Belly dancing is one of the most popular dance forms today, particularly with women. One reason for that is that many believe belly dance can help tone your abdominal muscles, enabling one to achieve the right shape of abs and body contour. Regardless of your reason for performing belly dance, it is important to ease your way into mastering this particular dance art to ensure that you can enjoy each performance.
Basic Preparations
In an effort to study belly dance and its many variations throughout the years, many enter belly dancing schools. Enrolling yourself in a program is surely an effective way to quickly learn the basics of this dance form, especially with the help of professional guidance. But you must also take personal measures to ensure that you learn quickly and effectively.
The most basic tip that each novice must learn is that you must remove any sources of distractions. Although belly dancing might appear simple, it is actually one of the more complex dance forms that are defined by intricacy. Hence, you need to fully commit yourself into learning this dance form and each day in the program you will be taught new dancing principles that you can apply into your learning.
You must also set aside enough time for practicing daily, such as 1 hour of session per day, to get yourself accustomed to each dancing principle. Then, you can review what you learned and drill yourself with these new moves until they become familiar.
Obtain Belly Dancing Study Guides
The most basic study aid for learning how to belly dance is a suitable music. If you plan on practicing from home, you can seek the opinion of an expert belly dancer on where you can buy music that you can use for your practice. Or, you can also purchase a belly dancing instructional video, which is more convenient since you can view demonstrations of dance moves and follow based on the instruction given by the expert.
It is not enough to rely on video instructions and choosing the right music though, you must also look into developing your own fitness routine. Attaining enough flexibility in your body will give you an advantage when belly dancing. Focus the workout on your hip circle, or your rib cage area since this is where you will need the most amount of flexibility from.
Regular Practice
This should be an obvious bit of tip for newcomers to belly dancing. Do not be content with instructions in your dancing class or those you get from video instructions. You must set aside a time each day wherein you can practice whatever new moves you have learned and slowly gain mastery. Ideally, you should set aside at least an hour each day. But if you are busy, one or two days per week should suffice.
Wear Appropriate Clothing
Unlike other dance forms, belly dancing actually requires performers to use appropriate attire to allow freedom of movement around the hips and lower body. Instinctively, wearing jeans and loose shirts is not allowed. You need to provide a full range of motion on your belly, hips, and legs.
The broomstick skirt is the most ideal clothing for belly dancing with the top edge preferably pulled down to your hips instead of waist. This will then bring focus to what your hips are doing such that you can execute each move properly.
Warm Up and Cool Down
Belly dancing might not be as intensive as other types of dances, but it is important to perform warm up and cool down before and after each dancing session, respectively. In the warm up process, it gets your body in the mood for dancing, which is crucial with belly dance since it requires grace in your movement and coordination throughout your entire body. Meanwhile, cooling down to ease your body back to its state of inactivity and avoid injuries, particularly to your lower back. Gentle stretching should be enough to cool you down.