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Student Resources
Here, you will find student reading, including links to other resources, material written by our teachers, and links to lots of video clips!
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Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
Level One: Circle Unit, Class 2
Articles There are many styles of raqs sharki (the Arabic name for bellydance), influenced by changes in politics, technology, and...
471
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20211 min read
Level One: Circle Unit, Class 3
Articles One of the beautiful things about bellydance is it gives a place for women to have community. This piece is from the e-Zine...
410
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
Level One: Circle Unit, Class 4
Articles While bellydance is generally dominated by cis-women, there is a long history of men and gender-queer folks bellydancing as...
290
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
How Bellydance History is Like Molecular Physics
Bellydancers have come up with some incredible stories to explain the origins of our dance. And while we can know a lot about the past...
290
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
Level One: Figure 8 Unit, Class 1
Articles I promised short articles each week to give the dance some context. This week: a little on the history of bellydance, and the...
380
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
Level One: Figure 8 Unit, Class 2
Articles I mentioned the more traditional way of teaching this class. Western way of teaching and learning, with a very codified way of...
350
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
Level One: Figure 8 Unit, Class 3
Articles There is a concept in Arabic music called Tarab, which loosely means "the ecstasy of listening" and is a sort of trance like...
240
Lisa Lumina
Mar 7, 20212 min read
Level One: Figure 8 Unit, Class 4
Articles There are many ways raqs sharki can be healing: it brings us back emotionally in touch with our bodies, balances physical muscle...
230
Lisa Lumina
Mar 6, 20212 min read
Level One: Infinities Unit, Class 1
Articles Old fantasies had people in the West thinking that raqs sharki (the Arabic name for bellydance) was a dance of seduction, but...
300
Lisa Lumina
Mar 6, 20212 min read
Level One: Infinities Unit, Class 2
Articles I want you all to find your own voice. Shems articulates well how all this movement vocabulary fits into learning how to dance...
190
Lisa Lumina
Mar 6, 20212 min read
Level One: Infinities Unit, Class 3
Articles I wanted to take a second to talk about some of the ways bellydance can be both physically (TW: gun violence) and...
300
Lisa Lumina
Mar 6, 20212 min read
Level One: Infinities Unit, Class 4
Articles Borderns drawn by colonizers have contributed a lot to the diaspora from countries in the Levant and beyond. In this week's...
250
Lisa Lumina
Mar 5, 20211 min read
Finding Music to Practice to: a Guide for Beginners
This post has been remade as a regular site page: https://www.centralbellydanceschool.com/bellydancemusicforbeginners
230
Lisa Lumina
Mar 5, 20212 min read
Level One: Undulations Unit, Class 1
Articles The proper names for bellydance are raqs sharki, in Arabic, and dans oryantal, in Turkish. Besides the music and torso focused...
200
Lisa Lumina
Mar 5, 20212 min read
Level One:Undulations Unit, Class 2
Articles Raqs sharki has, for as long as we know, existed under patriarchy. And if you REALLY want to dive into an academic discussion of...
270
Lisa Lumina
Mar 5, 20212 min read
Level One:Undulations Unit, Class 3
Articles During the history of gaining respect for raqs sharki/dans oryantale as a family friendly dance there have been efforts to...
200
Lisa Lumina
Dec 5, 20207 min read
Cross Training in MENAHT dances
Why we should explore all of the other bellydance styles and regional folk dances, and why you do not need to study European dances to be...
1700
Lisa Lumina
Dec 5, 20202 min read
Folk Dance Styles of the MENAHT Region
MENAHT is a short hand way to say Middle East, North Africa, Hellenic (Greek), and Turkey. Hello bellydance students! This post is going...
620
Lisa Lumina
Dec 5, 20207 min read
About Teaching Styles, the Power of Association, and Natural Dancing
Most of us, as new students, want to learn the right way to dance. We often want to know what the correct name for a move is, and how it...
330
Lisa Lumina
Dec 5, 20202 min read
Level One: Undulations Unit, Class 4
Articles Bellydancers occupy something called a "liminal" space in MENAHT culture. Both an integral part of celebrations, and a...
270
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