Autumn Term - week 12

Last lesson of the term! I do hope I'll be seeing you again in the new year. Please remember, if you can possibly sign up before the end of December, I'd be very grateful. The viability decisions will be made early in the New Year, and I would really like this class to keep going!

The last lesson of term is always Technique Requests, and Y requested Camels. This is a move that requires good abdominal control, so I usually leave it until the second term. But what the heck!

But like last week, I wanted to focus strongly on the routine to Akteb Aleik, and get it finished, so there was a bit of recapping Verse 3 (which has 3 reps within it), and moving on to Verse 4 which is nice and short, and the finale, also short.

I'm sorry I couldn't do the video last week of Verse 3, but did manage to film it all the way through after class, with only a small bit of forgetting what I'm supposed to be doing, and as soon as I've got it edited and uploaded, I'll add it here.

And finally, in Music Corner, we spoke about the cool down music I used, which is from Jane Birkin's Arabesque album, which was recorded live in concert, with a small orchestra of Arab musicians. The piece I used in class was Elisa:

But I also sometimes use Comment Te Dire Adieu:

Wishing you all the very best for the Holiday season, and looking forward to seeing you on the other side...

Autumn Term - week 11

I decidedI wanted to complete the choreo, even if it's not fully "learned" by the end of this term. This is partly because Y will be leaving us, and partly just in case we don't get enough people to be viable for next term (I hope we will, but I'm planning these last two sessions on a worst case basis).

So we started with a quick catch up on the Vertical Figure 8s from last week, comparing the difference the foot position makes. Try practising the V8s Up and In with your feet a bit wider apart than usual and with your feet closer in.

But mostly we were working on Verse 3 of the Choreography. This one is a bit harder to remember, because there are 3 sections that are the same tune, so you need to keep tabs on where you are in the routine. 

As usual, I'll video the next bit and put it up here, and add it to the Youtube playlist.

Next week is our last session of this term, and we'll finish the routine - Verse 4 and the ending are shorter than Verse 3!

Autumn term - week 8

Tonight it was just me and C. We recapped the Step Push moves from last week, and we worked on Single Sided Hip Circles:

We did a bit of a recap of the first verse of the choreography, then moved onto the second verse. I'll leave videoing it until a few more people have learned it.

Autumn term - week 7

I hope you all had a good half term. My holiday in France was very stormy, windy, rainy... But it was still good to have some time away with my sisters!

Tonight was really about consolidation, making sure that what we did before the half term break is still there in our memory! We recapped the hip drop with release/kick. Remember, the key with this is to be really strong on the standing leg, and not put any body weight into the dropping/releasing/kicking leg. As soon as you even up your standing weight, your body won't want to do the little release/kick, because it takes you off balance. Also remember to keep the supporting knee soft, and don't pop the supporting hip out.

We also brought in the hip push (a very close relative of the hip drop) and used it to create travelling moves (we're going to need them in the choreography soon).

This covers the basic hip push and the on-the-spot twisting version. The Travelling versions are in the video below:

We also did some abdominal work - the usual pull in & release, but varying the speeds. Quick pull in, slow release, or slow pull in, quick release. 

• Use a slowish count of 4.
• Count 1, pull in the abs quickly
• Count 234, relax the abs slowly and smoothly
• Or vice versa
• Count 123, pull in the abs slowly and smoothly
• Count 4, relax the abs quickly to let them pop back out.

We also recapped the Akteb Aleik choreography Introduction, and added Verse 1 to our routine. I remembered to take both phones (one to film, one to play the music) so here's the dance to date, so you can practise it:

And in Music Corner... El3ab Yalla, by Oka & Ortega

I found the lyrics, to make sure I'd explained it right to you, and thankfully I did!

If you want to check out the words, they are here.

Autumn term - week 6

I can't believe we're already half way through the term! 

I was reminded that October is Black History Month and the theme is Celebrating our Sisters, so all the music for tonight's class is music that was performed and made famous by two great Divas of Arabic music - Oum Koulsoum and Warda. More on that in another post, it could get very muso-nerdy!

The new technique that was introduced tonight was the Hip Drop with a Foot Release (aka a Drop Release, or a Drop Kick, though that sounds like Rugby thing!). This is a bit tricky, because it's hard to get used to not trusting our body weight to the floor, you have to be confident working with all your weight in the standing leg, and not letting your "empty" leg to take the body weight.

