Tribal Vitalogy
Just wanted to post a few notes about Tribal Vitalogy - the 3 belly dance workshops with Ariellah and Samantha Emanuel I attended in Bristol on Saturday 4th of December.
Started at 9.30am, the mirrored hall in the gym was freezing cold and the music pumping out of weights class next door was distracting.
Ariellah's yoga, pilates, stretching and conditioning for 2 hours was first.
She actually spent quite a lot of time with us talking about getting yourself into the right frame of mind for belly dancing:
"Dance with intention." Meaning that you should not simply show all the moves and combinations that you can do. Know what you're trying to say with your dance, tell the audience a story, convey some sort of message.
"Be in the here and the now." Don't think about what you're going to have for lunch or how bad the traffic is going to be. Focus on your body, feel every toe and every finger and control your movements. Connect with the audience through every gaze and every move. Sometimes it's useful to massage your feet if the floor is too cold to warm them up, re-ground yourself, feel the toes and feet again to enable you to focus on dancing.
"Every movement should have a purpose." Imagine that you have eyes all over your body and project the mood of your dance with every one of those eyes.
"Your movements should flow". Ariellah read out one of her favourite traditional Indian dance quotes, it goes something like this: "Where the hand goes, the eyes will follow. Where the eyes go, the head will follow. Where the head goes, the heart will follow. And where the heart goes, the body and soul will follow."
"Remember that you are a dancer!" With tribal it's often easy to focus just on the core moves and simply stand in one spot showing all you can do with your chest, belly and hips. Remember to dance. It's very useful to cross-train in other forms of dance - be it ballet (Ariellah used to dance with the Royal Ballet), jazz, modern dance, salsa etc. The beauty of fusion is that you can easily fuse moves and steps from other genres with belly dancing, creating elegant and graceful movements across the stage.
Then she killed us with intense yoga, pilates and muscle exercises. :)
Then Samantha Emanuel did two hours of drills (repetitive belly dance moves), correcting us individually where was needed, which was very useful for me!
Personal notes:
- I have a tendency to lean forward, must lift my toes.
- Watch my hands, they have a tendency to do their own thing.
- Isolate the chest pops & drops in the chest, must not engage abdomen muscles.
Learned new stuff:
- Do push-ups to develop and learn to control pectoral muscles, which are useful for really sharp and controlled chest pops and broken circles.
- There are 3 ways of doing chest circles: 1) 'scoop' with muscles under shoulder blades and 'close fan' with rib cage muscles; 2) expand and contract the diaphragm (try focusing on what your diaphragm is doing when you're breathing in and out); 3) engage your pectoral muscles (this is a very small and muscular move).
- Practice breaking down chest circles into segments combining or alternating all of the above techniques: start with 4 stops, then 8 stops, then 12 (imagine a clock), then 16 etc.
- Rectangular chest figure of 8: drawing an 'electronic' infinity sign with vertical and horizontal chest slides (no movement forward or back). Remember to use all 3 of the above techniques; try adding stops half way through each slide.
- Practice mayas with stops: start with 1, then 2, 3 etc gradually increasing the number, making the drops smaller and the initial hip lift higher (do not bounce up&down, keep lowering the hip with each drop). Focus on controlling the hip moves with obliques.
Then we had a quick break and Ariellah's theatrical expression workshop followed by a short choreography.
The theatrical workshop started with getting us to understand how the same moves can portray different emotions.
Example 1: pick a simple medium speed beat; do a set of simple moves to it - e.g. 2 quick chest circles and 1 slow whilst taking 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. Pick an emotion or a personality to portray - e.g. we had a 'scary/freaky' Now imagine you have eyes all over your body - every finger and every toe. Project this emotion, this personality through every eye - practice this in front of mirror to see how you can move your head, facial expressions, body, your arms, your legs to help project this.
Example 2: pick a set of steps (e.g. forward-back-forward and two normal) Start by practicing different walks first: imagine that you're breaking stuff with your feet (notice how you move, focus on how the rest of your body behaves); then imagine you're walking on egg shells or something really fragile (again, focus on what your body is doing). Now repeat this process, but this time imagine you're crushing and breaking through stuff not just with your feet, but with your whole body, all around you; then again imagining something really fragile and soft all around you.
Then we did a few combinations fusing various steps borrowed from salsa, ballet and jazz with belly dancing. I absolutely suck at ballet moves :( MUST LEARN TO SPOT TURN!!!
