Last night's class was so much fun. It was great to see some returning students, along with a whole bunch of new faces! The first class of a new session is always exciting, especially since it's only our second session at Keefe at Night. The last semester was a whole lot of fun and I was thrilled to be back teaching for the fall.
We've got a great class put together for this session. The choreography is a piece I rather enjoy, set to Dance of the Darkness by Blackmore's Night. This particular piece of music always makes me think of the renaissance festivals, which were my first introduction to belly dance years ago. Since then seeing the dancers at the faire was always my favorite part of visiting. This is my opportunity to bring a little bit of that flavor to Keefe, and a chance to blend some elements of traditional belly dance into my own tribal style focus.
Our focus of the night was learning a few new movements and really breaking into the basics of belly dance movements. We began with some shimmies and basic hip lifts. We stayed briefly with taxeem (a horizontal figure eight from down to up), before moving into the movements used in our choreography: the Arabic (also known as the camel walk), a partial grapevine step, arm undulations, and a hip circle and a half. All we're missing is a three-point turn (which you likely already know if you've done any other form of dance!) These moves are going to be the foundation of every "chorus" segment of the music, giving us a comfortable set of movements to fall back on throughout the piece.
Looking forward to next week, we're planning to smooth out this intro piece and add that beautiful turn! We will also be building on our foundation with a shimmy drill and will be preparing to layer some simple arm movements along with it.
Class was great this week and I'm looking forward to the rest of the session!
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