Bellydance-The Hips

The Hips

When Your Hips Circle
The Whole Universe Swings Along

The hips are two shell-shaped walls that contain the pelvis.
How soft and supple they become with this dance! Hip movements require less effort than other belly dancing movements. The important thing is to keep your knees bent,
Your head high and your chest open to leave enough space for the heart.

Hip Swing
Shift your weight on to your left leg and place your right leg in front of you, balanced on the ball of the foot.
The hip has now enough space to move freely.
Throw your right hip upwards, while keeping the ball of your foot on the ground and your upper body still.
Repeat the movement at few times, then change and try with left hip.
The strength of the swing comes from the hip alone!
The whole lower belly is projected sideways and to the front.
When you get the feeling that you can make this movement effortlessly-without tensing your shoulders or your neck and without blocking your breath-then you’re doing it right.
Your swing your hip outwards and yet you sit in yourself.
You send your energy from your hips into the space around you; it travels from your hips and fills the space with your strength, your inner impulse, invisible yet perceptible. You give your strength a shape, a face. You swirl up everything around you and absorb it.
You can also perform the hip swing while turning around yourself. In that case, your front foot is used as a compass. Your arms are held up and to the side.

Hip Drop
In contrast to the hip swing, in which the movement is directed upwards, the hip drop is a downward movement. You perform it as if you wanted to sit on an invisible chair,
Changed your mind at the last minute and stood up again.
You bend your knees and lower your body, but all the time you sit in yourself, drawing your security and your strength from inside. No matter how far down you go. You never forget who you are. Your forehead is relaxed in the knowledge that meekness is the sister of pride.

Hip Sway
Imagine a child sitting on your right hip.
Now move him to your left hip.
Practice until you feel that the child could fall asleep, until the movement turns into a wave, until the wave carries you away and you become the baby.

Hip Thrust
Take the basic position. Center yourself. Now bring your right hip bone forward;
Your left hip bone will automatically go backwards.
Alternate bringing right and left hip bones forwards, as if trying to throw a ball with each forward thrust. Between each movement, take time to pause in the middle, like so: left hip bone forward, basic position, right hip bone forward, basic position, and so on.
Let all your strength and self-confidence come to the fore in this movement!
The wilder your thrust, the quieter and more sober you’ll feel inside yourself.
Let all the tensions, the laws and disciplining-whether imposed by the outside or by yourself-flow out and let yourself be swept away in the intense moment of dancing.
If you thrust your right and left hips in a forward diagonal direction, at a crazily fast rhythm, you’ll progress to the hip shimmy.