The Shimmy : Egyptian Belly Dancing

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Sahira and I’m here on behalf of Expert Village to give a little bit information about belly dancing. Probably one of the most popular movements in belly dance is the shimmy. I’m going to teach you the bicycle shimmy, sometimes called Egyptian shimmy, which comes from your knees. The movement initiates sort of like you’re walking, you’re bending your knees alternating right, left, coming almost to a straight leg position, but your feet are not moving, so this allows your hips to go up and down. As you make this movement a little smaller and a little faster it becomes what is known as the shimmy, which can be done at a nice, comfortable tempo here or you can speed it up to make it a faster shimmy, the knees move faster but they don’t move quite as far and they come back to straight and it’s going to give you sort of a vibrating effect in your mid section, which is really good when you have the costume on you, and this is your basic bicycle or Egyptian style shimmy."