Spring Term - Week 1

Welcome to new students! Welcome back to returning students!

This week was a consolidation lesson, just to get us all back into the swing of things after the Christmas break. We worked on:

• Figure 8s, horizontal and vertical
• Hip drops and hip pushes

We also ran through the start of our Choreography to Hayatak fi Soura. This music is in the Youtube Playlist, as well as the video of me doing the routine with my back to the camera/class. There are Choreography Notes for the routine too, if that will help you remember:

Click on this link to bring up the pdf file, or Right-click on the link and select "Save link as ..." to download the document to your device.

Home Practice

The theme that joined all the tech work was making sure we're doing the move that we think we're doing! It's very easy for our bodies to default to a move we know better, when we're trying something new or something we're less familiar with. So the home practice suggestion for this week is to try and build up your "body consciousness" about which move you're doing.

Either practise Figure 8s, or hip drops/pushes. Just one at a time.

Fig 8s - Are they horizontal? If so, are you circling backwards, or circling forwards? Are they vertical? If so, are you circling in towards your middle, or outwards?

Hip Drops/Pushes - Drops? If so, are you pulling the hip up with your side muscles (obliques)? Are you letting the hip drop on the beat? Pushes? If so, are you pushing up on the beat? For both, are you keeping your torso upright?

Practise in a mirror, if possible, so that you can check what you see in front of you is actually what you think you're doing.

Use the videos from the YouTube playlist, to remind you of the moves, and think back to what you remember from the class.

And finally, if you don't have time... do a 30 second burst of just one of these moves, but be clear about which one it is. You can do it while you're brushing your teeth, or while you're waiting for the kettle to boil. You don't need to change into practice gear, or find music to work with. You don't even need to take your shoes off. Just do 30 seconds. If you can do 30 seconds, twice a day, that's 7 minutes over the week. It all adds up!

Edited to add:

The music we used in the Practice session was Badala Zamana by Zohra. Feel free to use it for your own home practice. It's only 3 minutes....