Colette Todorov finds rhythm in numbers, and in belly dancing

“I love working with the numbers and the exactness of it all, organizing accounts, reconciling bank accounts,” she said. “There’s a nice rhythm you get into that I find almost relaxing. I really enjoy the routine of it.”

Todorov, husband Steven and daughter Zoe, now 9, moved to Hood River in 2008 from San Francisco, after Steven and Mosier resident Tom Reid started Green Home Construction (www.greenhome-designbuild.com), with a focus on building “very efficient homes” from the ground up, although they do a lot of solar installations (including solar hot water and electric systems), too.

Not long after the company started, Todorov became the bookkeeper. “When my husband and Tom were starting out the business, bookkeeping was one of the things they needed to have happen, but it was hard to find someone who would be a good fit,” she said. “Under kind of funny circumstances at the beginning of 2009, I broke my leg and couldn’t get around very well, and they needed to find someone that was a little bit more hours than what they’d previously had. I was doing contract work that got pretty quiet, so those three things combined put me back into the bookkeeper’s seat. It’s a set of skills that I had not tapped into in a long time, but was able to apply it in a new way.”

Her previous bookkeeping experience came during her college years at California State University, East Bay, when she worked for a bakery “back when bookkeeping was in books,” she joked. By the time she graduated in 1996, she’d gotten the bakery switched to automated bookkeeping.

But her main focus during those years was natural resources. She earned her Bachelor of Science in geography, with a certificate in cartographic communications (map making). She was an intern and seasonal employee with the National Park Service in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, as well as for the City of San Francisco as a gardener. “I did a lot of work in their native plant areas,” she said. She also worked as the native nursery plant manager in Muirwoods, north of San Francisco.

However, the field “is really competitive to find positions that are more than just temporary or seasonal,” she said, adding that she came to the Gorge with “more specific plant knowledge” to an area “pretty heavy in fish and water knowledge.

”Not to say that it’s not a possibility because I love the resources here, but it’s more my hobby fun time.”

Working in the Green Home Construction office also has the added benefit of a flexible schedule.

“I’m really lucky that the owner lets me have flexibility in my schedule, which is nice,” she said. “…It gives me the opportunity to take advantage of participating in my daughter’s school, going on field trips, and taking time out to do dance related things. I make sure the job’s taken care of, but being able to take advantage of that flexibility has been fantastic.”

Those “dance-related things” are weekly classes and performances — Todorov is a belly dancer.

She began in 1997, after seeing an ad in a free weekly newspaper. “I had seen belly dance performances, but didn’t know much about it at all. I decided one day to go see a class… and loved it.”

What she didn’t know is that she had dropped into a class taught by Carolena Nericcio-Bohlman of FatChanceBellyDance, a teacher “who had a very specific style of belly dance, one that she had developed,” Todorov said.

This style — called American Tribal Style Belly Dance — focuses on improvisation, and, while it was new when Todorov began, is now taught worldwide.

“You’re learning a vocabulary of movements, and along with those movements, you learn gestures and cues, so if you dance in a duo or trio, you are creating choreography on the spot,” Todorov explained. “Before (Nericcio-Bohlman’s) style, belly dancing with a group would be choreographed, so she really changed belly dancing.”

The style requires very little preparation before a performance — about 15 minutes, where Todorov and her fellow dancers pick music (such as a fast entrance song, something slow and dramatic for the middle, and something fast and upbeat to finish) and decide who will dance when.

“So if there’s three of us, the only thing we might talk about ahead of time is that all three will dance to the first song, two to the second slow song, and all dance together at the end. That’s the only performance discussion we have,” Todorov said.

“When the music starts, we go on stage and are moved by the music, by the audience’s energy, and are inspired by our dance partners,” she said. “We improvise through the whole song.

“Every time we dance, we get to do something completely new and inspired by the event, how we’re feeling and who we’re dancing with,” she added.

She performs primarily with her troupe, Scarlet Thistle Dance, but is also a solo performer. She can be seen quarterly at Solstice Wood Fire Pizza, each spring at the Center for the Arts movement show, and at Spring Fest in White Salmon, Huck Fest in Bingen, Hops Fest, Harvest Fest and First Friday “anytime we can,” she said.

Todorov opened Scarlet Thistle Studio (ScarletThistleStudio.com) in her home in 2009 and teaches weekly classes. She also teaches once a week at Datura Studio in Portland, with an additional online class through the studio’s Datura Online (daturaonline.com).

“One thing I like about belly dancing is that you can choose the impact,” she said, be that high impact and challenging, or low impact and gentle. This means women of all ages and abilities — her students range in age from 16 to mid-60s — can participate. Some of her students are brand new to belly dance, while others have been participating for years.

There has been strong support in the Hood River community of both her classes and her dancing, and she is happy the family relocated here.

“It’s been a great move,” she said. “We love all the friends we’ve made and love that it’s such a wonderful environment to raise our daughter.”