The two most important belly dance moves

Yame

New member
This is a "just for fun" thread. There is no right or wrong answer.

Which belly dance moves do you consider the most important? Or, phrased differently, if somehow your body was forced to "forget" every belly dance move but you could choose two that your body could retain, which ones would it be?

This will of course vary upon style and personal taste... I have my own two that, in my opinion, whole performances could be made up of. But I am going to wait for a few answers before I give my own. This forum has been a little slow lately, let's get some life going on here!
 

Mosaic

Super Moderator
Hip circles ( big & juicy or small & neat) & of course the wonderful shimmy ( though there is the fall back when you can't think of anything else - the hip drop ... hmmmmm so hard to chose:) )
 

Sirène

New member
MVM (Most-Valuable-Move) = Hip drop/lift.

2nd MVM = undulation. It's versatile and works the other half of the body.
 

Kashmir

New member
Vertical hips - slow it is a rock, fast it is a shimmy, play with the timing and you have a hip drop.

The other most important move would be a backwards horizontal hip eight - for the squishy bits.
 

Roshanna

New member
Backwards horizontal 8 and hip drops. I can get a long way on those. Though I guess too much layering would probably be cheating...
 

seona

New member
Shimmies and taqs! (Taqs are what my teacher calls hip bumps/hits/etc) up 8's, nice & gooey are a close contender though, but taqs & shimmies I feel I gravitate towards more. Actually the three moves i mentioned I tend to use just those if I ever perform improv, i get brain freeze, this thread has reminded me that I need to get more moves in my memory, don't want to bore the audience haha
 
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Darshiva

Moderator
I call these moves (the one or two you can't live without) the "when in doubt" or default moves. They're different for everyone but there's usually overlap. For me it's shimmies and wahda wa noss (hip drop with release on the second count). If I don't know the music you can count on me doing one of those two moves until I get a feel for it!
 

Sophia Maria

New member
Darshiva, I didn't know that was called 'wahda wa nos'! Never heard that before.

But yes, I would have to say that for me, the thing that I always come back to is that classic hip drop release. The second is definitely horizontal figure eights :)
 

Darshiva

Moderator
Yep, it's one and a half. I can't remember where I learned it, but it was probably a Keti dvd. It's almost always a Keti dvd or a private/workshop with Barbara Wolfkamp!
 
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