Bellydance (slow) and undulations practise

Hi there am back again after a long time with a home video. I had been really busy with school and only uploaded performances lately. So sorry about that I had been having dancer’s block for the past few days. I always wanted to learn tribal fusion, so i fused some steps i learnt. Unfortunately it didnt look very tribal fusion. Haiz.

I am not so happy with this vid. Its pretty unchoreographed and a little too fast. I have been really concentrating on arm movements lately. I always neglect it and i know it will be bad in the future.

Practise does not make perfect! Perfect practise makes perfect!

I heard this beautiful qoute in a DVD by Jenna. And i think it makes perfect sense. Sometimes i ask myself, how much practise will it take me to be a level where i can say its good enough. Like when we read about professional dancers we find they have been dancing for 20 years 25 years. And it makes me sometimes feel demoralised on how much ahead we must practise.

Passion can drive us to practise. But i wonder is our practise good enough. Practising rolls undulations shimmies randomly might not be enough. I have been doing that for the past few months. It has helped me. N ive accompanied weights with my practise doing dances uploading them up and getting feedback. 

Perfect practise may not be what we think we are doing. I read Suhaila Salimpour’s interview and she was talking about strengthening muscles that can help in bellydance. Controlling muscles is mastering bellydance. And there are various exercises that can prepare us and strengthen us to make us better bellydancers. Practising steps are not enough. We need to know our muscles well and do exercises that help prepare us.  Suhaila’s glute exercise can help crunch our bum muscles better when doing hip bumps. 

Gym does help me strengthen my thigh and ab msucles. Thigh muscles are extremely important in backbends. I cant do backbends yet. And gym did help to strengthen. Anaheed’s exercise does wonders do.

How do we practise?

I came up with some plans during the dancer block period.  Practising steps is one of them. We can combine them into a simple dance and do them in variations. What i do is i shimmy for a whole song. Belly roll or undulate to a whole song. This can really help. Accompanying weights with it helps strengthen as well.

Gym is important. I visit it every two days now that im in my holidays. I usually do 3 leg machines and abs.

Good instructional dvds are great to practise with. Rachel Brice’s arms dvd had been criticised by some dancers saying that it does not show the secret to serpentine movements. But the truth is, practising the exercises she teaches will eventually create fluidity. Many of us just dont have patience. The exercises she teaches really really helps. I do it for warmup before dancing and i see a great difference! We have to drill many such movements into our muscle memory. These exercises help us prepare.  Choreography dvds are also great to work with. It helps you build your dance vocabulary.

Classes! Definitely important, Even though i dont quite practise da choreography at home. My teacher is kind enough to help go thru every week. Opinions from teachers can really help. In fact its the most important of all. Cos she can see whether we are making a mistake or not. And we are able to correct our movements basing mostly on her feedback

Play music and randomly dance to it. This help us intrepret music. Like when to do shimmies or when to do snake arms. Try dancing differently to the music each time.

Watching videos help too. Watch dancers and see how they intrepret a song. Watch different dancers ddance to the same music and try it for yourself. With youtube its easy to watch so many performances by professionals

Moving each muscle individually has helped me great deal. Like moving my disphram to help me master flutters. It has helped me in my belly roll as well. Just pushing in muscles randomly.

Plans

In my country, unfortunately they only teach egyptian. I found a ATS dance school but they are uncontactable. I wonder if they are around still. I guess just graduating from a school does not make you da perfect bellydancer. I might have to learn from few different schools to make my foundation strong. But the secret to perfect practise is definitely patience.

Sometimes i get frustrated when i cant move as well as the many professional dancers or a fellow dancer. And i wonder how long more. But as long as we work smart we can get to a level we can say that “good”.

Song requests

If you need songs. Mail me and tell me which song u want.

Makeup video requests

They are coming up. I am hoping youtube video quality doesnt make it suffer

Tutorial requests

I am not an expert. I can only try my best to explain. But its good to seek help from a professional teacher. I will try to upload your requests and i really still hope you guys will seek help from a real bellydance teacher. Use my vids more as a accompanied practise then learning from them. I usually load them up so i myself wont forget what i learnt,

FEEDBACK

Do tell me your honest feedback whther its about my dance or my blog. I appreciate them all. Happy dancing!

