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Are all belly dancers female? Not according to Yuska Lutfi Tuanakotta.

“There is this misconception that all belly dancers are supposed to be female,” he said.

But Yuska, who is a member of the Oriental dance troupe VelvetRAQs, has disproved this misconception. He has been teaching Oriental dance classes, which include belly dancing, for three years now.

“It started as a hobby,” he said. “Then it became my passion and eventually an obsession.” However, Yuska’s students in the classes he teaches are all female. So far, he is the only male member of VelvetRAQs.

“It is a shame, actually,” he said. “Maybe the guys think it’s not manly to become a belly dancer. They should be more like Billy Elliot,” he said, referring to the lead character in a 2000 British film.

The dance troupe VelvetRAQs, part of the dance school DanceWave Center Jakarta, is organizing a hafla — the Arabic word for a belly dance party — on Sunday. During the school’s haflas, students and teachers put a show to present the progress that they have made.

“We are also doing this as a fund-raising event for our annual recital, which will take place in November,” Yuska said.

DanceWave Center was founded two years ago and currently has around 60 students, most of whom are Indonesians. The show will feature eight performances from different classes. While the main focus of the hafla will be Oriental dances, two other classes at DanceWave Center Jakarta will also be showcased: the hip-hop and the sexy ladies dance class, which are both taught by Monique Chai.

Monique, who co-owns DanceWave Center, said that being a dancer in Indonesia was not an easy career.

“When people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them that I am a dancer, I sometimes get raised eyebrows,” she said.

Yuska added that as a dancer, it was sometimes hard to find gigs because people did not want to pay up.

“ ‘You charge too much, even the singers don’t get that much,’ ” he said he had been told many times. “Sometimes, dancers have to work harder than [singers] do,” he added.

Monique also has to deal with prejudice when it comes to her sexy ladies dance classes. “It’s different than the dancers that people go crazy about at clubs,” Monique said. “No offense to those girls, but in my class, I teach them the correct techniques and we have real choreography. It’s more than just shaking your booty.”

Yuska confirmed that the sexy ladies dance class was actually very hard work. “They are doing sit-ups, running and stuff like that,” he said.

Monique said they used to have difficulty finding venues to perform at because owners were afraid they were going to show too much flesh and that the dances might be too vulgar.

“But our shows and also the hafla on Sunday, are open to anyone and are very PG 13,” she said. “People may think that it is inappropriate that we are showing off our bellies, but hello, this is part of the dance. If we are not showing our midsection, then we’re doing it wrong.”

Both Yuska and Monique do their own choreography, something that they both enjoy doing. Their approach to choreography is also similar. They always start with the music, which can be anything from Oriental pop music to Linkin Park — but they try to avoid the mainstream because they fear that other choreographers might just copy it.

“I always start with a song,” Yuska said. “If the song fits and speaks to me, it sometimes only takes 10 minutes to come up with new moves. But then again, it can also take up to three months sometimes.”

Monique said: “It comes and goes. When you’re in the right mood, you can come up with a lot of things. Sometimes, you get stuck and think, ‘Oh no, I’ve used this before.’ But the music always comes first.”