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Below I have laid out a level breakdown of the bellydance movements and steps with pop-up descriptions of each when you click on the name. You can scroll down or click on the levels below.
Introduction
The following level breakdown is a work in progress and I would appreciate feedback on it. The reason I came up with it is that I've found new students have difficulty accepting the idea of repeating beginner courses. It is difficult to convey the fact that one can't cover all beginner level material in one 8-10 week course so I thought the outline might help to give students an idea of how much material there is, and as a reminder for myself in lesson planning.
Think of it more as a outline of the movements and steps a beginner, intermediate or advanced dancer would be working to master rather than a description of a course at a given level. In dividing the vocabulary into levels I've tried to go from the basic building blocks to the more complex and physically challenging. The breakdown is unavoidably somewhat artificial as different people find different moves easy or hard-we all have different capabilities and learn at different rates.
Learning to dance is not like taking a credit course and getting a certificate. Spending the time in a course doesn't necessarily make one proficient enough to move on to the next level. We don't have a belly dance exams (thank gawd!) so it is a judgement call on the part of the student and the teacher to determine when they are ready to move on. However, at times it is very constructive to challenge oneself by taking a higher level course. The following is my own set of criteria (at present) for how I would distinguish amongst levels and is open to debate.
In this breakdown I've limited the discussion to technique. One might consider differing types of performance experience to be relevant to level of expertise. The list of advanced vocabulary is shorter than might be expected. I didn't attempt to include all the possible permutations of movement combinations and simultaneous isolations-that would be impossible as they are infinite!
Definitions and explanations of terms follow below.
©Copyright 2000 Marilee Nugent - Please contact the author if you
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Also see the Anatomical terms and Supplementary Concepts page for further clarification.