Origins of Oriental Dance in America
Oriental dance aka “belly dance” or “Raqs Sharqi” in Arabic, is considered one of the oldest dance forms on Earth, but no one knows for sure where it came from. Over the last few decades, archaeological, societal, and cultural discoveries, regarding the Middle East, dance historians have more information resources concerning the dance’s origins more than ever before. Currently, there are two “historical” schools of thought about where the dance may have originated. The first proposes that the dance may…
Listen & Learn: Belly Dance Podcasts
You don’t have to be in the studio to learn more about your favorite dance. You can jump online or on your mobile and download great audible content to listen to anytime, anywhere – FOR FREE! Listening to podcasts is a super convenient way to learn new things, like great advice from master teachers, ideas on improving your performance, or hear about another dancer’s research into various styles. Lots of good info you would otherwise have to get from a…
Why Your Students Shouldn’t Wait to Perform
As a dance teacher, one of the roles we play is “therapist”. Perhaps more important at times than providing our student’s dance instruction, we provide informal counseling when it comes to dealing with the psychological issues that arise when our dancers are faced with performing. Many dancers lack self-confidence and/or self-esteem and ironically that may be the very reason they begin belly dancing in the first place – to help them build confidence. Sometimes they have doubts about their abilities…
The 7 Characteristics of Great Teachers
What does it take to be a great teacher? DEDICATION The single most important characteristic of any teacher of any discipline is dedication. If you are not so passionate about your art that you cannot persevere through the hard times of growing your classes, slow seasons, dealing with difficult people, nor allocate time to study and practice your art yourself with a “show must go on” attitude, you will not make it as a really successful, well respected teacher. You…
Are You Ready To Teach Belly Dance?
I will be asking you 10 questions that will help you decide if you are ready to start teaching oriental dance. It’s important to be able to answer YES to all of these questions, if you answer No on some of them, at least you will know in what areas you may need more education before you are ready to begin creating and teaching your own classes… 1) Have you learned this art from a respected teacher(s) with a dance lineage who…
What is that instrument that I hear? The Mizmar
The Mizmar is a traditional Middle Eastern instrument found in Egypt, the Levant, Turkey and North Africa known for its unique sound. It is also known by a few other names with slight variation in style and materials, the “zurna” in Turkish, the “zamr” in the Levant, and “rhaita” in Morocco.
Songs Every Belly Dancer Should Know
Listen to over 130 samples of essential belly dance music! To enjoy the full song FREE, install the Spotify app on your device or computer. Click here to go directly to the playlist in Spotify Tips To Find Exactly What You Are Looking For Song Title Spellings Most of these song titles are transliterated from another language like Arabic, Turkish, or Greek. When you are searching for music try spelling it in different ways that sound similar. For instance,…
Resistance is Futile: How to Assimilate Dance Stylization
When we begin our dance journey, we spend a lot of time building a particular dance technique, usually the technique of our teachers or the general style of the genre we like the most. Once that technique is “hard set” in our bodies, we tend to approach new related dance forms with the same technique without first “clearing our cup” of what we currently know. We don’t always understand when we begin dancing that it’s so much more than muscular…
