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| Floor movements Because proper technique in belly dance is critical for good dancing and can be hard to achieve since it uses intrinsic muscles rather than outer muscles, there are some specialized movements you can practice to teach your body how to do a movement correctly without �cheating� by relying on other muscles. Most often, students will get into the habit of relying on their qadriceps or knees to make their hip movements big. It works fine for a beginning movement, but will stop a dancer cold when she attempts more complex movements that those basic movements done correctly would have trained her for. These aren�t the typical floor dancing movements that are taught in a belly dance course, but rather a way to make sure that you�re doing the basic movements by engaging the right muscles rather than cheating them out by getting other muscles involved. All of these are done lying on the floor or sitting on the floor which changes how gravity works on your body and how you use your muscles to hold yourself in position. These will show you in an instand whether or not you�re using your muscles the way you ought to. |
| Down hip warm up: A downward hip and upward hip are the basic building blocks for almost all hip movements in middle eastern dance, and a lot of dancers use their knees to cheat the movement out. By bending one knee while straightening the other, you can achieve a hip drop of sorts, but by not using the proper muscles, you�ll end up putting too much stress on the knees (never a good thing!) and not strengthening the muscles you need to strengthen to do other more advanced movements. Lie down flat on your back and do a slow, smooth downward hip on the right side. You should feel your whole right leg slide down along the floor under you as if you were reaching for something with your right foot. Repeat on the left side. Your hip should not come up off the floor or dig into the floor at any point of the movement. If it does, it means you�re adding a back or forward angle to your downward hip. Pull the hip back to neutral and repeat on the other side. |
| Up hip warm up: This is the same as the down hip warm up except your lifting your working hip up towards your arm pit in a straight line. You should feel your leg slide along the floor and your hip should not lift off the floor or dig into it at any point. So what�s the difference between an up hip and a down hip anyways? Because the hips are attached to each other, when you drop one you automatically lift the other. However, a down hip and an up hip are differentiated by the accent on the movement. When you watch an accomplished dancer, you can tell whether she�s doing a down hip on the right or an up hip on the left because she�s adding muscle strength to the movement on one side which makes a difference in its size and emphasis. That�s the difference that using the correct muscles will make in your dancing. |