Over the last few months I knew that I had wanted to make some changes to my curriculum, but I did not know what direction I wanted to take or what changes. After many weeks of thinking and brain storming it hit me as I was preparing to introduce a Belly Dance Class at our local YMCA. I needed something that would catch people’s attention and at the same time described what my classes would be about. As it began to piece together I sat at my kitchen table and realized that most of what we do is hip work; layered on by other movement such as traveling, accents and so forth. So I thought to myself ok Hips, but Hips what?? I continued to brain storm and asked myself what do I want my students to achieve out of my curriculum and I came up with being able to effortlessly move from one movement to the next the hips being the core and icing the cake with other movements. That is when I came up with Luscious Hips and started to develop the curriculum. I ended up with 8 weeks of solid curriculum, tested it out myself and then took it to my students and tried it out.
The goal is still to drill a movement, but also learn to travel with that movement and to put movements together much quicker but drilling so it becomes natural in the body. For instance, the first week we started out with the Egyptian drilled it then added hips up in place first drilling then putting it together by moving with it and going from basic Egyptian to Egyptian with hips up. Each week we add movement and always review the weeks before. What happens is that it becomes progressive so if a student misses a class they may miss out. This curriculum also helps with transitioning and putting moves together which seems to be very common in most students. There will be at least 3 different levels or more and once a student is finished then they will be tested on their knowledge before they can move to the next level. This is not a learn belly dance quick approach I wanted to make that clear.
My current students seem to enjoy the new curriculum and the class is going over very well at the YMCA, we are getting geared up for week 3 and they are all doing well and learning!
The Picture above was taken by NightWing Photo! We had about 500 shots in 3 hours it was a wonderful, but exhausting!