By request we did a bit of work on Arms. We started with basic concepts. Use the back to lift the arms, not the shoulders. Consider whether you want symmetry or asymmetry. Think about your hand position - they finish off the curve of the arm. Consider all the joints you can use to move your arms and hands about.

This isn't the Arms Drill we did, but it's the same basic concept. You can follow along, and try to remember to do something else with your body, so you don't treat arms as a separate thing, but as part of your dancing as a whole.

There's an Arms tag/label, so if you're interested, you can click on the Arms label in the list, or at the foot of this post.

For the Akteb Aleik choreography, we completed the Introduction, and I will try to film and post a video by the end of the weekend.

Try to have a few listen throughs, a few follow alongs for the choreo, so you don't forget all about it over the half term.

See you on 2nd November - have a good break!

Autumn term - week 5

Tonight was all about the Three Step!

We started with a recap of the Forward Back Changeovers and the long (7-step) grapevines from last week, but bringing the focus to the short (3-step) grapevine. This is covered in the Grapevine videos I posted last week.

We also worked on Walking using the Three Step pattern. We did some basic Walking practice, to practise posture and centredness, and moved on to the three step walking pattern, where we can add accents, and then we used that pattern to move onto the Arabesque Walk

We also started the choreography to our chosen song, Akteb Aleik. I will do short video clips as we go along, and try to post them each week.

For now, here's the music for practising to:

This week was all about the Intro. It's a long intro, so we'll do the end of it next week.

I can only apologise for the complete lack of any attempt at editing. I had to film it on my work iphone, and I don't know iphones, I'm an Android girl.
I did lose balance a smidge on one of the turns, next time I hope I'll be better at it!

For home practice, listen to the music, trying to identify the changes. Dance along with my practice video. I hate to sound really boring, but you won't learn it unless you actually practice it!

Good luck!

I mentioned listening to an interesting radio programme on Breathing as a way of reducing stress/anxiety, all about how they teach breathing techniques in schools. They talked about some really interesting techniques. If you fancy a listen, it's only 14 minutes:

An Almanac for Anxiety: In Search of a Calmer Mind
Episode 4 - Air

Autumn Term Week 3

Tonight we worked on some new material, the Forward Back stepping pattern (aka box step, aka Pas de Bourrée). This can be a bit tricky to "get", but you just have to remember it's not a walking forwards step, it's a staying on the spot step, it's a case of balancing the forwards & the back.

For the more experienced students, we used the Forward Back step with a range of accents, to give it a bit of variety.

We also recapped the Hip Hits, and shimmies. 

We also added a heel lift to our Figure 8,

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I was also trying to gauge opinions on my choice of music for the class choreography. I'm hoping you all like Ma Tigi Henna, by Nancy Ajram (Lebanese, but she sings Egyptian style!)

But then you voted for my second choice of music, Akteb Aleik by Fadel Shaker:

For the Shimmy practice I used a drum solo called El Tablaa from a very old cd, called Delta Festival Vol II. I've done a bit of a Youtube search, and I can't find it. I'll keep looking...

I found a couple of tracks from the cd, but not El Tablaa. This one, Adomma we Tekka, is good:

The account I found that track on, TheBellydanceVideos is a goldmine of old school bellydance music and videos. It's definitely worth having a look at her videos.

The tabla drummer on is Khamis Henkish, one of a family of excellent drummers. There's a playlist of one of his cassettes here. Sorry, I don't read enough Arabic to tell you anything more than what's on the track titles.

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Home Practice -
For the new students, work on EITHER the Forward Back step, OR the Figure 8 with heel lift.
If you're one of the more experienced students, work on Vertical Figure 8s (especially on trying to work out the difference between the Up & In 8s and the Up & Out 8s)

Spring Term - Week 4

Tonight we practised the choreography first, and moved towards the ending, working on the final verse, and the final choruses.

The choreography notes are here. I've tried to set up the file so that anyone with the link can view it and download it, but if you need to ask for permission to see it, I'll try to do that as quickly as possible.

We then went on to Hip Drops and Single Sided Circles as our Technique for the day.
There is a Single Sided Hip Circle in the playlist, which also covers technique that we haven't yet covered (the vertical versions), that we'll come onto in the next couple of weeks.

The Hip Drop video is in the Playlist:

Beginners - Week 10

Tonight we took our undulating figure 8s from last week, and got them fully vertical! We started with the Up & Out figure 8, and then moved onto the Up & In figure 8.

We also looked (briefly) at Turns, mainly to bring together all the different kinds of turns we've done this term - the 3-Step Turn (360°), Mini-Grapevine Turn (180°) and Flamenco Turn (180°/360°). 

