Weekly classes follow a classical format: warm-up, review and foundation drills, new vocabulary, center-floor, across-the-floor, and choreography.
Beginner through intermediate classes use Middle Eastern music and focus on the conventions of traditional styles: Egyptian, Turkish, Lebanese, American Vintage (“American Cabaret”), and theatrical Oriental dance. Coursework includes cane, “veil” (fabric), and finger cymbals.
Upper level classes explore belly dance as a medium for creative expression within and beyond a traditional context, and include belly dance set to nontraditional music, nontraditional dance technique and vocabulary, and work for dance theater.
We teach:
Clean Versatile Technique, Adaptable to Cultural, Tribal, and Fusion styles
Students internalize precise confident dancing through a structured and systematic curriculum that builds from the ground up. Beginner classes guide students to mastery of foundation movements and instill good habits in alignment and placement. Building on this strong foundation, continuing students apply their growing skills to new and progressively more sophisticated material as they advance. Classwork includes isolations, sophisticated use of the arms, footwork, traveling movements, and turns.
Taught with consideration to each student's unique anatomy and abilities, information-packed breakdowns and hands-on correction elucidate the optimal mechanics for each move, giving dancers the best ability to isolate cleanly, create variations, layer simultaneous movements, transition smoothly, dance with less effort, avoid injury, and create individual style.
Musicality
Richly detailed training choreographies express music through movement, instilling rhythm, timing, and sensitive phrasing. Classes teach basic music theory, the specific conventions of Middle Eastern music, Middle Eastern rhythms, and music interpretation.
Artistic Expressivity
In both traditional and nontraditional work, we emphasize purpose and integrity. To support intentionality, we teach context: how, when, and why to use the technical elements of belly dance. When we teach movements, we describe the historic, cultural, musical, and stylistic considerations that influence their use. Students examine not only the mechanics but also the sensation of each dance component and interpretation, forging a personal relationship with dance vocabulary and imbuing it with personal meaning.
In traditional work, Natural Beauty Belly Dance encourages heartfelt dancing. We avoid the self-consciously "sexy" posturing found in some nightclub dancing, and favor an uncontrived aesthetic of openness and warmth.
Stage Presence
Our emphasis on alignment, precision, and intentionality creates self-assured charismatic dancers. For students who decide to share their dancing with an audience, our classes address show development, makeup, costuming, and performance considerations.
