Philosophical wonder woman

I've heard this called the "Belly Dancer's Code" - but I really like this affirmation that came from the newsletter of Shimmy in the Spirit of Bellydance by Holly Luky. March Affirmation- by Tonya Chianis RScP Dignity Have you thought about how many different cultures have embraced the wonderful art form of Le Dance Oriental or Belly Dance. It's being accepted and perfected by practically every country in the world. And even more amazing is how wonderful the dancers are. When you become a part of this dance world, be so proud to know that you are supporting the women and men whose roots are in this dance. Make up your mind to share your finest costume creations, as well as perform, in the most dignified and thoughtful ways. So many countries of this dance origin have suffered and continue to suffer greatly through wars. Every time we do this dance we bring to the attention of others, not only our desire to be respected in this dance, but our respect to the...

At the recommendation of a twitter friend, I picked up Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love from the library. Its playful conversational style and personal narrative flow made it a quick, easy read. It's one woman's story following a break-up and how bellydance became a fun, life-changing hobby to pull her out of the heartbreak. She describes adventures in both dating and becoming immersed in the bellydance community. I was more interested to read about her experiences with bellydance. Anyone who gets into it knows how addictive it is and so then you move to the next phase after classes; performing. Anyone who performs gigs can empathize with her experiences in the dreadful venues; shows getting delayed by hours, little pay, no dressing room area, uninterested audience members, etc. Performing in places ranging from senior centers, random carnivals, bars, concerts and the most unexpected places is always an adventure. She had a great analogy about how to ...

Hey dancers - frustrated because your budget or time doesn't allow for belly dance class? Do you spend countless hours behind a computer desk wishing you could be practicing dance instead? Well good news, you can practice isolations just about anywhere!  Sitting at your desk :   1. alternating glute squeezes.   This is pretty easy to do without anyone noticing (so long as your face isn't making a weird expression. :) As you hopefully know, alternating squeezing each butt cheek is a great way to build up your shimmy strength (while also building muscle memory). First make sure you have the correct posture. Then focus the mind on right cheek, squeeze and then left. If you can only do it slowly that's just fine, it's still an effective exercise and eventually you'll easily speed up. For more info on glute squeezes see Shira's website .  2. pelvic tuck, glute squeeze (both together).   Make sure your posture is correct. Sit toward the back of your chair wi...

Zills, Veil and Shimmies Hey everybody! Sure hope you can make my all level bellydance workshop being held at Studio 21 in Golden, CO on August 29 - 3:00 - 5:00 PM. This workshop will focus on zill (finger cymbal) rhythms, veil work, shimmies and more. For people with bellydance experience I'll add layers on for you to challenge you. If you happen to have a large piece of fabric that could pass for a veil or a veil please bring it, if not don't worry I have some extra veils. I don't have any extra zills but you can still learn from listening and I'm happy to pass mine around. I will describe the various rhythms, demonstrate & we'll work through a few rhythmic exercises and you'll have handouts describing everything we've learned. Zill rhythms are essential to know for the bellydancer, so even if you're not ready to add a zill rhythm to existing dance movements, understanding them will help the middle eastern music to really get into your blood! I...

this can more commonly be referred to as the "Tuck and Push" - a tip I gleaned from Jeela (aka Annette Mason) , a lovely dancer from Arizona. Just like a tennis player has a "ready" stance, so they can easily reach the ball in any position, also a bellydancer has a neutral ready position to easily enable their body to get back to a stance for the next move. Here's how to do get the tuck and push working for you (from Jeela's website): What is this Tuck & Push?? It is the balancing of the front and back of the torso creating a foundation for good posture and power in your dance. It also makes you look great in pictures! How To: 1. Stand with feet hip distance apart, knees soft, weight centered over the arches of your feet. 2. Roll shoulders up, back and down. 3. Use your lower abdominal muscles to pull your belly button in towards your spine: this is your Tuck 4. Use your upper back muscles to draw shoulder blades together and Push rib cage straight for...

In short, because it makes us feel beautiful! I asked a lot of fellow shimmy sisters to chime in on why they love bellydance and here are some answers I got... "it makes me feel fantastically beautiful and great about myself! :-)" "I am not a dowdy female." "it helped me discover a part of myself that was dormant!" "it empowers women to be more self accepting and celebrates joy of femininity, as we meditate with movement." The truth is, we all need to accept ourselves and feel comfortable in our skin and bellydance helps us do just that. It's a fact that someone is more attractive when they are confident and also when they let their inner inspiration and beauty shine through (see Owning Your Sexiness ). Bellydance teaches you to isolate and control every muscle in your body and with that comes an enormous sense of empowerment and freedom. Once the muscle memory takes over and the movements begin to click for you, I promise it will be in you...

Six questions to ask yourself about your dancing before a Bellydance performance. By Nielle McCammon (to appear in the Jan/Feb issue of Shimmy in the Spirit of Bellydance magazine) Over the summer I participated in a bellydance show in which the performers ranged from first-time beginner to seasoned professional. And what struck me was that the technically best performer was not necessarily the favorite performer for all the audience. It also occurred to me that one or two of the performances were too experimental and strange for a show to an audience comprised of people who had never seen bellydancing before. I was prompted to ask the guests I invited who their favorite performers were and why --- and I was extremely surprised at the answers. Their favorites were not the seasoned professionals who showed off their technique mastery but the performers who were all about connecting with the audience and sharing the love of the dance from their heart. They liked the dancers who were...

