Isetnofret

Hi all.

I have recently moved to a place where there seems to be no bellydancing classes anywhere near. Of course you can go to the nearest big city by train and select from various dance classes by several different teachers, but it takes over an hour just to get there and another hour to come back, and everyone (like me) just don't have time to do it weekly - and I can't live without my weekly dance classes!

So I have been thinking to finally have the courage to start my own beginners class here, to offer other people in the area the possibility to dance weekly and just for the joy of meeting people who are interested in bellydancing. But of course I would need some help from the more experienced people... I myself went to the beginners class 10 years ago and I can't really remember anything about it.

I was thinking to go through all the basic movements and slowly during the classes teach a little easy dance using them so that people can actually get to dance immediately, not just learning hip circles and so on.

Seems like a good plan, but now I'm struggling to decide which are the basic movements that should be taught to all beginners? What do you normally teach on beginners classes and in which order? Which are normally easiest to learn for most people and what seems to be more challenging? How much do you tell about the origins and history of bellydancing and different styles to beginners and how much is to be saved for those who still want to continue after beginners class?

Lots of questions there... Thank you all for the excellent forum, I'm not a native English speaker and I have studied mostly with non-English teachers so I also need lots of help with the correct English names of different movements etc. and just browsing through some topics on this forum has already been a lot of help for me.

maariku

Hi! I think this thread can give you quite a lot of ideas:

http://forum.orientaldancer.net/showthread.php?t=610

I'm sure youll have success with your class. Keep us updated!

Salome

I teach fundamental movements in this order more or less: traveling steps, lifts, drops, slides, snaps, shimmies, circles, figure eights, undulations. I don't teach every execution possible with a movement family. For example in drops you can do plie, grand plie, hip drops, pelvic drops, rib drops etc. Grand plie, rib drops and pelvic drops I save for my next class level. But we do plie and hip drops etc.

I save the last 5 minutes of class, after cool down, for lecture and provide a hand out on the topic. I do one on labels for the dance at large, one on the core elements of the dance at large, the core elements of the style I teach (American style Oriental), recent history of Oriental dance in root countries and history of American style Oriental etc.