Tribal Belly Dance Class #1
Oct. 21st, 2004 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenBack! Was not eaten by a bear. It still took twice the time it should have so I left at 6 and got there at 7. However the trade-off here is I can take the highways back home after class and since they're mostly empty and everyone around here speeds, it's ridiculously quick to get home. So the overall traveltime kinda evens out.
I'm still going to judge it by next week, though, as that's when I'm going to have work, which means getting off at 6, leaving immediately for class, and somewhere in there having to change. The teacher said it's okay if I'm a little late and miss some of the warm up, but even so we'll see. I don't want to do all that driving for something I'm missing a lot of.
The class itself was fun. I got to see the teacher and her dance partner do a little Tribal dance to start with, which is the first time I've seen Tribal live. It's definitely more my style than cabaret is. I won't turn cabaret down if that's the only class I can end up taking, but I really would prefer doing Tribal (which is part of why I don't mind the drive, assuming it works out).
I think the teacher is new at teaching. She's been dancing for a while, but I don't think she's ever really tried teaching an official class before (I seem to remember her saying something to this effect on the phone as well). She seemed a little subtly uncertain about how to start the class and how to guide people. Granted, some of this might be due the class starting late thanks to her dance partner arriving late (her dance partner is the one who lives near me - and who also took the highways and ended up 20 min later than me. Good thing I chanced the bears.) so possibly she was trying to figure out how to smoosh everything in so people would get all of the parts of the lesson even without the full time for the lesson.
Also, I think she didn't know how to break things down enough. Like she would show one move, we'd try it for a few seconds, and then she'd immediately go into "Okay, now let's do it while going forward, let's do it while turning, let's do it while going backward." Which is all well and good and me and my classmates (tribemates?) were more or less okay with it, but I think it would have gone better with really understanding how to isolate the move first, then doing variations on it (esp when the variations require slightly different footwork). As it was I had problems being able to maintain a choo-choo because doing the hip bump properly and moving all around the room to a fast beat was too much for my brain to keep track of, and one of my classmates was totally lost on the concept of how to do an Egyptian and turn at the same time. (Bearing in mind that there's only four students, including myself, so at this point we've got 50% of the students speaking up to say they've got a problem, and I don't know if the other two did as well and were just quiet about it)
Which isn't to say she was a bad teacher, just that since I had the other class to compare it to I could see where it could have gone better. Like this was a B+ class as it was, but if the teacher had taken the time to, for example, explain how you're shifting your weight from one foot to another during an Egyptian turn I think my classmate would've gotten it quicker and the class would've been an A. (With me it was just trying to do too much too fast).
Oh - and at one point she had us doing very fast hip shimmies, but at no point did she explain how to do them. She just did it and expected us to go along. Luckily I was okay with that, not sure how my classmates were.
Though possibly all of that also boils down to us not having enough time and her trying to rush things. She also may have tried to do stuff that was too advanced, b/c as I was leaving at the end I heard her dance partner quietly tell her that she thought the stuff covered tonight was not what she would call beginner.
In terms of what we covered we had the hip bump (which may have a more official name but I'm blanking on it), hip bump while moving forward which is a choo-choo (we also did pivots while doing the bump), the Egyptian, and the Egyptian while moving forward, backward, and doing a turn. She then talked a little bit about the subtle signals that the lead dancer gives to the other dancers to let them know what moves are coming up. She didn't expect us to memorize that, she just showed a couple and then demonstrated them with her partner.
On the whole I found it to be fun, and much more exercise than the cabaret class (which is not a slam against cabaret as a whole, it's just to say that the cabaret class I take doesn't cause me to break a sweat). I'd really like it if the drive could work out as this is the only proper tribal class I can get to. The only other one available to me is officially 30 min in the other direction, but with traffic again it's going to be closer to an hour, and with that it's a combo class of Tribal and some body shaping - which is nice but I can do body shaping at home, and don't feel a need to drive for that long to do it. OTOH that school does offer cabaret later in the evening, so if this Tribal class doesn't work out I may try their cabaret, esp since the later hour would mean less traffic and therefore less drive time.
