Rina Belly Dancer

How do you shimmy? While the older more traditional shimmy involves a teeter-tatter motion in the hips caused by engaging the glutes in an alternating pattern, the newer and by far more popular version is done through the legs, by fluttering the knees back and forth. While some people prefer one way and other people prefer another way, I believe both are essential skills for all belly dancers.

The Neutral Position In belly dance, unless you are doing a pose, there is no such thing as a strait leg, you should always always ALWAYS be in a slight plie (bent knees). So the basic “neutral” position of belly dance, is a demi plie with a flat back, weight just over the hips, tummy engaged head and rib cage pulled to the ceiling with the shoulders down, creating space around the neck. Whatever position you chose to hold you arms in, make sure they are rounded and frame your body keeping the arm pits open.

The Leg Shimmy As I said earlier, the leg shimmy is done by fluttering the knees back and forth, you want to keep your upper body tight and engaged so it stays isolated from the lower body movements. Then bend one knee a little past neutral. As you return the knee to neutral, bend the opposite knee. Repeat at a slow speed until you understand the movement, remembering to never allow your knees to fully straighten. You can speed it up or slow it down and make the movement bigger or smaller depending on the character of the music and they energy you want in the shimmy. This is the technique dancers use to do “freeze shimmys” which creates a sort of vibration look. You need to tighten you muscles all through the legs in order to do a freeze shimmy.

So literally, all I am doing in this shimmy is slightly bending one knee more then the other and switching. This is a nice, easy shimmy, but it has one big weakness, it’s completely immobile. If you lift up a foot to walk, you will lose your shimmy since it requires both feet to be planted on the floor to flutter the knees. This is why its important to learn both techniques.

The Glute Shimmy The easiest way to feel the difference between the glute shimmy and the leg shimmy is to modify the neutral position to a lunge. You want to keep all of the characteristics of the neutral position, flat back, weight over hips, etc. but this time put one foot a few feet in front of the other, with your weight evenly distributed over both legs, and keeping you hips square facing forward.

From this position, fluttering your knees has become quite impossible. Instead, you want to isolate the hips to allow movement by staying long and lifted through the torso, keeping your stomach engaged and alternating flexing the glute muscles.

Keep your hips as square to the front as you possibly can. Do the movement slowly at first, keeping the lunge stance. As you become more comfortable, try it faster with your feet closer together. Next try it on one foot. This should become quite easy for you if you really practice controlling the movement through flexing you glute muscles. You will notice that when your feet are together and parallel, your knees will flutter back in forth during a glute shimmy in a similar way as the leg shimmy, however, this is merely a side effect of the glutes flexing, as the legs are no longer in control of the movement.

Shimmerific To the untrained eye, the visual difference between the glute shimmy with your feet together and parallel, and the difference from the leg shimmy is very subtle. However, the differences in the technique create a completely different set of advantages and disadvantages to each shimmy. The leg shimmy, as I said earlier, is much easier to makes small, quick, vibration like shimmys, while the glute shimmy allows mobility and versatility in your body position. Try a combination of both shimmys for something different!

The shimmy is a fundamental step in belly dancer, I hope this tutorial helps you understand the movement and the different techniques. If you have any questions, or there is a different technique you would like broken down, feel free to comment!

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