Taking Technique I

After fin­ish­ing three bel­ly­dance chore­og­ra­phy classes, I knew it was time to really get down to tech­nique. The chore­og­ra­phy classes do go over the moves used in each dance, but it’s kind of a “here’s what it looks like, just fol­low as best you can” pre­sen­ta­tion. It’s been hard to really see what each move involves and to iso­late and per­fect it.

Tech­nique I is the class I needed. Sure, it means I have to make a mad dash to get there once I fin­ish teach­ing — I get out of teach­ing at 6:45 p.m. and Tech­nique I starts at 7:30 p.m. fif­teen miles away through Atlanta evening traf­fic. Luck­ily, unless there’s a dis­as­trous acci­dent block­ing the Top-​End Perime­ter, I can just make it, do a quick clothing-​change, and be ready to SWEAT.

You wouldn’t think that just pulling in and releas­ing spe­cific abdom­i­nal mus­cles for 45 min­utes would be much of a work­out. Ha! First, you have to FIND the spe­cific abdom­i­nal mus­cles you’re try­ing to iso­late. Unfor­tu­nately, most of my excess weight is in my abdomen, and those mus­cles are try­ing to stay hid­den behind it so they won’t have to work. At least Sabeeya has some tricks up her sleeve to help you find them.

Then you have to tighten spe­cific ones, and only those ones. I can suck in the low­est ab mus­cles by them­selves, but when I try to suck in the pair right under­neath “the girls,” every­thing else in the region wants to suck in also. You’re sup­posed to do this, though, with­out clench­ing up EVERYTHING, espe­cially with­out clench­ing up your butt like you have been con­sti­pated for a week.

The whole name of the game is iso­la­tion — move what you want to move and don’t move any­thing else (though it can come along for the ride). If you can’t do that you can’t layer moves atop moves, you can’t move your top half one way and your bot­tom half another way. After fifty years of slack­ing, those mus­cles of mine are hav­ing to learn a whole new way of work­ing, and they aren’t that happy about it. But damnit, I’m going to dance at least sort of pass­ably so they bet­ter GET happy about it.