So we'll see. I'll try it again next week and make my judgement from there =)
I'm still going to judge it by next week, though, as that's when I'm going to have work, which means getting off at 6, leaving immediately for class, and somewhere in there having to change. The teacher said it's okay if I'm a little late and miss some of the warm up, but even so we'll see. I don't want to do all that driving for something I'm missing a lot of.
The class itself was fun. I got to see the teacher and her dance partner do a little Tribal dance to start with, which is the first time I've seen Tribal live. It's definitely more my style than cabaret is. I won't turn cabaret down if that's the only class I can end up taking, but I really would prefer doing Tribal (which is part of why I don't mind the drive, assuming it works out).
I think the teacher is new at teaching. She's been dancing for a while, but I don't think she's ever really tried teaching an official class before (I seem to remember her saying something to this effect on the phone as well). She seemed a little subtly uncertain about how to start the class and how to guide people. Granted, some of this might be due the class starting late thanks to her dance partner arriving late (her dance partner is the one who lives near me - and who also took the highways and ended up 20 min later than me. Good thing I chanced the bears.) so possibly she was trying to figure out how to smoosh everything in so people would get all of the parts of the lesson even without the full time for the lesson.
Also, I think she didn't know how to break things down enough. Like she would show one move, we'd try it for a few seconds, and then she'd immediately go into "Okay, now let's do it while going forward, let's do it while turning, let's do it while going backward." Which is all well and good and me and my classmates (tribemates?) were more or less okay with it, but I think it would have gone better with really understanding how to isolate the move first, then doing variations on it (esp when the variations require slightly different footwork). As it was I had problems being able to maintain a choo-choo because doing the hip bump properly and moving all around the room to a fast beat was too much for my brain to keep track of, and one of my classmates was totally lost on the concept of how to do an Egyptian and turn at the same time. (Bearing in mind that there's only four students, including myself, so at this point we've got 50% of the students speaking up to say they've got a problem, and I don't know if the other two did as well and were just quiet about it)
Which isn't to say she was a bad teacher, just that since I had the other class to compare it to I could see where it could have gone better. Like this was a B+ class as it was, but if the teacher had taken the time to, for example, explain how you're shifting your weight from one foot to another during an Egyptian turn I think my classmate would've gotten it quicker and the class would've been an A. (With me it was just trying to do too much too fast).
Oh - and at one point she had us doing very fast hip shimmies, but at no point did she explain how to do them. She just did it and expected us to go along. Luckily I was okay with that, not sure how my classmates were.
Though possibly all of that also boils down to us not having enough time and her trying to rush things. She also may have tried to do stuff that was too advanced, b/c as I was leaving at the end I heard her dance partner quietly tell her that she thought the stuff covered tonight was not what she would call beginner.
In terms of what we covered we had the hip bump (which may have a more official name but I'm blanking on it), hip bump while moving forward which is a choo-choo (we also did pivots while doing the bump), the Egyptian, and the Egyptian while moving forward, backward, and doing a turn. She then talked a little bit about the subtle signals that the lead dancer gives to the other dancers to let them know what moves are coming up. She didn't expect us to memorize that, she just showed a couple and then demonstrated them with her partner.
On the whole I found it to be fun, and much more exercise than the cabaret class (which is not a slam against cabaret as a whole, it's just to say that the cabaret class I take doesn't cause me to break a sweat). I'd really like it if the drive could work out as this is the only proper tribal class I can get to. The only other one available to me is officially 30 min in the other direction, but with traffic again it's going to be closer to an hour, and with that it's a combo class of Tribal and some body shaping - which is nice but I can do body shaping at home, and don't feel a need to drive for that long to do it. OTOH that school does offer cabaret later in the evening, so if this Tribal class doesn't work out I may try their cabaret, esp since the later hour would mean less traffic and therefore less drive time.
So we'll see. I'll try it again next week and make my judgement from there =)
