Aisha Azar

Dear Adiemus,
Could it be the other kind?? What is it, rhuematoid??
Regards,
A'isha

Jane

None that I've ever heard of. You guys have a very strict "Code of Dance ethics & Behavioural Guidelines". Good thing I don't live there, I'd get in trouble on a couple of things!

Kharis

I have a ballet background. And I can tell you the training can be nothing short of brutal. I remember our teacher making us do 'frogs', you sit with the soles of the feet together in front of you, with both feet tucked into the groin, then she would come round and force our knees down onto the floor. The pain was terrible. Our feet were perpetually being pushed out to encourage turn out, and it hurt the hips. We were young and flexible and this was just how it was, but I know for a fact that ballet dancers suffer chronic injuries through both training and performance.

I returned to ballet when I was an adult, I did two years training, and found it incredibly hard. Then I discovered belly dance, and it was like a breath of fresh air for my body.

I do all my eights with flat feet. I power them via the waist and abdomen, this way there's no strain on the knees. I also keep them small, and despite the smallness, the muscle driven eights look incredibly powerful and defined. I've been teaching them this way for 13 years, hold 4 classes a week and have never had an injury either to myself or my students.

I don't encourage the 'tuck'. I find it often blocks the hips and this is particularly relevant with shimmies....at least for me. I shimmy using the thigh muscles as the powerhouse, the engine. The knees move, but don't jar. Legs are straight, but not locked. This is the Egyptian shimmy so far as I know, and I've found it taught by most of the leading ME teachers.

adiemus

You'd know if you had rheumatoid: this involves bilateral joints swelling, and a general feeling of mailaise (people usually feel they have the flu), and it's relatively easily diagnosed with a blood test.
this is a good website about RA: Rheumatoid arthritis - Arthritis NZ

__________________
He wahine, he taonga- Every woman is a treasure(Maori proverb)

Aisha Azar

Dear Adiemus,
YIKES!!! Okay, I definitely don't have that. My sister does though, in her hands.
Regardes,
A'isha

Samira bint Aya

You would be doing me a great favor, if you could tell me more about this technique that you learned.

I can do vertical 8ts with both feet flat, as well as hip driven, but the movement is larger when it comes from the hips. And I kind of feel it looks more “Egyptian” when you engage the feet.

__________________
Each dancing step brings a fresh breeze سميرة

Marya

Wel,l as best I can i will tell you. First some questions of my own. when you say engage the feet do you mean actually lifting the feet and maybe even generating some of the movement that way?

Aisha, correct me if I am wrong but I think that a big vertical figure 8 using the feet to give a little push looks more Egyptian Folkloric (although you rarely see this in videos of folkloric dance) rather than Egyptian Raks Sharki.

The move I learned from Aisha as best I can write it out is:

Standing with feet slightly apart (this will be an individual stance, you just don't want the feet too close together) I stand slightly less than hip width apart. bend your knees (again the amount of knee bend is determined by the dancer but I need to bend the knees so that my legs make about a 60 degree angle) engage the abdominal muscles until the bottom of your pelvis moves to directly under the bony top of the pelvis that we usually call the hip bone, this will cause the spine to loose some of the curve at the lower back. Feet stay flat on the floor, but the weight will shift a little from foot to foot causing the feet to shift from side to side a little.

This is where it gets tricky because I can't describe in words very well how I do this. But in this posture described above, I use my abdominal muscles to push the hip out to the side, up and then pull it in and down. Repeating on the other side of course. The hips sort of describe a sideways oval on each side. The trochanter joint is moving and supporting the movement but not the generating the movement. the trochanter joint moves to the side and in a slight ellipsis coming back to center. the abdominal muscles work hard. I grunted a lot when learning this move, but there is NO back pain when I do it this way, it actually feels GOOD. figure 8's for me are one of those joy-producing movements. I also do down vertical figure 8's the same way. I usually use up vertical figure 8s rather than down.

Hope this helps. Aisha Azar who taught me how to do figure 8s this way does have an instructional video for sale. (She doesn't pay me to say this either, i use her video all the time to refresh my memory of how to do certain movements)

Marya

Aziyade

Yup, that's what I think 99% of teachers would call a "tucked" pelvis, or a "flat back." It's really a contraction in the low abs, and I have a hard time figuring out why this would "block the hips" -- Kharis, can you elaborate on that?

Having control over your low abs this way also allows you to shimmy while doing pelvic drops, which is this really cool thing Shareen el Safy teaches and I can't remember who she named it after (probably Nagua Fouad, who did all kinds of pelvic drop shimmy-things) but if you do it a long time it feels like it sends you into another consciousness... LOL.

Marya

good question, I look forward to the response too. I avoid using the term tucked pelvis because students frequently tuck too much and round their back which is quite counter-productive. I also do not ask students to have a completely flat back, bodies vary, some just will not be able to flatten the lower spine. The most important piece is to have the abdominal muscles working correctly.

Is this the "welcome home" shimmy someone mentioned on another thread?

Marya

Kharis

Some students are under the impression that they should tuck the pelvis for shimmies...a move which often blocks the free movement of the pelvis if it's tucked too tight, or the chest drops down. If you try both techniques, tuck and then release, you'll find the released hip moves with more freedom. I use the tuck when I want to tighten up the shimmy, make it smaller. I use both techniques at the same time to produce a lower ab undulating taq which is pretty interesting to watch. All this sounds terribly complicated and up it's own arse in the written word.... but it's a great technique for drum solos.