It was also a chance to think about what we can do to minimise dizziness, such as:

• Spotting (where you fix your focus on a still point)
• Anti-Spotting (where you fix your focus on a point that's moving with you, creating an illusion of stillness) 
• Disrupting the Inner Ear with a quick Up-Down
• A LOT of practice
• Ginger

Beginners - Week 9

Today we added some vertical undulation to our horizontal figure 8, with an added heel lift on the "outside" of the move. The video for that is right here as well as in the Youtube Practice Videos playlist:

We also did some more work on getting our Abs to do clever stuff. This time it was about controlling the pull-ins and the releases, not only as to their speed, but also being able to stop the pull-in or release half-way.

And today we officially completed the choreography to Hayatak Fi Soura!!!

(I know we did it unofficially last week, but that was just messing about, I didn't actually teach it). So from here on in, it's about troubleshooting and getting it to look good! 

Here's the practice video, that takes you all the way through. I messed up a little bit in the second half, but hey, nobody's perfect.

Happy practising!

Beginners - Week 8

This week we worked on using the hip push while travelling - the Step Push, with a plain and cross-step option, going forwards and retreating. The practice video is here - it's a big vid covering various Hip Push options, but the Step Push section starts at 9mins5secs:

We also did more work on Arms.

The Arms music was Al Gani Bad Youmein, by Samira Said. It's very passionate and emotional. There's a lyrics video with English translation here, if you want to follow the words.

For the Choreography, we've got started on the repetition of the sections we did at the start. One of my Principles of Choreography is that when we have repetitions in the music, we use repetitions of the moves we used earlier. So with Verse 2, we're repeating exactly what we do at the start of the routine (the cross step, hip drops, grapevine combination). But in Verse 3, it's "same but different", still hip drops, but in a different pattern, using profiles rather than facing front.

A bit of background - I created this choreo as part of a workshop series with Kay Taylor, who runs FaridaDance.com. It was all about creating choreography, I wanted to gain insights from how other people approach it. All of us on the course created our own routines to the same music. To see how other dancers interpreted the music, you can see our compilation video here.

Homework suggestion, either the Step Push or the Choreography (the more you practise it, the more it will stick in your memory).

Beginners - Week 7

Welcome back! In this second half of the term we'll be working on more new techniques and more variations on those techniques we know. We'll also be able to finish learning the choreography and hopefully we'll be able to troubleshoot any problems you're having, and see how far you can remember sections for yourself.

This week we were focussing the Technique on Walking Like A Dancer, thinking about how to make the stepping look light and add accents to make a plain walk more interesting. Possible accents include - pause, chin lift, shoulder roll, shoulder hit, chest lift, abdominal pull-in, hip push, hip twist, hip drop (needs a lift on count 3, to prep for the drop on 4), knee lift, heel drop... so many options!!!). We also looked at using floor patterns for our walking, thinking about straight lines and curves.

We also worked on the Hip Push - a close cousin of the hip drop. This video covers the basic hip drop with the twisting forwards or backwards variations.

For the choreography, we didn't proceed any further than the Instrumental section, where we're walking in a figure 8 (or two circles, if that's how you see it). This week was more about refreshing your memories after a week off, and consolidating what we know already.

I'm planning on recording the full choreography practice video after class, either this week or next week, so you'll have the full version available soon.

Home practice suggestion: Shimmy!

If you've got no time, just do 30 second bursts of shimmy, plain or weighted, no music, just the knee action. If you do two bursts per day, that gives you 7 minutes of practice in a week, without really thinking about it.

If you've got 5 minutes, use the follow-along from the Weighted shimmy video from Week 6

If you've got more time than that, use my Shimmy Music Playlist, and try combining shimmies with different arm positions. 

EDITED TO ADD the music from the Walking Like a Dancer section. Its Manbaa Innar by Hossam Ramzy & Samy el Bably

 

If you use Spotify it's here. 

Beginners - Week 6

 Don't forget, it's half term next week (27th October). I'll be away on holiday, the centre will be shut, so there's no point turning up!

This week was for Learner Requests. This meant going over the Hip Drop.

The new technique (in the absence of further requests) was the Weighted Shimmy, where we allow the basic hip shimmy to move from one side to another. We also practised using the Arms drill from last week with the warm up dance.

We also consolidated the first half of the Choreography, introducing the short Bridge bit, that ends the first half of the routine, and the transition into the next section of the music.

