Just walked in the door from my first belly dance class. It was nice. Very basic, which is good because I needed instruction of a David Furyesque "When I say 'dance', what I'm talking about is moving the body to music in a certain way. And when I say 'moving' I mean..." nature, so this was right about at my level.
For the first class we covered proper posture, and learning how to isolate the correct muscles. We also did some moves which were actually more salsa-like in nature, but the intent there was to get us in the neighborhood of what the more complicated belly dance movements would be.
The teacher was friendly and good with the instruction, though her patter was a bit cliche comedian in that she would try to keep her audience interested by saying things like "How many of you have ever _____?" Which is good with stuff like "How many of you have ever taken a dance class before?" and "How many of you have ever tried yoga?" but a little weird on things like "How many of you have ever balanced a flashlight on your head while pretending to be Marilyn Monroe? Three of you? Okay, good, that's exactly what I want you to do right now."
Still, I liked it. And the good news is that she teaches other classes here in my hometown, and knows of other teachers in my hometown as well. So if I want to persue this beyond the 8-hour el cheapo uber basic adult ed level, I have options that don't involve me getting in my car and driving 40 min out of my way (as my web surfing had lead me to believe).
For those of you more interested in the technical stuff, we covered classic posture, and movements that would get us in the realm of shimmying, but for the style of belly dance we're doing our shimmies will be done through our asses and not via pistoning our legs. We're also doing more of a straight up and down posture, rather than a leaning back with hips forward posture. I'm sure she mentioned the name of this particular style, and I'm equally sure I've forgotten it.
Most importantly, yes, there was a cute girl in my class and yes we did talk during and after and yes she is named after a character on one of my favorite TV shows that I happen to have the hots for (thus making her a bit of a Mary Sue, as it's a guy's name), but no, my dykedar still does not work and sadly I have no idea if she'll even be in class next week as she was only sitting in this time to find out if she wanted to take it at all. I tried to plant the subtle hint for her to join ("So I'll see you next week then, right?") but it may have fallen on straight deaf ears.
On the other hand, at least I wasn't kicked out for being #21. Go me! =)
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