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Handbook for Belly Dance Students: History, Costumes, Music

Costumes, Ornaments, and Costume Making

The top, pants and hip belt of a classic American Tribal costume is often adopted by beginners for class wear.

Choli or camisole or sports top.
Harem pants
Tiered skirt or circle skirt with a colored band at the hem;
Tie hip belt adorned with tassels or fringe or coins.

BUYER BEWARE. A large proportion of the beautiful chiffony/glittery/beaded scarves, belts, skirts,and tops offered for sale to belly dancers are designed for glitter, not for durability, and they will fall apart! Examine anything you are thinking of buying carefully and bring/send it right back if it isn't good quality! Avoid pieces with unfinished fraying raw edges or made of fabric that is too light weight for the decorations added to it. Your best source of durable costume pieces, if you can sew, is your own two hands! But if you need to order, local craftspeople who will repair what they make are a very good choice.

Learn:

Costumes for Various Styles of Oriental Dance at BDANCER.COM.
Hints and Tips for the Belly Dance Costumer is an online booklet from Davina (Dawn Devine Brown) that describes the components of the different kinds of middle eastern dance costumes and how to use and care for them.

Make Costumes Yourself:

Make Your Own right here on Ruric-Amari.com!
The Costume Goddess offers sound advice on various aspects of costume making. She also has an excellent article on using color in belly dance costumes posted on Shira.net.
Annabella.net provides online Tribal choli, skirt and coin bra patterns.

Buy:

Cats Paw Coin Belts by local craftsperson Perry Williams. Beautiful, long lasting, musical belts custom made for you. He is local and good with customer service.
The Red Camel sells wonderfully distinctive tribal jewelery and the prices are very reasonable. Her website includes textiles as well as necklaces and bracelets.

Gigs 101

Checklist for Performance in a Public Venue for Ruric-Amari Dance students.

The fantasy: take dance lessons for three months, get Discovered and become Rich and Famous. Sounds like a plan, but please read these first before you invest thousands in beaded costumes!

Elizabeth Artemis Mourat's How to interpret what club owners mean when they say what they say.
Performing and Professionalism links. Samira is a long-time professional dancer in WDC and she does a great job keeping up with the latest and greatest info on becoming and staying a professional dancer.
Why showing up ready to dance in a great costume is not enough to make money: the cult classic thread Draw and Deliver thread on tribe.net.
Funny but true: DON'T FOOL YOURSELF video.

The details:

Doing Gigs checklist compiled by Shira.
Free Calendars to print out.
Performer's Checklist from www.annabella.net: don't leave home without it! Oriented towards Tribal dancers but useful for all.
Transporting Your Stuff from Farfesha.com.

Stage Names: Many belly dancers from previous generations chose an Arabic stage name. Many of the younger dancers, including Ruric-Amari, use their given names on stage. If you seek inspiration for an Arabic stage name: Arabic Names and their meanings.

Health Benefits of Belly Dance

Larger Women can Belly Dance on Shira.net.
Health Benefits of Belly Dance on World Belly Dance
Belly Dance fights cellulite on ArticlesBase.
Bellydancer Guide to Pregnancy on Star Dancers

History and Humor

Laws of Belly Dynamics include valuable advice like: don't just do something, stand there! and Always leave them wanting more; never leave them wanting less.
About Middle Eastern Dance at Shira.net.
Morocco's articles on Oriental (she HATES the word bellydance) dance.
Hafla Jokes from Hasani.net
La Danse du Ventre from Saudi Aramco World magazine, 1971.

Poems

On Seeing the Pupil of Kung-Sun Dance the Sword Dance by TU FU

Student Warm up Exercises

Warm Up 101 here on Ruric-Amari.com.
Warmup on OrientalDancer.net

Styles of Belly Dance

Shira has 22 pages of info on this topic!
Short descriptions of many types of 'belly dance' at www.spiritdancer.co.uk.
Folkloric dance styles at VenusBellyDance.
Bhuz is a collection of forums on middle eastern dance and belly dance. Some of the most useful discussions center around the music, costuming and movement for ethnic dance.

Veils

Making a Dancing Veil right here at Ruric-Amari.com!
Dying Silk Veils at Farfesha.com.
Dying Silk at DharmaTrading.com.

Workshops

Ruric-Amari's Your Body Electric workshop series and upcoming workshop schedule.

Ruric-Amari and Samovar often attend workshops by these local sponsors:

Conchi and Nataj , Cincinatti OH
Crescent Moon Dancers
Mecca, Lexington KY
MEDSOK

National favorites:

Folk Tours in (as of 2012) New Jersey.
Morocco , NYC, NY

Zilling and Druming

Kawakib breaks it down.
Basic Music Theory by the incomparable Mary Ellen McDonald.
Mary Ellen Donald articles at Gilded Serpent.
Turbo Tabla zill rhythms
Turbo Tabla specialty rhythms
Carmine's Rhythm cheat sheet
Quick and Dirty Guide to the Doumbek
Zildjian.com for concert zills.
Zil Practice from ALYNE.biz.
Mid-East.com sells many kinds of Mid-Eastern and Western instruments.
Doumbek Delerium offers 'Choosing a Middle-Eastern Drum' and 'Beginning Drumming.'
Uncle Mafufo produces CDs and Videos teaching zill and drum playing.
Middle Eastern Rhythms FAQ is the long tour through the subject of Middle Eastern Rhythms.
Guide to Middle-Eastern Rhythms from Blackroot.org.
Music and Rhythmn from the Dancer's point of view.
Practicing with the Finger Cymbals focuses on method rather than individual rhythms.
Finger Cymbol Technique by Yasmin and Artemis focuses on how to become comfortable with them and develop stamina.
Med-dance Mail List from 1998 has good tips for beginners.
Near East.com zill textbook.

Et Cetera

FirstGov, the official web portal of the US Gov't. Tax, SS, passport, student aid forms and info. Also at 1-800-FED-INFO (1-800-333-4636).

The Library:

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Ethnic Dance Arts here at Ruric-Amari.com.

Max Tilke's Oriental Costumes, Their Designs and Colors online!

Joy of Belly Dancing is a well-organized encyclopedia of links. The Arts, Graphics and Vintage Arts links are very good.

Anthea has a lot of good articles on dancing and on zill playing on her site. She is a regular contributor to several belly dance magazines.

Textile As Art has pictures of the 'real' versions of the 'costumes' in Max Tilke's books.

Take a virtual bellydance crash course at Shira.net.

Morocco of NYC has been dancing, researching, and teaching for over forty years.

A comprehensive outline of Near Eastern Dance movements

Almashriq is dedicated to documenting the 'cultural riches of the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean: Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey. These 'cultural riches' include costumes and recipes as well as articles on history and politics.

OrientalDancer.net contains thoughtful articles for dancers of all skill levels. Also features a discussion board and instructor and event directories.

Insights:

Imperial History of the Middle East: 90 second summary of 5000 years of astounding history.
Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia by Lady Sheil, 1856

Starving Artist Cafe

Ruric-Amari teaches in Kentucky and Indiana. If you need a teacher outside this area, try the following web sites for national lists:

Contact Ruric-Amari