Belly Dance class #5
Oct. 20th, 2004 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenHad my fifth belly dance class last night. Had an interesting moment when it was very noticable that most of the students hadn't been there last week. The teacher, in response to this, asked "Can anyone who was here last week tell the others what they missed?" and I, thanking the God of Comedy Setup Lines (who as you know is my patron diety), replied "Shoulder massages, and lots of sex."
Which normally you'd think is a quip that, while not the greatest witty remark the earth has seen now that Oscar Wilde is dead, would immediately earn a titter on the use of the word "sex", if nothing else. But no. It was easily a count of 5 of everyone looking at me before the "Oh, she's joking" reaction took effect.
Which makes me wonder if they thought I'd been serious.
Anyhoo...
Gotta say last night's class was a little disappointing. I think the teacher was either distracted by something (her cell phone kept ringing just before class started), or possibly this particular section is not something she's strong in.
In theory what we worked on was learning how to isolate the hip muscles for an up and down shimmy (previously we'd done side to side), and ways to help tone and strengthen our arms as part and parcel of learning to do snake arms, and working with veils (not that we worked with veils, just that she showed us what movements would be good to practice to eventually work up to veils).
The arm bits were fine. The hips not so much. For some reason she doesn't know how to break this one down into something coherent. So she first started off with a dance move that uses the front of the hip, which really doesn't make sense to me because the hip lifts we want to do use the back of the hip, so I don't know why she kept insisting that we learn something that by definition is the wrong way to do it, especially when it's not like the move itself is any easier than the correct hip lift would be.
Then she had us practicing the concept of settling our weight into our hips, which is, if I'm understanding it right, infinitely easier than how she was describing it. I don't know how to explain her explanations except to say she took what is a fairly natural body movement and broke it down too much, so that instead of letting our weight move into our hips as it normally would she inadvertently had us fight against that weight, then settle it into the hip.
Which I could understand if she wanted us to understand what settling the weight felt like, but what she was actually trying to do is get us to walk with the hips going back and forth. The natural way the body wants to do that is to, well, walk with the hips going back and forth, because your weight moves this way while you're walking already. But her way of describing it put a pause in between taking a step and shifting the weight, which was just odd.
It wasn't just me either. I could tell my classmates were having a hard time with it, and normally when she describes something we all get it fairly quickly. Later on she happened to mention that these kinds of hip shimmies aren't her strong suit, so I'm wondering if she's just not in a good place to teach those yet.
So, slightly frustrating class last night, but the arm stuff was nice all the same.
This Thursday I'll be taking what shall hopefully be my first Tribal bellydance class, so we'll see how that goes. My biggest worry is the drive. It's a little roundabout, but then again that's based on Mapquest's way of putting it. When I looked at it on an actual map it seemed much more straightforward.
So we'll see. =)
Which normally you'd think is a quip that, while not the greatest witty remark the earth has seen now that Oscar Wilde is dead, would immediately earn a titter on the use of the word "sex", if nothing else. But no. It was easily a count of 5 of everyone looking at me before the "Oh, she's joking" reaction took effect.
Which makes me wonder if they thought I'd been serious.
Anyhoo...
Gotta say last night's class was a little disappointing. I think the teacher was either distracted by something (her cell phone kept ringing just before class started), or possibly this particular section is not something she's strong in.
In theory what we worked on was learning how to isolate the hip muscles for an up and down shimmy (previously we'd done side to side), and ways to help tone and strengthen our arms as part and parcel of learning to do snake arms, and working with veils (not that we worked with veils, just that she showed us what movements would be good to practice to eventually work up to veils).
The arm bits were fine. The hips not so much. For some reason she doesn't know how to break this one down into something coherent. So she first started off with a dance move that uses the front of the hip, which really doesn't make sense to me because the hip lifts we want to do use the back of the hip, so I don't know why she kept insisting that we learn something that by definition is the wrong way to do it, especially when it's not like the move itself is any easier than the correct hip lift would be.
Then she had us practicing the concept of settling our weight into our hips, which is, if I'm understanding it right, infinitely easier than how she was describing it. I don't know how to explain her explanations except to say she took what is a fairly natural body movement and broke it down too much, so that instead of letting our weight move into our hips as it normally would she inadvertently had us fight against that weight, then settle it into the hip.
Which I could understand if she wanted us to understand what settling the weight felt like, but what she was actually trying to do is get us to walk with the hips going back and forth. The natural way the body wants to do that is to, well, walk with the hips going back and forth, because your weight moves this way while you're walking already. But her way of describing it put a pause in between taking a step and shifting the weight, which was just odd.
It wasn't just me either. I could tell my classmates were having a hard time with it, and normally when she describes something we all get it fairly quickly. Later on she happened to mention that these kinds of hip shimmies aren't her strong suit, so I'm wondering if she's just not in a good place to teach those yet.
So, slightly frustrating class last night, but the arm stuff was nice all the same.
This Thursday I'll be taking what shall hopefully be my first Tribal bellydance class, so we'll see how that goes. My biggest worry is the drive. It's a little roundabout, but then again that's based on Mapquest's way of putting it. When I looked at it on an actual map it seemed much more straightforward.
So we'll see. =)
