Basha Raks- Jawhara, Kiya and Tabia: Teaching

Belly Dance for Every Body

Belly dance is one of the oldest dance forms dating back to the 11th century. It is, primarily, a celebratory dance performed for women by women. It has evolved over the years to include such variety and style to suit every dancer.From the earthy "Tribal" dance to the classical "Egyptian" and even 'Gothic" and "Fusion" there is genre for everyone.

Belly dance allows women to express themselves through movement and to reclaim their identities and a sense of inner power. It teaches women to love the body they are in and encourages and promotes self-esteem within a supportive, social enviroment.

Sadly during world wars women in the oringinating middle eastern countries, working to feed thier families, brought the dance out of their women only enviroments and before foreign men. Eventually the movie industry used the dance but altered the costumes and sexualized belly dance. This existing sexual taboo of a folk dance still prevails today in the general public despite nearly a century's passing. Once experienced however, myths disolve and the true healing, empowering, joyous and communicative nature of the dance prevails.

Basha Raks hold the utmost respect for the dance, each other and the audiences we perform for. We never promte belly dance as a dance of enticement but a dance of celebration and joy!

Basha Raks Pricing and Information

We can create a unique and customized experience for you and your guests.

Our standard one hour performance includes 2 dances and a mini lesson for you and your guests

OR

Three dances with no lesson

Fee: $200

An example of our Bridal Shower performance is an introduction of Basha Raks followed by teaching you and your guests traditional cheers to use during our dances. We then perform a dance. After this we invite the bride and her bridesmaids up for a mini lesson where they will learn a short routine. We close with another dance.

We perform all through the Durham Region and beyond. For travel exceeding 40 kms a charge of $0.35 per kms will apply.

Please email for cutomized pricing basharaks@hotmail.com

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Teaching

As I mentioned Tabia and I are teaching beginner lessons to a group of about 15-20 women. Tabia does most of the teaching and I go around and help the ladies perfect the moves.

It is a lot of fun and quite a challenge. When it comes to teaching I always think I know how to do the moves, how do I explain it in a way the student can know how to do the move too. It's not as easy as some might think! I love using analogies to help. Most of the time it makes all the difference to the student. Having several analogies also helps as what works for one might not work for another. One example for the hip drop is to imagine as you let your hip drop down that your butt cheek is hitting a drum to get a good boom as it drops.

We are obviously doing it correctly as the women are AMAZING!! They are all picking it up really well and we have a great group of dancers. Some women are unsure even when we tell them they have it. Others are very proud of themselves. I thought one woman in particular had taken lessons before as her hip moves were wonderful She told me she hadn't taken any lessons and was quite surprised but happy when I told her how lovely her hip work was.

One move we've taught them is a large hip circle. Like it sounds you move your hips in a big circle starting at the side, swinging your hips and butt around the back to the other side then do the same to the front. The ladies had it but needed a bit of flare. Tabia said if they were facing away from the audience when they swing around to the back that they want the audience to know they have the honour of seeing their butts so make the most of it while they can! The ladies stepped that swing up with so much attitude it was awesome! I ran to the back to see and it was great seeing the new found pride they had in their butts, which can be a real source of self consciousness for a lot of women!

It's been great to see the enthusiasm and excitement the ladies have when coming to the lessons. The last lesson when Tabia and I arrived many of the group was already there, eagerly awaiting their next lesson.....it was great!