Middle Eastern
Typically in Middle-Eastern nightclubs and restaurants in Chicago, you will find Belly Dancers wearing brightly colored, sequined and sparkly costumes doing an elegant and glamorous belly dance with lots of hip accents and fluid body and arm movements. This style encompasses a broad range of belly dance styles known by many names such as Oriental Dance, Raks Sharki, Cabaret. We use both traditional and contemporary music from Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and other Middle-Eastern countries. These types of performances often include props such as veils, canes, swords and zils (finger cymbals).

I have a great deal of pride in my Belly Dance geneology. I received majority of my belly dance education from a wonderful Chicago dancer named Angelina, who is the daughter of an American belly dance legend Dahlena. Dahelna began her belly dance education in the nightclubs of Boston, which were dominated by belly dancers of Syria.

The wonderful style of belly dance which they gifted me with is often considered in the belly dance community to be a more “old fashioned” or “traditional” belly dance style. Dahlena emphasizes many techniques that she learned from women who would dance “homestyle” which I would describe ask quite simply, the way middle eastern people dance when they are home! Its the type of subtle hand, head, shoulder, and hip movements you will see the guests at middle-eastern parities and weddings doing. These movements are very traditional and fully middle-eastern flavored!

So if our style is “old-school” you might be wondering what the “new-school” style is. This destinction is highly debated and sometimes even controversial, but by my definition, the main differences I see in this “old-fashioned” verses more moderns styles are:

1. The Shimmy. If you look at my tutorial on The Shimmy Techniques you can see that there are two kinds of hip shimmies that are commonly used today. I associate The Leg Shimmy to be more of the modern way, and the The Glute Shimmy as more of the old fashioned way. Many dancers, myself included, have learned to incorporate both in their dance.
2. The Influence. Modern styles are much more heavily influenced by Jazz, Ballet and Modern dance. I think this is a wonderful thing to let a dance form grow and change within the context of the culture it is in. There is only one loss I think the modern style has had because of this influence and that is the internalization of many of the movements. Traditionally, belly dance has been a very “turned-in” style, in almost the opposite way that ballet is “turned-out”. Many “old-school” belly dance steps are even done pidgeon toed. This “turned-inness” translated to a beautiful internalization of the movements such as core contraction during undulations, and hip accents that are pulled up or in to the body. I feel like many modern dancers have neglected these subtleties that were very unique to belly dance.

In Chicago we are blessed with many talented dancers of both styles often in some combination. My Favorites are Angelina, Alexandria, Sabah (who is a traveling Belly Dance Super Star) and Vanessa (the current house dancer at Julianna’s Restaurant)

American Tribal
American Tribal Style is almost the rebellious second generation of belly dance. It originated in the west coast, specifically in San Francisco but a woman named Jamila Salimpour and her dance troupe Bal Anat.

Tribal dance is much more free form then other dance styles and dancers are very liberal with their techniques and costuming. They have broken all the rules of dance that have been adopted for hundreds of years (such as keeping shoulders down and back) in a way similar to hip-hop and pop dancing.

Tribal costuming is much more earth toned and dark often using tassels, coins, natural beads and darker fabrics.

Tribal dancers are very experimental and use alot of undulations, body contortions, back bends, pop and locks, and arm movements.

Some Chicago Tribal Dance groups are Blue Lotus Tribe, Read My Hips, and Hipnotic.

I know my knowledge about Tribal Belly dance is not very extensive, if you would like to contribute some information I would really appreciate it.

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 th leg shimmy, however, this is mearly a side effect of the glutes flexing, as the legs are no longer in cntrol 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 fundemental 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!