HIP HOP BELLYDANCE WITH “DETENTION”

Hi guys

I know its been a long time since i posted any video. Some of you guys were worried as well. I was busy with semester not quite feeling well too. In the meantime, i was working with Joshua Simon, as classmate of mine to perform on Singapore’s National Day. Joshua is really amazing to work with, and im dreadfully sorry that i couldnt attend his many rehearsals cos i was super sick and the semester was really killing me. Joshua was really very patient. I learnt alot working with his amazing team. I am not so good with names.  But i really love you all.

Hip Hop and bellydance

Hip hop has very familiar steps with bellydance. They have hip drops, chest lifts figure 8s. It was pretty easy for me to learn. But i had one problem. Hip Hop has a totally different attitude. It has power and oomph. It was pretty difficult for me adjusting and changing my feminine style to something with alot of power. By nature, im a very soft person. So its hard for me to project power. I might have been able to do it if i had a lot more time. The first person who taught me some hip hop moves was ZEF. Its a good thing i found his friendster, i am not too good with names but i recog faces alot better. Zef was patient and very careful when he was teaching making sure i do alright.

Hip Hop needs alot of strength and attitude. Earlier on, i spoke about facial expressions. Hip Hop is another of those dance artforms you shouldnt be smiling too much in.  Bellydance needs multi tasking, patience and passion. Hip hop even though its easier (atleast to me) needs energy. Hip hop has very big movements that are easily visible on stage.

Dance : Other Forms

I really admired most of the dancers there. They come from different dance backgrounds. We had a Malay dancer and a contemporary dancer as well on stage. Khairani did Malay dance and ive always known that art form for being graceful. Maybe culture plays a part as well. Malay women are particularly graceful in their movements. Khairani did a great job. Reagon did contemporary dance. I really admired his dance skills. He is the guy flying around in the video. His movements are big and really catches attention on stage. Extremely graceful as well. He has a background in contemporary dance, He is one one of the dancers i really admired there.

Cheerleaders

There was a cheerleader girl. Joshua was doing some of those cheerleading tricks where you carry a person up and make her stand on your shoulders. That was really amazing to watch. Even though, i was frightened she might have an accident. She looked really fragile.

Chinese dancer

Amanda if i remmeber clearly told me about her background in chinese dance. She seemed very interested in bellydance. I really hope she can take it up some time. She did manage to learn an inner hip circle at the end of it.

BIG MOVEMENTS ON STAGE

There was something interesting i learnt from this girl. I am sorry i dont know her name. She’s got dark curly hair ( in case you are reading this

She suggested i needed bigger movements espcially on a big stage. I agree with her. I remember one of my bellydance teachers telling me about bellyrolls. Bellyrolls are movements of three stomach muscles that may not be too visible on a stage, so she suggested undulations (the movement of your pelvis) Both movements look familiar but undulations are alot more bigger. Shimmies can be replaced with turkish shimmies to look more big on stage.  Belly rolls are fascinating but its not too visible. As a dancer, its important to take over the stage. Travelling steps , veil work and big movements give you power. Bellydance doesnt have that much of travelling steps compared to hip hop or contemporary dance. So its important to plan out your movements.

Wings of Isis is a good way to show how big you are on the stage. The thing is, you should know how to control it. I was hoping to use wings of isis, but i didnt have time to practise with it. Furthermore, i dont own one. This is one way to take over the stage. But big movements are not always good, one shoud have a mixture.

Taking in mind where you are performing?

Bellydancers perform everywhere! Its important to take note of your space. I watched an interesting clip which talks about space.

We perform at stages restuarants and festivals. This clip kind of elaborates how to make use of this space to our advantage. I got reminded of this clip when the curly haired girl spoke to me. Im sorry i have to describe you this way, i really dont know ur name.

When we are in smaller spaces we can afford to do tiny movements like an egyptian shimmy and bellyrolls. It looks more sensual that way.

COSTUMES

Ive to thank Sakuntala Aunty. Shes my mom’s friend.

I cant speak tamil for nuts. But she really had patience with my broken tamil mixed with malayalam. She really did my costume well and made sure it didnt fall off. I am afraid of losing clothes during a performance. This costume i got it from egypt. Its alot prettier that the ones here and alot cheaper as well!

Special thanks

Detention group. All of you. The sweet little girl who had the song in the phone. Zef, Kairani, Amanda, Josh and all the others .

Angel who missed the performance but still came to support. She;s my really close friend

The lady who recorded the entire event