Home practice suggestion: Shimmies!
Here's a shimmies video, that you can follow along with.

Or of course you can practise the Choreography.

Have an excellent break, and see you on 3rd November.

Beginners - Week 5

This week we continued to expand our technique, with new Forward Back step changeover variations, using the Take a Step Out option, and also the Add an Extra Step option.

We also worked on Arms. It's important to practise armwork with some hip or stepping action, so you get used to arms being part of your wider dance. Also remember to keep your back engaged and your shoulders down, so that your arms don't get tired.

Home practice suggestions. Either keep working on the choreography, or try some Arms practice.

Choreo: use this practice video (I've included it on the YouTube playlist). Watch it, so you can see how the music and the moves connect. Use the video to dance along with it. If you're feeling super-confident, try dancing it without looking!

Arms: use this practice video (I'll include it on the YouTube playlist). You can just watch it, to get a feel for arm shapes you can use, or better still practise along, copying what I'm doing. Even better, try finding your own arm shapes and patterns.

There's a talky bit at the start, for those that want a recap, or those that missed this session. If you want to go straight to the drill, it starts around 3m45s.

The music is "Adaptation" by House of Tarab.

Beginners - Week 4

 This week we used our existing technique:

• Circles, Figure 8s, side hits, hip drops, shimmy

And we covered new technique:

• Forward Back Step changeovers
• Grapevines, long with 7 steps, short with 3 steps

We used our basic techniques from the previous weeks to do a warm up dance, and we have started the Choreography to Hayatak Fi Soura

The music video is in the YouTube playlist.

If you're more into Spotify, the music is here.

I've updated the Youtube playlist with the Forward Back and Grapevine videos.

I'm leaving the choreography video for next week, but if you want to practice it before then, here are some notes:

Intro - start by standing with R foot posed, hands crossed at heart level

Cross step (R foot in front of L), hip drop L x 2, repeat to other side, cross step R foot hip drop L x 3 (different speed).

Grapevine x 4, travelling to R, stepping L foot in front of R first.

Repeat cross-step-drop & grapevines other way.

Verse 1

Hip drop R x 3, hip drop L x 3, hip drop R x 3 (different speed), figure 8 to RLR

Repeat Hip drops & figure 8 the other way.

The grapevines video includes a bit at the end about how they fit into the start of the choreo.

HOME PRACTICE

Bronze level - read the choreography notes above & use that to remember what we did

Silver level - read the choreography notes WHILE PLAYING the music video, so you can connect the music and the moves more firmly in your brain.

Gold level - practice the choreography with the music from the video. 

Platinum level - write about the choreography in your dance journal (or make some notes on your phone, or in your diary!). When you write about it, you think about it, which helps you to remember what you have done. You can say which bits you like, which bits are more of a challenge for you, how you like the music... 

Bellydance Taster Workshop - Saturday 1st October

In this Taster workshop, we covered some Beginner level technique:

• Circles & half circles
• Figure 8s, plain & reverse
• Hip Hits/Side to Sides
• Hip Pushes, including the Step-Push travelling variation
• Forward Back step
• Hip Shimmy

There are practice videos available for all these moves in this Youtube Playlist.

We used all these techniques in a final improvised dance.

We used a gentle warm up to mobilise our joints, and some stretches at the end of the session to get any muscles that have tightened up back to normal.

If you enjoyed this workshop and would like to continue learning to bellydance, you can join the Beginners classes that run at Guildford Adult Learning Centre, on Thursday evenings. Don't worry, if you've done this workshop, you should be able to catch up fairly easily.

The course details are here, but don't enrol online. Instead, phone the Customer Service Team on 0300 200 1044, as they should be able to reduce the course fees, pro rata, because you've missed the first three sessions.

EDITED TO ADD

I said I'd upload a couple of Beginner routines. To be honest, they'd be hard for you to learn on just one Taster like today's, but... Fill your boots!

This first one is called Music For Zeinat, and it's the most Beginner friendly of my choreographies. I would normally teach it over 5 or 6 weeks in the first term of a Beginners class. (Sorry, I only just realised the video was set to Private, I've just changed it to Unlisted, so you should be able to play it now).  

The next one is a bit more technical, maybe more of a second or third term Beginner routine. It's called Maigorakshi. Youtube won't let me show it, because of music copyright, so it's on Vimeo, and you'd need the password "bea" to see it.

Finally, this is Ziggarats of Cinnamon. This one was basically designed to show off different Forward Back Step variations. This is one of my early versions of this piece, I've simplified it a bit over the years!