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| Hip slide warm up: Lying flat on your back slide your hips out to one side as if reaching for something with your hip. Make sure you�re reaching in a straight line. Don�t let your hip start to trace a curve that either goes up towards your armpit or down toward your toes. Pull the hip back in and repeat on the other side. |
| A maya, also called a downward 8 is one of the most sinuous hip movements in a dancer�s repertoire. Many dancers do it by lifting their heels to exaggerate the �down� on one side. There�s nothing wrong with that, but you need to be able to do the movement with both heels on the floor to be sure you�re engaging the proper muscles to do the movement. The maya, executed when standing, consists of sliding the right hip out to the side, then curving it downward. Then the left hip curves out to the side and curves downward. The trick is to add the crossover in the middle so that it looks as if your hips are tracing an infinity sign as you move. |
| Lie down flat on your back on the floor. Slide your hip out to the side keeping it touching the floor � if your hip lifts up off the floor, you�re adding a forward to the movement instead of keeping it strictly a side movement. Once your hip is extended to the side as far as it will go in a fairly straight line, curve it downward toward the toes of that foot. Your foot should stretch downward as you push your hip downward as if you were reaching for something just out of your reach with your toes, just as it did in the downward hip exercise. Once you�ve reached that hip down as far as it will go, switch sides and reach the left hip out to the side in a straight line. |
| Upward 8 warm up: In this warm up, instead of reaching your hip out and down, reach it out and up on the right, then pull it in and reach out and up with the opposite hip. |
| A Word about Mayas (down 8s) and upward 8s: Most people will find that they have serious trouble with either the upward 8 or the downward 8. The majority find the maya more difficult. Women use a bit of an upward 8 in their hips every time they walk � that bit of �sway� in a woman�s hips as she walks is similar to parts of an upward 8, so most dancers find an upward 8 easier to learn than a maya. If you want to see a walking downward 8 done beautifully, rent �Queen of the Damned� with the late Aaliyah. There�s a scene where she walks across a room toward someone, and as she walks, she moves her hips in a flawless series of downward 8s for the length of her walk. |
| Maya Warm up: |