Natural Beauty Belly Dance? Does that look exclude people who [wear makeup/process their hair/have had their appearance changed through surgery/have tattoos/shave/wear deodorant]?
Are your classes going to be too serious for me?
Am I going to feel self-conscious about my [age / appearance / background / whatever]?
I am totally uncoordinated / have no rhythm. Can I really learn to dance?
Will belly dance help me to get in shape, lose weight, and tone my abs?
I’m a beginner. A total absolute beginner. I’ve never taken any classes before. I just want to check and make sure: is the beginner class okay for beginners? Because I’m really a total beginner.
I've never taken any classes, but I'm from the Middle East, so I grew up doing belly dance. Should I go straight to the advanced course?
I've never taken any belly dance classes, but I think I’m going to pick it up quickly. Should I go straight to the advanced course?
I have taken belly dance classes before. Should I go straight to the advanced course?
Are these classes for women only? Is belly dance for women only?
Is belly dance sexual? Sensual? A dance of seduction?
How long does it take to learn belly dance? How long before I'll be ready to go pro? Can you get me a job?
Natural Beauty Belly Dance? Does that look exclude people who [wear makeup/process their hair/have had their appearance changed through surgery/have tattoos/shave/wear deodorant]?
Not at all. "Natural beauty," in appearance as in dance, is simply the attractive quality of confident authentic self-expression. Natural beauty joyfully embraces personal style. While natural beauty may be created by genetics or by the visible changes made by life experiences—work, parenthood, survivals and recoveries, growing up, and growing older—it may also be crafted. We reject the idea that bodies and faces become more valuable when they are altered to conform to the narrow standards of images in mainstream media, but celebrate agency and choice, and believe people are most beautiful when they show or create an appearance that lets them feel most like themselves.
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Are your classes going to be too serious for me?
It depends on what you are looking for. We take dance seriously, and design classes for disciplined and focused students. You'll be encouraged to work hard and will probably find some of the moves challenging. But classes also acknowledge the diverse needs of adult students, and support fitness, self-discovery and personal growth, cultural exploration, and meeting new friends. Beginner classes in particular are designed to provide a welcoming environment to have fun and try something new. At all levels, students will find a nonjudgmental rapport, and respect for the challenge of balancing dance training into a busy life of adult responsibilities and other interests.
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Am I going to feel self-conscious about my [age / appearance / background / whatever]?
We make a warm, comfortable, nonjudgmental classroom environment a top priority. It's certainly possible that you may be the most young or old or [whatever] person in class, but you'll be in a diverse population composed mostly of thoughtful and sensitive women with strong individual identities. Most students are in their twenties or thirties, but classes usually include older and younger students too. Students represent the many ethnicities of New York City, with body types across the spectrum of shapes and sizes. Classes nurture positive body images and encourage healthy realistic ideals.
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I am totally uncoordinated / have no rhythm. Can I really learn to dance?
While beautiful dancing appears effortless, it’s actually the product of hard work. No matter how fast or slowly you pick up material, learning to dance at a performance level requires commitment, patience, and practice outside of class. A sense of humor helps too! If you have a lot of work ahead of you, set realistic goals, and don't measure your accomplishment against how others are progressing. If something doesn't make sense, ask! If you’re stuck, consider supplementing classwork with private lessons. You will almost certainly get frustrated sometimes, and need to push yourself over the rough spots.
Belly dance is more than just a performance art—if you’re not interested in the challenges of learning to dance for an audience, you may want to focus on belly dance as social dance or as a participatory activity. When done as part of a spiritual or meditative practice, for fitness, or just for fun, belly dance is open to dancers at all levels of ability and commitment.
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Will belly dance help me to get in shape, lose weight, and tone my abs?
Belly dance has many wonderful fitness benefits. Training builds strength, balance, flexibility, stamina, alignment, and coordination, and may ease body stiffness or pain. While many quintessential belly dance movements happen in the torso and activate core muscles, the arms and legs also play an important role in the dance. We teach belly dance as an intentional and deliberate discipline, so students also enjoy the benefits of cultivating a "mind-body" practice. Increased awareness of posture and body lines confers poise and grace, and can create a more streamlined and confident silhouette.
However, as with any mode of physical activity, results depend on the frequency, length, and intensity of your workout. To see the greatest benefit, you'll need to attend class several times a week or practice outside of class. For beginners, most belly dance moves provide low-intensity exercise. You'll need to master movements before you can dance fast-paced choreography, so you will have more opportunities to raise your heart rate as you advance.
Because we teach history, context, and theory, most classes also include some lecture. If you're looking for a pure workout, you may prefer a dance-fitness class offered at a gym.
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I’m a beginner. A total absolute beginner. I’ve never taken any classes before. I just want to check and make sure: is the beginner class okay for beginners? Because I’m really a total beginner.
Yes. The beginner class is for those just starting out: beginners. No previous experience is expected or required, although any dancer who would like to revisit basics is welcome as well. If knowing more about what to expect will make you feel more at ease, you'll find much more information on this site. You might also look at Autumn's teaching DVD, Beautiful Technique—classes teach material in the same way as this DVD.
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I've never taken any classes, but I'm from the Middle East, so I grew up doing belly dance. Should I go straight to the advanced course?
