Move, Damn It!…. and an Update.

IF you move, you can look like THIS!

MOVE, DAMN IT!

Well, you just can’t belly dance unless you move.

Some of my students don’t.  I don’t know why, but I have to figure out what the blockage is.  You aren’t a good teacher unless you can light a fire under their fannies.

And I am not afraid to use the matches.

Some are extremely shy, though they have the beautiful bodies youth still brings.  Some are just not used to moving their bodies in sensual ways….and if Belly Dance isn’t sensual, then what is?

Ah, God.  There is such growth in BD when you catch on fire.  There are no ceilings, you reach to the heavens and your feet are like roots down deep into the earth.  You are stretching for immortality.

I can’t express too strongly the regenerative powers of dance…and this dance in particular. It is born of our bodies, our natures as Women, as creative human beans….Plant us in the earth and watch us grow!

Every woman has the power to dance, regardless her body shape or her experience.  It is these damn internal messages we carry around like toxins in ourselves ABOUT our potential as dancers.

A good teacher can punch through these barriers and find those things that can unlock them.  I have to be a better teacher.

Today I put on full tribal makeup, a good tribal costume and either I will look like a left-over from Halloween or I will scare the bedevil out of them. I will scare them into motion.  I will spit wooden nickels or I will spit on them.  This last was done to me 5 years ago when I went out for my first solo performance by the older dancers and I thought: “How rude!”  I didn’t know that was for ‘luck’.

One thing I think is my problem.  I am a stickler for form…and form takes time and it varies for each dancer as she comes into herself.  I am going to let up on form and just try to make it all more fun.  That should help…but I thought we were having fun.

Another thing: I’m going to use more music in the exercises we do.  I think music must be able to unlock a lot in our minds and bodies and I haven’t been using it enough.  I’m going to rely on this and see what happens.

We do have a lot of fun each class, but I think it’s just commitment on both sides.  Me to start pushing them into different steps, and them to PRACTICE.

I know now why teachers rely so heavily on choreography.  That’ll fix ‘em.  Some Hagallah  will make them attend.

Teela with the Whip this afternoon.

Addition:  I loosened up this afternoon, and the class went MUCH better.  I forget that these movements are damn hard in the beginnning…and they can be frustrating.

So, I dropped the whip, only attended to form on some things…and had more fun in the doing.  We danced to 9 pieces of music, not the whole songs, but enough to be able to work different zones of the body.

That went very well.  I think I really saw improvement and progress today, because people were not so self conscious about ‘getting it right’.  (but I did go back to some basic forms, and we did snake arms today…and that’s damn hard~!  Even for me.)

That will come, but it will take time and PRACTICE!!! And that must be done at home…on their own time….religiously.

There is no way around this….

Plus, I think music is ‘the’ key to getting it in the muscle memory.  I saw some progress here, and I think muscle memory is developing in these gals.

We went to Kaboobee’s after class and regained all those calories we lost in class with some wonderful baklava.  And Persian sweet tea.

The owner is Iranian, and is a poet and LOVES Rumi and is going to set up poetry readings.  He has asked to carry “The Zar Tales” and I carefully explained to him that some of it is erotica, and it’s very “anti-fundamentalist”…to the extent that the Zars (djinn) barbeque the Mullahs (the bad Mullahs….) and thereby “Spirit becomes Flesh”.   Of course, the Mullahs come back as Zars and create their own revenge…. but that is in Book II of “The Zar Tales”.

Are we having fun yet?  He seemed delighted in the synopsis of the tale so we will see.

But he gave me a ‘junk drive’???? to download some of my Persian music (belly dance) for him and the restaurant.

This later will be an excellent venue for my gals to start dancing in public.

That’s when they PRACTICE and really start to move.

And I might not have to get out the matches.

Teela

Tags: how to light a fire under a fanny??, Kabobees Persian Restaurant, Movement in Belly dance, Music, spitting, the whip