I had a chance to learn from a performer, master instructor and choreographer, Hadia from Canada last March, 2009. It was my first formal teacher training course, a hole in my pocket, but well spent.

About Hadia

She has been dancing for 38 years! She studies the middle eastern dance since her university years. She also pursue Jazz, Contemporary dance, flamenco, African, Brazilian dance, Latin and Polynesian dance. After many years of dancing, she became a registered massage therapist and ever since, instruct and apply her knowledge of anatomy, kinesiology and physiology into her dance that makes her an unparalleled master instructor. She has so much to share and eager to correct and make sure you get it right.

For a detail bio, please go to http://www.hadia.com/toppage1.htm.

The training

It was a 3 days (20 hours) intensive level 1 teacher training course with syllabus coverage that include:

• an interesting course on anatomy to learn about the muscles in our body and how to use it safely;
• basic essential rhythms and music appreciation;
• establishing the learning environment;
• the different learning styles and how to approach them;
• warm up and cool down exercises;
• body awareness and alignment;
• and many more..

If you're interested to know what is the full course outline, please go to http://www.hadia.com/teacher.htm, for more information.

What I've learned?

From the few days of training and workshops, I began to realize what is pure Egyptian belly dance style and what is not. I began to understand why some dancers prefer to call the belly dance that I've known and learned all this time, as American Cabaret Style.

I've learned how to check for proper alignment and got mine corrected by Hadia. I also learned the proper way to do thigh shimmies and hip shimmies. Hadia pointed out that I do seizure shimmies! Hahaha.. I've never listened to the rhythm in the music when I do shimmies, but thanks to Hadia, I now know that my shimmy has to be in time with the music and not go into seizure!!

I've learned that to have sharp movements in the hip, is about using your abductors or inner thigh muscles and not about squeezing the glutes. However, based on my own experiment, squeezing the glutes does help to contract the abductors, for someone that doesn't know how to use or find the abductors yet. I'm not sure whether I'm right. So, I am still experimenting. I find it is easier to find the glute muscle, than the abductors, maybe, it's because I've been trained to use the glutes?

I've also learned that, some of the movements that I've learned are not that safe for the body. In order to learn more, I went online to look up on safety in relation to belly dance and found an article in shira.net that talks about healing through oriental dance and I would like to share one short paragraph written in the article.

"The great thing about Oriental dance is that it is body-friendly. Unlike other dance forms, pure Oriental dance does not require leaping, hyperextension of joints, or abrupt movements. Admittedly, there are some artists who have incorporated ideas from ballet, modern dance, or other forms into their own interpretation of belly dancing to create a type of fusion, but at its heart Oriental dance uses gentle, natural movement."

For the complete article, please go to http://www.shira.net/heal-phys1.htm.

And there's more!! I've learned so much, I can't possibly list all here. They're valuable information for a teacher to-be like me.

I'm eager to apply them to my new class starting next week! I would really like to learn more from her, there's still a lot to cover from where we left off. I hope that she can come back again, next year. She said she will if, there are more participants for the training. Any takers?