Probably not. Growing up with Middle Eastern social dance will probably give you a great familiarity with a cultural style, but often doesn’t create the foundation of clean versatile technique that students build through formal training. Just in the same way that a native speaker of Arabic or Turkish certainly has a perfect authentic accent but may not be a particularly interesting conversationalist, native dancers need more than style to be interesting performers.
Whatever your cultural background, we recommend that students with no previous formal training start in a beginners' course. (Or, if your interest is primarily cultural, you may do better training elsewhere with a teacher who focuses on dance expression of a particular ethnic identity).
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I've never taken any belly dance classes, but I think I’m going to pick it up quickly. Should I go straight to the advanced course?
Probably not. Most belly dance vocabulary depends on the coordination of many subtle precise movements, and many dancers who attempt to learn only through mimicry are limited by inefficient and inarticulate internal mechanics. By starting at the beginning, you’ll formally learn the optimal technique for each move, giving you the best ability to isolate cleanly, create variations, layer simultaneous movements, transition smoothly, dance with less effort, and avoid injury.
And, if you’d like to take ownership of the dance and make it your own, you'll need more than technique. Because belly dance is most often a solo form in which the performer is improvising on the spot, or performing material she has choreographed for herself, the best dancers know not only the “how” but also the “why” of each movement. By starting in a beginner's course, you'll learn the stylistic and cultural considerations that go along with the way each move is used.
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I have taken belly dance classes before. Should I go straight to the advanced course?
You’re welcome to try a class at whatever level you think is suitable. Go with your gut: if you like the idea of a fresh start, or if you feel your dancing will be strengthened and refined by shoring up your foundation, enroll in a beginner’s course. If the idea of going "back to basics" gives you an impatient or discouraged feeling, dive into an upper level course. (Keep in mind, however, that your instructor may not be able to take class time to individually catch you up on material you’re not familiar with. If you’re out of step but don’t want to take a beginner’s course, consider taking a few private lessons to bring yourself up to speed.)
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Are these classes for women only? Is belly dance for women only?
Unless noted, you may assume that all students in a class are female. However, most classes accept male students.
If you follow religious or cultural rules that don't allow you to participate in dance activities where men are present, please contact us before you come to class: in most cases we can make arrangements to officially designate a class as women-only.
If you're a man who is interested in taking class, please let us know; we will designate a class co-ed if it doesn't create a problem for existing students.
Many belly dance movements come from social and folk dance and are done by men, women, children, and grandparents alike. In traditional Oriental dance, cultural attitudes favor female performers, but a few male performers have found success. (In dance as in theater, in some historical periods, men and boys have also performed as female impersonators.) In tribal, theatrical, and nontraditional belly dance, roles for men are more open. Like female dancers, male belly dancers make choices—about style, costuming, personal appearance, and stage persona—that influence how they will be perceived. Some male dancers challenge gender stereotypes; others appear quite macho.
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Is belly dance sexual? Sensual? A dance of seduction?
If you want it to be, yes! If not, no!
Not everyone is an independent thinker. Some people will always see anything named "belly dance" in light of stereotypes with which they are familiar, and never take the time to look at what they are seeing and draw their own conclusions. So some people may deem all belly dance as sexual, in either a positive light—as an intriguing sensual or seductive expression, or even as an expression of sacred sexuality; or in a negative light—as something to be kept private that becomes sordid and shameful in the public sphere, or as something demeaning that reinforces sexist attitudes.
Someone without a preconceived impression will see that dance movements take expression from the context of a performer's style, skill, venue, costuming and appearance, music, and musicality. While belly dance may be sexual, or sensual, it may also be sweet, joyful, fiery, elegant, poetic, bold, playful, soft, strong, feminine, masculine, poised, earthy, ethereal, regal, graceful, sparkling, commanding, and so forth. (In the case of nontraditional belly dance, it may be more things as well: unnatural, robotic, lurid, mechanical…)
In the style taught by Natural Beauty Belly Dance, we make no effort to be sexual, but don't consider sexual expression to inherently be distasteful, approval-seeking, or hostile to the interests of feminism. Rather than trying to be "sexy," we strive to appear warm and genuine—in essence, “natural.”
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How long does it take to learn belly dance? How long before I'll be ready to go pro? Can you get me a job?
It often takes dancers 1-3 years to develop technical proficiency, and 5-10 years to develop fluency. But it really depends on your natural ability, resources, and focus. As with most things, what you put in is what you get out. If you have a dance background, attend multiple weekly classes, practice outside of class, work with a private coach, and have a narrow focus on one particular style, you may become quite good in a matter of months. For most dancers though, a slower trajectory is more realistic, and more advisable. "Cramming" dance is like cramming for a test —you'll be more solid with movements built over time. No matter how quickly you learn, there's no actual endpoint where you're "done." If you've made a serious commitment, your dance will continue to grow in sophistication throughout your career.
Going pro requires different levels of skill for different contexts. Your appearance, personality, and ability to promote yourself are equally important factors that will affect your success.
Natural Beauty Belly Dance focuses more on dance as artistic expression than as commercial entertainment, so we create performance opportunities for students in theater settings. In class, you'll learn dance moves that can be used in commercial shows; we can answer questions about nightclub and party work; and we'll try to provide networking opportunities for aspiring professionals. In general, though, students focus on self-expression rather than expression limited by the constraints of pleasing an employer.
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