Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A Yule Bellydance Lesson

I can dance half naked in front of hundreds of people. I can paint myself up like a two bit whore (stage make-up) and prance on out bare tummy, and occasionally cleavage, exposed. But I can't for the life of me get up the guts to wear a two piece swimsuit. And even though I'm on several club DVD's in all these wacky costumes, AND have performed for the local cable channel, I'm somehow not ready to expose my belly on a home video.

Weird and shy as I may be sometimes, I still love to teach. So I present to all of you my first Internet-home-video-bellydance-lesson. With background music! :) Although I wasn't aware that the sound of my coin scarf would act as white noise that almost blocks out the music and my voice. Sorry about that.

Merry Yule everyone! And shimmy on! :P

P.S. For those interested in smoke hands, the video is here.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful shimmy : )

I learned to shimmy in ATS, which is a different kind of shimmy. It's more like a sassy walk in place. Sorry for the crappy description, but that's what I think of it as.

Ailie said...

Ah,this brings back memories of endless shimmy drills in class. I hated them at the time, but they were well worth it.

Dark Mother- I had to relearn the basic shimmy for ATS- I guess its equivalent in cabaret is a 3/4 shimmy, where each hip goes updownup. I found it much harder to learn!

Unknown said...

I've seen 3/4 shimmies taught as updownup's through YouTube videos. I learned them as outupdowns so you get more of a side to side motion. I've also had them taught as out-tuck-untucks - which when your first learning them, look like your constantly being punched in the gut. :P

Ailie said...

My teacher, who is a sweettempered sadist in a hipscarf, likes to blow our minds occasionally by switching through all the variations of a 3/4 shimmy during warmup. I usually start gibbering somewhere between the downupdowns and the twistdownups

Unknown said...

You are surely amazing !!! And beautiful !
I went to Tunisia for 2 months a long time ago and learned to belly dance a little bit. You are super good ! Even people over there don't dance as well !
Merry Christmas !
Hugs

Foxy said...

Lovely shimmy! and you too! :)

Djarfskald said...

Ooo~ I tried this out and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be! While this doesn't resemble a Hawaiian hula move it is very much like the Tahitian style(something I hadn't learned)! Just youtube Tahitian hula and you can find some clips where it looks similar.

Unknown said...

Fun! I only wished I could figure out how to turn down the music on your webpage (is that Jimmy Hafla? love it!) so I could hear you better. 3/4 shimmy was my nemesis when I learned to bellydance...now learning to use glutes instead of knees over different weight on feet (SSBD) - crazy! Go you for posting videos, I'm envious. :)