I took a zill workshop with Jasmin once and really enjoyed her knowledge and enjoyment of the dance. Last night I was doing more Isis research for my fiction story and came across an article she wrote on Isis. It really is historical and has nothing to do with bellydance but very interesting nonetheless. I link to one article from her on my dance website but she has a wealth of information she's written on MANY topics that I plan on sharing with my students :) http://www.bestbellydancechicago.com/Newsletter/article_archives.html

I've decided I want to monetize my blog but I want to choose who I advertise on my site. So I'm going to start right now advertising my favorite new bellydance magazine based out of Sedona, AZ: Shimmy in the Spirit of Bellydance . Holly Luky has created a wonderful, positive forum for sharing the love of the dance and fostering a spirit of COMMUNITY not competition. The articles range from fitness, to positive body image, to dance styles and techniques and so much more. I'm in the process of writing an article for submission that I will end up sharing here as well related to do's and don'ts of performance and defining your dance style. I'd also like to advertise costume and dancewear vendors since let's face it, we need something to dance in! I really enjoy Dance Distributors for general dancewear and have a large number of bellydance vendor links on my website shimmygoddess.com So if you are a dance teacher, performer or vendor, please contact me if y...

If I do even just ONE of these every day, then hopefully I won't cringe when I see the performance DVD of my July bellydance solo :) First of all, my favorite yoga workout from Karen Voight kills 2 birds with one stone. YogaSculpt stretches one set of muscles while strengthening other sets. So you're getting strength training the same time you are stretching in a meditative state (at least it's meditative for me now that I know the workout well and don't need to look at the screen). When I first tried this workout, I thought I was going to die. In the beginning I simply couldn't do it all the way through. Slowly but surely it's do-able even though my body responds differently to the work out every day. It's important to just be patient with yourself. Even though it's TOTALLY old and outdated, I really like abs of steel and when that got too easy I got Abs of Steel 2 that also incorporates push ups. I feel like my abdominal's are my biggest fit...

Last night I took a ballet class for the first time since probably 7th grade. That's 22 years people! So all things considered, as I look back I didn't do as badly as I could have. I remember all the positions at barre and have been stretching regularly, but once it came time to put a series of steps together across the floor, that's when my brain turned to mush. I used to speak ballet, but I don't remember a lot and will need to do a little reviewing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_ballet In addition, we did some serious stretching both at barre and in the middle of the floor and occasionally my body would twinge and spasm as if to remind me I'm not the spring chicken that used to do these movements. But it also brought back flashbacks of about the time I stopped being serious about ballet... when my childhood teacher would push me deeper into stretches to the point of severe pain. I LOVE watching ballet and dancing it even if I know I was never pro...

guess what? Zills (finger cymbals) are a great workout for your arms. After a 3 hour workshop with Rachel Brice doing choreography with zills, my arms are still hurting 2 days later. (all my other parts hurt too of course, in a good way). But I've been surprised how I felt every muscle in my arms from constant zill use. I don't usually sign up for zill workshops because I feel I know the rhythms pretty well, but now I might just for the exercise! Rachel Brice is the sweetest, funniest superstar dancer. I wish I could take from her every week!

I don't recall having seen this site before, and needed to add it to Ava 's list of links since she's this month's featured dancer. Looking through I thought it was all selling merchandise (that's most of it) but there are a lot of great articles too, such as: In Search of a Better Belly By Jasmin Jahal I took a workshop with Jasmin years back and was really impressed with her immense knowledge about bellydance culture, history, technique, fitness, etc. So I plan on coming back to this site for more research and will need to add it to shimmygoddess (which also needs a total redesign, le sigh).

In searching for one bit of information (I forget what now), I came across a huge belly dance festival here next month hosting, Rachel Brice . (She's only one of the most amazing and mesmerizing bellydancers in the world!) I've never taken a workshop with her but seen her perform a lot - and I'm so excited! The event's called Elevation 2009 and has 3 full days of workshops with many people as well as shows in the evenings. In addition, I've made friends with a very nice woman who started a new dance studio in my area of town called Studio 21 . They have classes for all ages and even adult classes like ballet, hip hop, ballroom, modern and more. She asked me if I'd be interested in teaching a beginning bellydance workshop and I'm thrilled! I've always been a bit skeptical about teaching because I'm hard on myself and never think I'm in good enough shape... but I've been a student of bellydance for over a decade so I think it's about...

The trend I'm seeing is a lot of movement toward Facebook. So I'm going to focus my networking there, but keep myspace for the people that haven't transitioned yet. I'm looking for any and all belly dancers to join a group I started on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=64430114281&ref=share Please invite any dancers in the Denver area you know to join. It would be great to have a central repository of Denver dancers to draw from and we could really unify the community. Currently the Bellydance Superstars skip right over our state, so I think we should show them how much dance enthusiasm Colorado has... even though we love our current teachers, we can always benefit from the excitement of new perspectives and techniques. I for one really miss attending workshops by traveling, professional dancers and want to take with as many of them as possible. So if we had a more centralized way of networking, we could appeal to more dancers to come here to teac...