Belly Dancing Choo Choo Shimmy: Weight Shift

Series Summary

The various strains and versions of Middle Eastern Dance have become commonly referred to as Belly Dancing in the West, despite the multiple origins and cultural mysteries. It is generally accepted that the tribal and religious dances that we recognize as belly dancing originated in Egypt, though it's also true that Turkey and the Roma people practiced versions as well. Today, belly dancing is performed in the Western world as a form of entertainment, exercise and as a hobby. There are a number of different individual dance moves that can be performed within the realm of belly dancing, and among these is the choo choo shimmy. In this free video series, a dance director will demonstrate belly dancing choo choo shimmies, as well a number of variations on this particular dance step. Everything from twists to figure eights, arm undulations, head slides, traveling and chest lifts will be covered, as will tips on how to practice and combine belly dancing choo choo shimmy variations. With these dancing lessons and techniques, anyone interested will be able to expand their repertoire of artistic expression!

Video Transcript

"Let's practice our Choo Choos Shimmy with shifting our weight very distinctly. Let's first review with our feet flat on the ground, the knees are going to be soft, and pulling the belly button and lift your chest. We're going to be doing a weight change with each hip alternating, just like in our bump or weighted hip lift. So we're going to take this little motion here and we're going to shift right, left; right, left. First, get that going, make sure you have your weight evenly distributed side to side and then go up on your toes as much as you can. And then little faster right, left; right, left; right, left; right, left. And then you speed it up. If you look down at the feet, you can see that I'm shifting the weight and I'm really using my side muscles to pull the hip up in toward my rib cage. You want to keep the chest nice and still so that you really see what the hips are doing. Make sure those ankles are pulled in toward each other. You don't want to have little pigeon toed feet, that won't be very pretty. Make sure everything stays lifted nice. Just like you're floating over the ground. So practice that in the mirror and watch your posture."