The Mysterious "Shimmy"!

Ok, now finally I'm on to my first belly dancing lesson! After my eventful journey to the school, I arrived 45 minutes late!!!! I know, it was ridiculous... I was feeling really bad, when I finally arrived. The lesson had already started about 15 minutes ago coz Mavis (her stage name is Siryn) had been running around looking for cables to connect the stereo only to find out later that the school do not provide any, she was to bring her own! Why can't the school inform her about stuff like that earlier?! Really annoying...

Anyway, after changing into comfy pants. I was finally in the class! Mavis was in the process of teaching the class how to do the knee "Shimmy". It is the vibration of the lower body and it is one of the basic moves in belly dancing. You stand in the belly dancing position, i.e. legs apart, same distance as your shoulders, tuck in your stomach, perk up your bum a little and keep your shoulders relax. Then you bend your knees which drop your hips, and lift your hips when you straighten the knees. There you have it! This is the shimmy! Sounds easy? Well....since this is the vibration of the "lower" body, we should try minimize the movements in our upper body. This is what brings the shimmy to another level! I can't seems to be able to do it in the beginning but after awhile, it started to work a little! *victory!* Then Mavis demonstrated how to do the quick shimmies. My goodness! I was so amazed! Her hips seems to be powered by motor and has a life of their own! I think my jaw dropped a little but I regained my composure very quickly! ^.^

Mavis also taught us how to move our shoulder - in and out. Push one shoulder out and pull it in, then you do the same on the other shoulders and finally try to do both shoulders alternately. She also suggested that in order to keep our hands from moving too much, we can put our palms against the wall or on a table. Well, I think it was because I didn't have something to stabilise my hands, I ended up flapping like a crazy bird.... (yeah, yeah, yeah... just put the blame on whatever...) Mavis said,"When you're moving your shoulder faster, you want to keep your hands from moving around, so that you won't jiggle your boobies so much." Ok, I'm not exactly sure now if she said the word "boobies" but you know what I'm talking about. When I heard that I felt like I just walked into the wall! Huh, isn't that the whole idea of moving the shoulders?! I'm so misinformed..... *embarrassed*

Another move we learnt is the "snake arms". The idea is to move your arms like a snake, graceful and smoothly. You position the middle finger and your thumb like you're gonna press them together, but you don't. Then you rotate the wrist to make it look graceful. Then try to move your arms gracefully around your body. Mavis was saying,"Imagine you're making beautiful patterns with your hands in the space around you. Making the space pretty." Boy, I'm not sure what I was painting but I can tell you, it ain't pretty...

We also learnt the "horizontal eight" move. Where we're suppose to move our hips and imagine that we're writing the number 8 on the floor. Well... if you can see what I write on the floor, it'll look like someone took a paintbrush and just slap paint here and there and no where near the number 8...

This first lesson really opened my eyes to the world of belly dancing. It seems so simple and graceful when the professionals do it! Now I know how much practises and coordination is needed just to make it look like belly dance!

Sharing with you guys who are interested to find out more about belly dance, a link which Mavis forwarded to me: Sahira,

I'm gonna practice my shimmies now, while washing the dishes. Hopefully there aren't any spying neighbours watching, otherwise I know what they'd be thinking...."See! I know it won't do her good to stay home so often, now she finally lost it! "