Technique is Important

It’s easy to forget the centrality of technique once you’ve been dancing or performing a bit: Sewing or choosing costumes. Makeup. Hair. Politics. Dayjob. Drama. Scheduling. Taking classes. Troupe rehearsal. Blogging. Advertising. Stuck in traffic. Improvising with a live band? Eek. Oftentimes nowadays, dancers don’t have the opportunity to dance with a live band. Sometimes the bands we dance with are fun and talented, but contain few Middle Eastern elements. Sometimes we do get the luxury of a more traditional ensemble.

Remember, it’s always important to run your technique. One of the best ways to do this is to continue taking at least one or two dance classes a week as a student. If scheduling is too weird, pick a few bellydance drills a day from a hat and do those in an open and clear space that you have available. Drilling technique with your students is also helpful and can fulfill this recommendation, especially if you switch up the physical focus of warm-up or class drills every week. If all else fails, practice with a DVD. It’s also helpful if we run an improvisation to an unfamiliar song as practice, just in case (or really, when) our musicians decide to surprise us, in addition to knowing what we’ll be dancing to inside and out.

If we’re going to dance with live music, or sometimes even not, we want to have the movement bank in our muscle memory already. Drilling, repeating and improvising are key! Choreography retention can be extremely important in different contexts, like a large theatrical show, but think of it as a completely different muscle that needs exercising. The more we drill our movements and the more we move to cover and interact with stage space organically, the more at ease we will be during the show. This in turn makes us able to focus on other things like crowd connection, posture, finishing touches on hands and feet and overall visual presentation.

Happy dancing! =)

Reprinted with permission from the BFLA blog here: http://bellyfusionla.com/wp/2013/08/technique-is-important/