Thread: Hair whipping/tossing/flipping

Okay, i love hair whipping etc. however, aesthetically, is it better for a dancer to do this only if she has straght hair?

can she do this with curly hair? just curious. also, what about length of hair.

for a stage performance, would it look ridiculous if someone did this with shoulder length curly hair?

just curious. thanx.

Unless you are doing khaleegi or zaar - one hair toss per dancer per show would be my rule

Curly or staright makes no difference. However, when I started doing a bit I found I had to cut my hair to about the bottom of my shoulder blades as longer hair needs more effort to loft and the timing would not fit the music.

Be careful tossing your hair around. The first time I had a neck x-ray the doc said, "You are NOT doing hair tosses with this neck, are you?" I was floored until I discovered his massage therapist was a belly dancing friend of mine who'd tipped him off.

aww! its so much fun though. okay, so it doesn't matter for wavy or curly hair? good cuz I sooooo want to learn khaleeji dancing.

i guess those big daring head whips that russian danceres do are OFF the menu!

okay, let me to go and cry in private, lol.

Originally Posted by Kashmir

Unless you are doing khaleegi or zaar - one hair toss per dancer per show would be my rule

Agreed! At a festival a couple of years back there was a lot of hair tossing. It got old very quickly, to the point that whenever a dancer with long hair came on we were just waiting for the inevitable.

Straight vs curly doesn't matter, but I don't see the point of tossing it if it's just going to sit there. IMO it could work with quite short hair - not the khaleegi toss, but something that sent it tumbling over your face in an alluringly dishevelled way.

okay thanx am working on getting my hair longer. will have to wait and get some biotin. oh can't wait for that (the vitamin, not the hair brand).

LOL Ahava! No of course it doesn't matter what your hair looks like. Hair in motion looks beautiful whether it's straight or curly or wavy or short or long or whatever.

In fact, it's easier to toss your hair when it's shorter. The longer it is, the more force you need to use to get it to do anything. So you can get a lot more hair motion with a lot less effort when it's not so long.

It also must be great not to have to worry about hitting people in the face with your hair when you whip it, which happens to me a lot in classes/workshops, or when out social dancing or at tighter-spaced gigs. In fact I noticed in a video of a recent gig, during a Moroccan chaabi part where I was on the floor tossing my hair, some customers moved their table away from me because my hair was hitting their table, dangerously close to going into their food. OOPS!!!

So trust me, there are advantages to having shorter hair. Just make sure you use proper technique and are careful with your neck.

I have to say I disagree with the one toss per dancer per show "rule" above, first because I don't like to limit myself with lists of what I can NOT do right before a show (thinking of what TO do instead of what not to do is much more useful to me), but more importantly because using your hair when dancing is beautiful. This doesn't mean you should go out there and make your belly dance into a Khaleegy. So I see where Kashmir is coming from with that and understand her point. Hair tossing in belly dance should be used as an *accent* and not the main attraction, BUT if the definition of "accent" was "must only be used once per show" we'd run out of accents reeeaaaalll quick, so how would we keep our 30-minute shows fresh and interesting?

I also find that for me personally, hair tossing really helps cool me down. I seem to have no natural cooling mechanism because I don't sweat at all. So I quickly become dangerously hot, especially my head and my neck and if I don't get my hair off my neck once in a while I could seriously overheat before the end of a full set. So I pick up my hair a lot and occasionally do hair moves so I can get some ventilation. It helps!

One of my instructors can twirl her hair at a high rate of speed - while spinning! As she says, "It looks cool ONE TIME during a performance."

Myself, I have one solo where I do "the rearward toss thing" as part of Kaleegi. Otherwise, it doesn't feel right (to me).

I prefer just a few hair tosses per dance, not too many. It looks great when done in a spin!
I saw a dancer once who tossed her hair ALL the time, it got old within a minute. It looks like someone is trying to compensate or seek attention.

Hair tossing, boob tossing, cookie tossing- it all loses its impact after a while.