The Body Outline in Belly Dancing

Video Transcript

"hen considering your arm movements in belly dance, you want to make sure that you're not having your arms too busy when your body is doing something very complicated. So often we just hold the arms in a certain position, and we hold them nice and still. In this, in this arm movement, body outline, it's actually a separate arm movement. So you don't want to be trying a lot of complicated things while your arms are moving. So let's stand with our feet facing straight ahead. Knees slightly bent. Belly button pulled in. Chest lifted. Shoulders down. Nice smile. Good. Let's bring the arms up over our head. And now we're going to bring our palms together. And we're going to bring down and then frame the head, frame the chest and frame the hips. Pushing energy down so the energy comes up and then we're going to frame, frame, frame. Good. So we're showing the audience what to look at. You could add another movement to this. A little bit of a shimmy adds a nice touch or a body undulation which we'll cover in some of our other clips. O.k. But you don't want to be a lot of really complicated stuff and then trying to add your body outline to that. So then it's just going to look sloppy. You want to go for nice clean lines. Arms up. Good. And make sure you try this in a mirror and see how looks before trying it on stage."