Diana: Hi! My name is Diana, and I am a Middle Eastern dance instructor and performer in the Northern Virginia area, and I am going to go over some basic belly dance hip movements. So, a lot of the movement comes from straightening and bending our knees, so let's just practice that and we drive forth our knees back and anyway, it should be just nice and relaxed, and remember, that our posture, our hips, our pelvis is slightly tucked under, we are just bending and straightening our knees in a gentle fashion. We are not forcing our knees back, because we don't want to hit our knees, and that's how we start moving our hips. See how my hips are going up and down, like a piston, and also I am using my abdominal muscles to help get this belly dance movement going.

Okay, so, the first one is going to be a lift. So, what we do is, we use our abdominal muscles and we try and crunch up here, so, we lift, still, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, good, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. So, I'm using my inner thigh muscles to get this movement going and I am also using my abdominal muscles here, great, and we lift, lift, lift, and this is a basic hip lift, and we use this movement a lot in the Belly dance, great. We change, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, good, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. Now, from here we can do a drop, so, a drop, drop, drop, and it's slightly different. I am thinking the accent is on the down, so, when I am listening to the music, it's down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, good, down, down, down, down, down, down. So, I down, down, down, down, down, down, great. Next one is a twist, and it's just like the washing machine. You bring this hip forward, and then you bring it back, bring that forward, and back, back, forward, forward, back. Now, just twist, it's just like the twist. You just keep your knees slightly bent, and keep your top nice and still and relaxed and that's just what we call a hip twist, great. And it's a hip twist. Now, I go over hip drop, and what I do to get this movement to go as I use my, the bending, and the straightening of my knees, and nothing is forced again, nothing should hid, it should all feel good and relaxed. So, just bend, bend, bend, and straighten. So, I bend this knee, and I straighten this other knee, bend and straighten the other knee. And there's alternating hip drops, good. Now, we are going to go back to the hip lift and the hip drop, we are going to stand on one leg and we are going to drop it in the front, in the middle, and the back. Front, middle, back, front, front, middle, back, front, middle, back, good, front, middle, back, one, two, three. Now, you can do it in four parts, we can go front, middle, back, in, front, middle, back, and in. We will try the other side, front, middle, back, in, front, middle, back, in, front, middle, back, in, front, middle, back, in, great.