Belly Dance - Shimmys

Transcripts

Diana: Hi! My name is Diana, and I am a belly dance instructor and performer in the Northern Virginia area, and I have been doing this for the last ten years, and I am going to do this segment on Shimmy, which takes a little bit of practice but they are an essential part of the dance. So, how we start, I am going to start, I am going to go over Chest Shimmy and I am going to go over Hip Shimmy. So, the beginning of this dance movement is we keep our knees pointed forward and we bend and straighten our knees, so, that drives our hips up and down. Now, when we straighten our knee, it shouldn't be forced back, it should be just nice and relaxed, it should be just to relax position, not really force it back, otherwise you'll end up injuring your knee. So, just straight and forward, straight and forward, straight and forward, straight and forward, and that's just, and that keeps our hips going, and with time, what you do is you increase the speed, and get it smaller, you bring it down smaller, and then you are able to Shimmy, and you relax everything, and you keep your top nice and still, as you see, I am not shaking around the top here, and I am just moving my bottom, my bottom half. So, straight, forward, straight, forward, straight, forward, straight, forward, straight, forward, and this took me quite a while to get, but it's just a matter of practicing and you just keep practicing, and practicing, and eventually, you'll get it. So, straight and forward, straight and forward, and the most, the big key thing with this is to relax, to keep lifted, to keep your posture correct, tucked under, lifted up through your body, and just relax, and then you just speed it up, and you keep in time with the music, and you can move from side to side, you can twist it forward, you can twist it round in a circle, you can do all kinds of things with this, okay. And that is what I call a knee-driven Shimmy, and there's many different kinds of Shimmies, but this is the Shimmy I like to use in my dance. And you just then roll, jiggle, we jiggle in the back, in the sides, and just keep nice and relaxed, keep lifted up here, keep relaxed, good. You go to the side, go round in the circle, good. The next thing I would cover, is vibration, and that's another type of Shimmy, and is a similar principle. I just got my weight on this foot, front leg, and I have this back leg bent slightly, and I just push down onto the ground and let flesh wobble, as you can see, and the important thing here is not to push deep back again, it's just, I am just pushing through ground, to get my flesh to wobble on my bones, and I am nice and relaxed up here, great. And we can do it on the other side; one side is usually easier than the other, good. And this should feel real good, and that is what I call a vibration. And we'll go over Chest Shimmy, which is forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, and then movement is coming from in between my chest here, and in between my shoulder blades, and it's just forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, and then you just speed it up. And it's just a matter of practice to get these movements. It takes a little while, just practicing, good, and that's the Chest Shimmy. Then we can do our twisting Shimmy in the front, and that's just forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, forward, back, and that's like a washing machine, good. And then, the other one we can cover very quickly is a Three Quarter Shimmy, which is up, down, and step, up, down, and step, up, down, step, up, down, step, up, down, step, up, down, step, and then what happens as you speed that up and you achieve this effect, but that takes quite a bit of practice, but the best way to do that is to up, down, step, up, down, step, up, down, step, up, down, step, and then you just quicken it up to get a Three Quarter Shimmy effect. Good and that concludes this belly dance section on Shimmies.