BuikdansFitness

Belly Dance HOW TO secrets:

How to get fluent arms

In modern oriental bely dance arms are not ment to draw too much attantion, or, in other words, passages with only arm work are almost outdated. Arms should be flexible and obedient enough in order to be harmoniously integrated with the movements and with the music. Out of all the body parts, arms take the longest time and the hardest work to get them fluent. There are a few positions of arms which are known as standard, and there are several “usual” transitions between them. But it is not enough to learn only standard positions and transitions, even if there would be dozens of them. In the flow of dance our arms move in unique way, and it is important that any spontaneous arm movement we make would look harmonious. How to echieve it?

1. We have to make our hands more sensitive. Look how simple movements our hands do during the day. We take, hold, press, push, carry, pull, squeese things. Mostly rough work, demanding power, and only sometimes asking for elegancy and tenderness. Our consiousness is so much used to certain patterns of our hand movements, that when we have to make some refined or delicate move, we feel ourselfs already clamsy. Therefore – uncomfortable feeling with arms in the dance too. The receipt is following: start to make dance exersices for hands on daily basis. These exersices will make your hands more sensitive to your consious signals (that means more obedient), more flexible and refined. It will create a right patterns of making transitions too. For detailed explanations of all the arm-and hands exercises you can try my DVD “Oriental arms and upper body technique” and let me help you getting fluent arms. (click here for content and videofragments, or order DVD here).

2. We have to make our upper back, arms and shoulders strong in order to be able to keep arms easily in any position as long as we dance. I can suggest a set of effective exercises with elastic body band to achieve this goal.