Remember your attitude when dancing! You're a dancer! Portray a character (e.g. be sassy, or feisty, or cute - whatever)
And to finish we learned a small chunk from this performance (only from 10:00 to about 10:45 in this routine, but it took us 45 mins to learn):
Started at 9.30am, the mirrored hall in the gym was freezing cold and the music pumping out of weights class next door was distracting.
Ariellah's yoga, pilates, stretching and conditioning for 2 hours was first.
She actually spent quite a lot of time with us talking about getting yourself into the right frame of mind for belly dancing:
"Dance with intention." Meaning that you should not simply show all the moves and combinations that you can do. Know what you're trying to say with your dance, tell the audience a story, convey some sort of message.
"Be in the here and the now." Don't think about what you're going to have for lunch or how bad the traffic is going to be. Focus on your body, feel every toe and every finger and control your movements. Connect with the audience through every gaze and every move. Sometimes it's useful to massage your feet if the floor is too cold to warm them up, re-ground yourself, feel the toes and feet again to enable you to focus on dancing.
"Every movement should have a purpose." Imagine that you have eyes all over your body and project the mood of your dance with every one of those eyes.
"Your movements should flow". Ariellah read out one of her favourite traditional Indian dance quotes, it goes something like this: "Where the hand goes, the eyes will follow. Where the eyes go, the head will follow. Where the head goes, the heart will follow. And where the heart goes, the body and soul will follow."
"Remember that you are a dancer!" With tribal it's often easy to focus just on the core moves and simply stand in one spot showing all you can do with your chest, belly and hips. Remember to dance. It's very useful to cross-train in other forms of dance - be it ballet (Ariellah used to dance with the Royal Ballet), jazz, modern dance, salsa etc. The beauty of fusion is that you can easily fuse moves and steps from other genres with belly dancing, creating elegant and graceful movements across the stage.
Then she killed us with intense yoga, pilates and muscle exercises. :)
Then Samantha Emanuel did two hours of drills (repetitive belly dance moves), correcting us individually where was needed, which was very useful for me!
Personal notes:
- I have a tendency to lean forward, must lift my toes.
- Watch my hands, they have a tendency to do their own thing.
- Isolate the chest pops & drops in the chest, must not engage abdomen muscles.
Learned new stuff:
- Do push-ups to develop and learn to control pectoral muscles, which are useful for really sharp and controlled chest pops and broken circles.
- There are 3 ways of doing chest circles: 1) 'scoop' with muscles under shoulder blades and 'close fan' with rib cage muscles; 2) expand and contract the diaphragm (try focusing on what your diaphragm is doing when you're breathing in and out); 3) engage your pectoral muscles (this is a very small and muscular move).
- Practice breaking down chest circles into segments combining or alternating all of the above techniques: start with 4 stops, then 8 stops, then 12 (imagine a clock), then 16 etc.
- Rectangular chest figure of 8: drawing an 'electronic' infinity sign with vertical and horizontal chest slides (no movement forward or back). Remember to use all 3 of the above techniques; try adding stops half way through each slide.
- Practice mayas with stops: start with 1, then 2, 3 etc gradually increasing the number, making the drops smaller and the initial hip lift higher (do not bounce up&down, keep lowering the hip with each drop). Focus on controlling the hip moves with obliques.
Then we had a quick break and Ariellah's theatrical expression workshop followed by a short choreography.
The theatrical workshop started with getting us to understand how the same moves can portray different emotions.
Example 1: pick a simple medium speed beat; do a set of simple moves to it - e.g. 2 quick chest circles and 1 slow whilst taking 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. Pick an emotion or a personality to portray - e.g. we had a 'scary/freaky' Now imagine you have eyes all over your body - every finger and every toe. Project this emotion, this personality through every eye - practice this in front of mirror to see how you can move your head, facial expressions, body, your arms, your legs to help project this.
Example 2: pick a set of steps (e.g. forward-back-forward and two normal) Start by practicing different walks first: imagine that you're breaking stuff with your feet (notice how you move, focus on how the rest of your body behaves); then imagine you're walking on egg shells or something really fragile (again, focus on what your body is doing). Now repeat this process, but this time imagine you're crushing and breaking through stuff not just with your feet, but with your whole body, all around you; then again imagining something really fragile and soft all around you.
Then we did a few combinations fusing various steps borrowed from salsa, ballet and jazz with belly dancing. I absolutely suck at ballet moves :( MUST LEARN TO SPOT TURN!!!
Remember your attitude when dancing! You're a dancer! Portray a character (e.g. be sassy, or feisty, or cute - whatever)
And to finish we learned a small chunk from this performance (only from 10:00 to about 10:45 in this routine, but it took us 45 mins to learn):
Click to view