Confessions of a City Slicker

There are three rules to dancing that Nath shared during his workshop recently and these are the three rules that he stressed on all the time.

• Never put yourself in a position where you could injure yourself. This refers to how you execute the different movements. I notice a lot of newbies tend to bounce on their knees when doing hip drops and lifts. Actually, the movement should be concentrated on the hips alone. Bouncing will eventually hurt the knees. This also applies for shimmies. While it is common to find that your shimmy is stronger on one side compared to the other, you should try to make it even so that you don’t put too much strain on just one leg.

• Never do any movement that can be inappropriate. In spite of all the sexy costumes, belly dance is actually a very modest dance. Therefore, be aware of how you pose/move. Conny always stress this part in class, especially how we stand. “Kang-kang” stances are a no-no.

• Always listen to the music. This needs no explanations.

And most of all, have fun and enjoy yourself dancing.

Here’s another tidbit I picked up.

While most people will say that you should pick a leng chai in the audience to focus all your electric shock on when performing, it can be quite intimidating to that particular person, especially when your attention is focused on him all the time. It’s also not fair to the rest of the audience because they will feel a little neglected.

If you are shy about making eye contact, just look at somewhere above their heads. They will never know. Look at the exit sign if you have to because to some people, it’s comforting to know where the exits are in case the audience starts to throw rotten tomatoes at them :p

Nath uses water a lot in his explanations.

Like when talks about hip movements. The hip is just a bone. There are no muscles to move it, so we depend on other muscles surrounding it like the legs and the abs. We want to picture the hip as a container full of water and we want to rock that container so water can flow to the ground.

When it comes to being sensual on stage, imagine that it’s a big shower. Ha ha, this is fun. So every move you make is aimed at splashing water at the audience.

Water is good, it fertilizes the ground and encourages new growth.

So get ready…splish splash, I’m taking a bath