Secrets de pratique de la danse du ventre:

Oriental Culture of dancing  is what your audience can enjoy on another level than just looking. It has extra dimension, it goes deeper, it stays longer in the hearts of audience.

In order to perform belly dance in oriental way, we should know certain oriental secrets.  Western people  have  ”western” perception which naturally skips important oriental details, and oriental dance experts  do not share easily  these details  with western population. But the more we watch oriental performances, the more we start to understand  principles, which  make a big difference between Western belly dance and the Oriental one.

Tips which i learned from some of my oriental teachers,observed in many oriental performances and discovered through my own practice:

a)      Don’t hurry up, learn to dance slowly and feel comfortable with it.

b)      Consider every movement you make as something very precious. Don’t overload audience with too many movements so that they don't lose their value. Make movements being aware of  every detail.

c)       Start being simple. Complicated movements may impress, and western audience would probably appreciate it. However,  the goal of oriental dance is not to impress, but to rich to the heart. Being simple, you will first of all create space for creative flow in you, and then more complicated movements will come to you by itself. This is the right inner state for dancing,  you become full of  love and interaction with audience. It will save your energy and even charge you up, and you will be able to dance long time, as they do in the oriental traditions.

 d)      Don’t rush after the music, but let the music complement your creativity. And make sometimes compromises. It may sound strange, because we make so many  efforts   to learn how to follow oriental rithms. And it is indeed nessesary to understand oriental music and be able to interpretate it properly. But the leadership should be always in your hands, not in the music. That means you stay focused on your creative process, you decide what you are going to do, and listen to the music only to "let it fall on the right place".

e)      Listen to the music beyond melody and rythm. Oriental classical and traditional music is full of emotions, which are like  hidden melody, not obvious. In western culture we follow obvious melody or rithm. But to make real oriental dance, try to hear that hidden melody, which is usually much more slow than the obvious melody. It is like in a poem:  you may say a sentence of many words which has rithm, but it expresses just one wave of emotions. And then there will be next wave in the next sentence. These waves of emotions are also present in oriental music and it is beautiful to hear them and to follow them.

f)       In western culture the more excitement, the stronger emotions are there, the more intense and passionate movement dancer makes to express it. In oriental dance it is not like that: when you are full of passion, don’t splash it out,  but continue to feel inner move. This energy of passion transforms into something which is felt like inner pressure, and then this pressure penetrates your movements, making your body "speaking".

 g)      Don’t do your best. Oriental dance is not a sport where the more you strain the more you achieve. It is the way around:  learn to take it easy when you dance. Play. Make movements in easy way, forget perfection with efforts. You have trained enough before this performance and now just be yourself.

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