By the time I finish experimenting with new workouts for the day, you can well understand that there’s no energy left for belly dancing. Well, today I decided to give the dancing first priority before I go and forget all the nice juicy moves altogether. I was seriously worried that with all the taut stretched out ballet moves and precision pilates, I’d get belly dance rigor mortis!
So I went back to Asharah’s warm up and did a few segments of that. And then a round of Bellydance Rhythms which has become a sort of fall back for me. And then… I decided I’d work with Sarah’s lovely Opulent Motion.
Now what I did absolutely not want to do is make a linear project of it. I really don’t want to start from the beginning and then inevitably keep losing track of it and scolding myself for neglecting it and adding another half-done project to my list. I also wanted whatever I learn from this video to be immediately “actionable”. I think I’m getting too corporatized. That should be danceable.
So I clicked anywhere to choose something and it turned out to be her breakdown of the L and S pose combination.
As it happens, I think this is a nice way to start working with the video for those of us who’ve been dancing for a while. There’s no move there that you don’t know how to do, it’s not layered with any jaw droppers that you’ll have to go back to the isolations for, and it’s got no rhythm counts to worry about. It’s just a set of beautiful poses, flowing into one another, usable for rhythmless taqsim.
I learnt the sequence in about one watch. And then I pulled out some taqsim music and for the next half an hour, went through this little sequence again and again. I stopped now and again to check some details on the video.
This was a lovely experience because trying it out immediately made me aware of all the details I had to get right. Was the inside arm or the outward one (facing the audience) that was to reach out? Was it the same arm that was high up in the L pose that later went into the “Liberty” pose? (Nope). Where was she looking, at each point? How do you get in and then out of this sequence?
I played around with this one sequence for a nice long while, finding the music that I thought went well with it, and slowly I managed to add a few moves to the beginning and end to make it fit the whole little taqsim piece I had found. It needs some polishing, but I do plan to write it out and put it away as a tiny choreographed chunk, just for practice. I also tried the same sequence with chiftetelli and loved the result.
Over the years, I’ve used this peculiar method of getting obsessed with one combo for the day as a way to really learn moves and file them right into my dance memory. When I look back, I find that the moves I know best are the ones I allowed myself to spend some hours on, doing them at random while going about other things, visualizing them, adding to them etc. I can think of many in that category including Sadie’s first long chifti combo on Slow and Sultry. I can’t forget it if I tried. I really recommend the choreography-challenged learners I know give this method a try. So many of you tell me you just never manage to get a whole choreography done or even a set of combos finished up. Hours and hours of muscle drills = but no free flowing dancing with the combinations you’ve got on videos. Well, try this out and see if it works for you too!