Belly dance class #4

[thebratqueen]

Last night was my fourth belly dance class. It was smaller than the others due to the Yankees/Sox game (at least that's our theory). That worked out well in that the teacher decided to let us play with zills (finger cymbals) and that way there were enough for everyone to practice at once.

Zills? Hard. At least hard to make the ping! sound. Doing the lower register sound is easy since that's pretty much the sound you make when you're screwing up the ping. Ping? Not so much. I think I got it a couple of times, but OTOH it's hard to tell when you're in the middle of a group of people going "clompclompclompclompclomp" with theirs. Also the teacher used her own personal pair which makes a different ping sound. Not that I blame her since that freed up more cheap practice zills for the rest of us, but in hindsight I wish I'd thought to suggest that she try using the practice zills once just so we would know what the right sound was.

Still, they were fun to play with. We actually got to those after the halfway point in the class, so it was zills and then practicing with them while music was playing. That was fun as the teacher also improved some dance moves for us as well, so we did some basic shimmies and arm movements along with it. It was the first time it felt like we were really doing dancing, instead of doing dance movements. It was also fun to see the dance movements come together to make something, instead of being isolated.

Prior to zills we had shoulder shimmies and chest lifts. Chest lifts were mostly practice for those who were having a hard time understanding the concept. I wasn't one of them, but the practice is nice anyway. From there we went on to feeling what it's like when we move from our shoulder blades, instead of from our shoulders, and from there we went on to shoulder shimmies.

I was able to get the movement of the shimmy, though doing it fast didn't come as naturally as doing a fast hip shimmy did. Also I can't tell if I'm isolating the top half enough or if my lower half is moving too much. In other words, when I do a shoulder shimmy my hip scarf starts to jingle, and I can't tell if that's right or not. OTOH the teacher didn't correct it (and she did correct something I was doing wrong with the zills) so who knows?

The only catch with the shoulder work is that this morning my back hurts (faintly, but still noticable). That's due to the car accident, as there's two spots on my back that I still have to watch from that, and shoulderblades is one of them (I have to watch when I do twisting ab crunches too, though that's the lower back). So have to be careful there, which is a shame as I want to practice.

In good news I talked with the teacher about what kind of classes are available once these are done. She said that she only teaches beginner, and that it'd be a waste of time for me to do the beginner class again. However her teacher teaches a once a week class that's open to all levels, and that's where she recommends I go next if I want to keep up with this. The nice thing is that the class is cheap, and it's located close enough to where I live that I could probably walk there, though it's just far enough that once winter comes I probably won't.

The only catch is that it's on Saturdays. Which you wouldn't think is a catch except that I work at least two Saturdays a month (only one in summer), plus in the past my stamina tends not to do well when I don't have at least one day a week where I don't have to go out of the house (stupid thyroid condition).

My teacher said that only showing up for two classes a month would be fine, as it's not based on a rigid lesson plan, but the losing an extra day makes me fret a little. I suspect what I'll need to do is end up not going to services any weekend that I do a dance class (and use my Friday off as the day on the weekends when I work Saturdays).

We'll see. It'd be nice if it worked since the location and price can't be beat. Plus she's apparently been doing this specific class at that time and location for years now, so it's not as though it's likely to go away. I just wish it was another weeknight class like this one.

Still, that's stuff to worry about later. Four more beginner classes to go in the meanwhle =)