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Session Descriptions

Belly Dance Boot Camp

***Some previous belly dance experience is REQUIRED: see below for specifics. Wear comfortable fitness attire and be prepared to SWEAT!! Also, bring a yoga mat for deeper stretching after the drills. ***

This hour-and-a-half intensive training will start with conditioning exercises for powerful dance-specific muscle strength and balance. We'll then progress to belly dance drills to sharpen and perfect tight, sharp articulations while creating the muscle control to execute smooth, gooey, fluid movements. We'll focus part of the class on shimmies (hey, we're sweating in August anyway -- may as well make it intentional!) and, for those who are ready for it, we'll also add layering drills. At the end of each class, we'll do some deep stretching and spend time really elongating those tight muscles.

This class is open to most levels of belly dancers (except brand new beginners with no dance experience at all). If you’ve taken basic belly dance, this class will help you understand the muscular drivers behind the moves. If you’re a more advanced dancer, this class will help you refine your technique and push it to the next level.

Details:

Four Tuesday evenings in August (see above for dates)

6:15 - 7:45

$40

Intermediate Belly Dance – Adult

***Admission into this class is by instructor permission only -- email me so we can be sure you are right for this class***

Build on your technique, learn more complex moves, explore performance and choreography techniques, enhance your veil, drum solo, and/or zil techniques, and discover how to accent and work with Middle Eastern rhythms. NOTE: Fall classes will be technique and concepts. Spring classes will be choreography to prepare for our June recital. Possible areas of focus for the Fall sessions include:

• Creating crisp, tight, sharp movement and rolling undulations
• Learning new, more complex moves; switching between moves quickly and fluidly; and creating smooth transitions
• Layering movement -- doing 2 isolations at one time or traveling while layering movement
• Developing improvisation technique so that when music plays, you can dance!
• Drum solo technique, new drum rhythms, and improvising to drum solos
• Turkish Roman-style accents to 9/8 rhythms
• Performance technique: creating a dance “persona,” interpreting the mood of your music, creating narrative through your dance, and captivating your audience
• Cute combos to take and use

Details:

Tuesday evenings (see above for dates)

6:15 to 7:30 pm

$40 per session

Drill Away The Chill: A Belly Dance Drills Intensive

It’s cold outside – or at least it will be in January!! Join me to heat up some of those cold and dark winter nights while also burning excess holiday calories in this special 4-week belly dance drills intensive.

This hour-and-15-minute class will help you tighten your isolations, enhance your muscle memory, and improve your precision, range of motion, dance strength, and flexibility. Using perfect dance posture, we’ll focus on executing core belly dance movements in a way that squeezes out all of their juice (in other words, you’ll REALLY do those moves in their full range of motion – not approximate or fake ‘em!), as well as drilling isolations to improve balance, muscular precision, and movement execution. And you KNOW we’re gonna shimmy to raise the temperature and heat up the nights! Plus, if we’re all together, we’ll share plenty of laughter to help us through – nothing warms up the belly like belly laughs!!

This class is open to all levels of belly dancers (except brand new beginners with no dance experience at all). If you’ve taken a basic belly dance class, this class will help you understand the muscular drivers behind the moves. If you’re a more advanced dancer, this class will help you refine your technique – and for you, I’ll even add some layers to make it a little more interesting!!

Details:

Tuesday nights in January

6:15-7:30

Advanced-Beginner (Level 2 Beginner) Belly Dance – Adult

 THIS CLASS HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED --

CONTACT ME IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO JOIN INTERMEDIATE BUT ARE NOT SURE YOU ARE READY

***This is NOT Level 1 Beginner: Some previous belly dance training is a prerequisite. For Level 1 Beginner, call Humphrey Calder ***

Embrace the joy and magic of belly dance! Build confidence and charisma while discovering how to move naturally to belly dance rhythms and music. This class will help you build on the basic moves that make up this captivating dance while improving fitness and having fun. NOTE: Fall classes will be technique and concepts. Spring classes will be choreography to prepare for our June recital. Possible areas of focus for the Fall sessions include:

·         Sharp isoloations, gooey movement, traveling technique, and perfect posture.

·         Belly dance rhythms and how to accent them

·         Finger cymbal (zils) and/or veil technique

·         Understanding 8-count musical phrasing, interpreting music with movement, and how to “fit” moves to music using both musical phrasing and personal expression to create your own personal choreography

·         Combinations that illustrate how to take “moves” and make them into “dance”

Details:

Tuesday evenings (see above for dates)

 7:35 to 8:35 pm

$35 per session

To register, call Humphrey Calder  

at (804) 646-1780.

(Please Note: As of summer 2010, the City of Richmond has stopped taking personal checks and credit cards.

To pay for class, you need to use a cashier's check or money order, available at Kroger for less than a dollar.)