Learning Belly Dancing from Books and the Web

• Venus - Bellydance Movement Vocabulary. Describes how to do more than 30 moves, but doesn't offer any illustrations.
• Middle Eastern Dance by Cassandra Strand. Instructions for over 100 moves, but no illustrations.
• Mavedans med Botticelli. Don't let the title of this site scare you - Botticelli is a dancer in Denmark, and the word "mavedans" is Danish for "belly dance". The link takes you to the English-language section of the site, where Botticelli provides text, pictures, and animations to explain several basic steps.
• Belly Dance Lessons Online. Sells online belly dancing lessons at $20 each. I haven't purchased them, so I can't comment on whether I would recommend them or not.
• Aziza Said. Covers a few moves, such as hip lift, hip drop, and shoulder shimmy. Also some rhythm information.
• Art of Middle Eastern Dance. This is a corner of my own web site with instructions for how to do a few moves, including belly roll, backbend, walking shimmy, and forward-and-back shimmy.
• Ankestamen. Ankestamen's mother wrote a book about belly dancing many years ago titled Nefertiti Presents Belly Dancing The Basics. Her site features a page from that book, a couple of lesson plans, and written notes for one choreography.
• Bellydance by Anthea - Combinations. Tips on how to assemble basic moves into combinations.
• Miramar. Assuming you already know some basic moves, Miramar's advice will help you start putting these moves together into dances.

Books

At the beginning of this article, I made several comments suggesting that books aren't a very good tool for learning to dance. But there is one thing I like using books for: they provide written explanations for moves that many teachers don't describe very well. For example, when I was a belly dancing student, my teachers did a terrible job of teaching stomach rolls. They demonstrated it, then asked us to copy it. That was not helpful. So I turned to books for alternate explanations, and that's where I found the help I needed to learn the move. Now, as a teacher myself, I still go back to my book collection for ideas on what words to use in describing the moves I want to teach.

Try looking in your local library for books on how to belly dance. They might have acquired some of the original books from

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5