I'm in love with chest circles!

[Didi]

Just this week, I felt like this move really clicked for me, like my chest looks separated out from the rest of my body and the movement is clean and defined. (Finally! Yay! ) And so now I'm in love with the chest circle, and was hoping some of the teachers/pros would share their favorite combinations with the chest circle. I feel like adding it into everything now that it looks and feels right! :lol: I really like the umi followed by chest circle, but so far that's my only way of combining it with other moves, other than doing it on its own ad infinitum (which is always an option ).


Thanks in advance for any combos, suggestions.
Didi

 

[slinks]

Try a shoulder shimmy with a chest circle try to keep your arms still

 

[janaki]

Hi Didi,

I love chest circles too!!!!

My favorites are...

traveling with chest circles (walking or gliding forward, back, side ways).

adding accents to an undualtions move is also beautiful. Lift your chest and circle and drop your chest and circle. It gives you two levels to your chest circles at the rib level itself.

alternating vertical and horizonral chest circles.

Sitting or kneeling whilst you do chest circles is also very nice.

Chest circle, undulate, hip circle, body wave combo is also nice.

My other favourite is hip drop kick (Right leg)and turn 1/4 (CCW), whilst you are turning, turn do the chest circles. Variation to this move is hip drop kick, sit and up with 2 rib circles.

Enjoy Didi:dance::dance:

 

[Kharmine]

I'm still working on mine -- my husband says he want to see me twirling tassels, yeah, right! :lol:

 

[Ravenhairedbellydancer]

i believe i got chest circles right away BUT i cannot do them efficiently from left to right lol , only right to left ,, and i cant do them fast, i learned it from veena and neens's dvd, i think they taught them very well, id better get back to practicing them, i focus too much on the hips stuff!

 

[Didi]

Me, too, Raven! For me, the hips stuff seems to come kind of instinctively, or at least it's not as hard to learn and get comfortable with. It's taken me forever to feel any kind of comfort level with the upper body moves, and especially to maintaining good posture with shoulders down and back. I had horrible posture before I started bellydancing... shoulders curved in and down almost perpetually.

And I'm sure I'm not nearly as good at any move as I will be in a year or two. My chest circles are not like a pro's by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that sometimes you work and work on something, and suddenly you take a leap forward. Something clicks, and it's dramatically easier to do and better-looking than before. For me, it was as if suddenly, the chest muscles detached from the shoulders and lower torso and felt isolated... but it took almost 11 months of practice before I felt that "suddenly". :lol: And because of my frustration with the upper body moves not looking as dramatic and pretty as the lower body ones did, I also had a bad tendency when I first began to really skimp on practicing the upper body, or to do it sort of half-heartedly, getting it over quickly.

But hard work pays off! It's so fun to have those leaps forward. I wonder if I have to work longer than most because I'm older, and my body seems to go, all right, all right already, if you force me, I'll develop the muscles and get better at this :tongue:. But it seems like I really have to heckle it for a while...

Didi

 

[Reen.Blom]

Hey Didi I also have bad posture- I would even say horrible- the shoulders are curved forwars and the shoulder blades sticking out instread of lying flat... Dancing surely helps, but its a constant struggle to keep it right!

But I think I have experienced the same thing with chest circles a couple of months back - It just "clicked" as if move all of a sudden got new "quality" to it! If course with months of work before that!

As Janaki mentioned before try dong the chest circle with a lift in the front part of the circle - that sort of gives it 3D feeling to the move - I like alternating "normal" circles with "lifted" looks cool! I think "Neon" in her Instant belly Dancer DVD gives that "lifted one"...

My most favorite combo with chest circle is chest circle-undulation- hip cirle (I think Janaki mentioned that one also ) "fused together" I do it like that:


1) 3 hip circles, when you are at the front part of the last hip circle -

2) you undulate your body up(I always imagine as if I was standing with my knees against the wall and want to touch the wall with my thighs- then hips-waist-chest) Last move of the undulation is chest lift.

3)And here you start your chest circles. I do 3 chest cicles and at the front part of the last one I do the undulattion downwards by lifting chest- chest back-chest down- with body to follow. The undulation ends with pelvis to the back and that's where you start the hip circles again! LOL

I really hope that the explanation makes sense!!

Love,
Reen.Blom

 

[Mya]

we do one called the tear drop...it's an incomplete chest circle and then you drop the ribcage....so if you start right to left, you never actually make it to the left; you drop the ribcage when you reach to the centre. I've also seen some dancers do a variation on the move....instead of dropping when they reach the centre, they do a little chest pop. i prefer the drop though - personally.

 

[Didi]

Perfect sense!

Reen, that makes perfect sense, and I'm going to try practicing the "fused" combo. It sounds beautiful and sensuous. It does sound like Janaki's "body wave". I love that we all have different names for the moves... some of them very evocative, inspiring immediate and clear mental imagery. For me, at least.

Thanks to everybody else for a lot of great ideas. So far, I have only tried a couple of Janaki's, (I can't combine chest circles well with all my travel steps yet, but it's really fun to try! ) but I'm writing them all down for future reference and will add bit by bit to my practice repertoire. That tear drop sounds really cool!

Didi

P.S. How does one do a chest pop? I'm sure I've seen the move, if it is what I think it is. In fact, I can think of one dancer whose chest pops are quite impressive. But I've only done chest locks, circles, slides so far...

 

[Mya]

P.S. How does one do a chest pop? I'm sure I've seen the move, if it is what I think it is. In fact, I can think of one dancer whose chest pops are quite impressive. But I've only done chest locks, circles, slides so far...[/I][/SIZE]

well what my instructor calls a chest pop/lift is when you abruptly lift the rib cage and drop it back to the starting position so that the chest looks like it pops up

 

[Reen.Blom]

Thanks Mya I was wondering the same thing!

 

[TiaSerena]

I'm still working on mine -- my husband says he want to see me twirling tassels, yeah, right! :lol:

:lol: my fiance says the same thing