Tribal Belly Dance

Tribal Style Belly Dance is accredited to Jamila Salimpour who fostered a fusion of costumes and folkloric dance styles from the Banjara gypsies of Rajasthan and began teaching what she knew and performing all over California and the West Coast. Using traditional folkloric dance elements and costumes inspired by traditional and ethnographic traditions, she presented on stage through Bal Anat a colorful dance company which included musicians, singers and dancers to create a “souk” or almost circus feel. Taking what she herself had learned
from native dancers from Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who were dancing in the United States, she began to catalogue “belly dance movement” and began creating a basic repertoire terminology which is still the basis for Tribal Style and American Tribal Style repertoire.

Tribal Style today represents everything from Folkloric inspired dances to a fusion of ancient dance techniques from North India, the Middle East and Africa. As a general category, Tribal Style covers many flavors of American Belly Dance both the folkloric inspired like Dalia Carella and fusion and cross over styles which explore modern, jazz, dance theatre, and hip hop with belly dance, as well as fusion with traditional classical ethnic dance forms like Bhangra, Bharata
Natyam, Flamenco and now even Polynesian and West African Dance.

According to Moria Chappell, a well-known Tribal dancer, Tribal differs from ballet, jazz and modern in its extreme emphasis of core muscle isolation (especially in the abdomen, pelvic girdle, and thoracic spine) and lack of hard impact moves. Because of the greater emphasis on muscular isolation than skeletal virtuosity, Tribal dance is accessible to people with a wider range of body types, ages, and health problems than many classic theater dance arts.

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TRIBAL BELLY DANCE (OPEN) / THURSDAY @ 10:30 a.m.

INSTRUCTORS: Sabrina Fox
LENGTH: 60 minutes
LEVEL DESCRIPTION: This course of Tribal Style belly dancing focuses on various types of hip and shoulder shimmy’s turns, all combined with foot work and arm positions. Students will learn short fun combos for home practice, future studio performances and add to their own belly dance performance vocabulary. Please wear yoga pants (no skirts please), tank top or sports demi-top and bring along a hip-scarf to highlight hip movements. Jazz shoes optional.