Start bellydance! Beginner’s online course by Aliah.

In this first video of the course you will learn with Aliah about the position of your body, before you can start dancing. After watching this video, you will know how to position correctly your feet, knees, hips, belly, ribcage, back, shoulders and hands.
The video also contains exercises to work on your feet, hips and shoulders.

In the second video of the course we will start to work with hips. We will learn such elements as: Omi, Big hips circle, hips up and down. Each element is explained in details, danced by count and by music. Aliah is also explain the difference between Omi and Big hips circle.

In the third video of the course we continue to work with hips. We will learn such elements as: hip drop, double hip drop and hip twist. Each element is explained in details, danced by count and by music. Have a fitness brick or thick book ready to assist upper body isolation.

In the fourth video of the course we continue to work with hips. And today we will work on Shimmy – one of the key bellydance movements. Each element is explained in details, danced by count and by music. Aliah also will give you some very useful exercises to develop your shimmy.

In the fifth video of the course we continue to work with hips. And today we will work on Hips slide and travelling steps. We will practice hips slide in different positions: on the straight legs, with soft knees and we will speed it up. As for travelling steps, Aliah will explain in details basics of it and we will learn how to make it not only on a flat feet, but on toes as well.

In this video we continue our course and work with hips. Today you will learn how to do one of the difficult elements on Oriental dance – figures Eight. Together with Aliah you will practice horizontal and vertical figures eight and figure eight with one hip. This movement is not easy and you don’t need to be frustrated, if not everything working from the first try. After enough drilling you will be able to do it nice and deep.

In the 7th video of the course we will work on shoulders. Aliah prepared for you set of different exercises to help development of your shoulders and ribcage. Drilling those exercises will help you to improve your dance technique of your chest and shoulders and difficult dance elements will be easier to perform because of well stretched shoulder muscles. Drill them regularly and results will come soon!

In this video we start to work on chest. And today we are going to work on chest circles and chest accent up & down. Chest circle will be learned in different variations: large circle using your back and small circle, which is done largely by lifting and lowering your chest.
As for chest accent, you will learn how to make this accent correctly and with good amplitude.

In this video of the course we continue to work on chest and ribcage. And today we are going to work on chest accent front-back and practice chest slide.

In this video of the beginner’s course we continue to work on your chest. Today we will work on spectacular and complicated movements – Figure V and Figure Eight. Aliah will explain all the nuances of execution of those movements and will give you some exercises for making your chest and ribcage more agile and capable for performing Figure V and Figure Eight.

In this video for beginners we will work on shoulder shimmy and very thoroughly learn how to make belly wave. And we start with shoulder shimmy. Aliah will explain in details how to begin shoulder shimmy and which body position is the most comfortable for this movement. In the second part of the video we will practice belly wave. But before we will start with belly accents in and out, it will help to warm-up your belly muscles and prepare you for the deep work with wave. We will work with lower and upper core and also try to connect all movements in one – belly wave, after practicing all it’s elements separately.

We continue our work and this lesson is dedicated to steps. You will learn Pas de bourrée steps and steps with hips slide. Those are one of the most widespread and simple steps used in oriental dance, which will help you to enrich your performance. We will practice these steps in line and in circle. For the steps with hips slide Aliah will also show you some variations.

We continue our work at our beginner’s course and in this video we are going to work with arms. Arms and hands – are zest of your style. Beautiful and gracious arms in your dance make 80% of success of your performance. But work on your arms and hands is a long and difficult process. Today you will learn arms positions, practice arm wave and do some exercises for your arms plasticity.

We continue our work at our beginner’s course and in this video we are going to learn Arabesque movement. This beautiful movement came to oriental dance from ballet. But we will learn it in simplified and adapted to our dance style form. The most important in arabesque is a nice posture and keeping your balance. We will work on technical details of performing this movement and also work on your balance with the special exercises.

In this video of our beginner’s course you will learn one of the favorite topics of Aliah – back bends. Along with the detailed explanation on the movement itself, Aliah will give you a lot of useful exercises for stretching your back, to be able to perform this beautiful movement deeper. So, let’s start!

This is the last technical video of our beginner’s course. The next video is final drum solo choreography by Aliah, where you will use your new skills to perform beautiful and dynamic dance! And today you will learn two very important topics: turns and hair work. Aliah will explain all nuances of performing turns and movements with your hair in spectacular and safe way.

In the last video of our beginner’s course you will learn energetic and powerful drum solo choreography. Although this dance was created with the elements learned in previous videos of the course it still mounts a lot of challenges for beginners, helping them to learn basics of Bellydance better.

You can use this choreography on stage or take parts of it to study basic bellydance technique. Have fun!

Choreography length: 02:08
Music: West Naima (Naima’s hips) by Hossam Ramzy (Amazon, YouTube)