How to control your shimmies

By Ishtar Dance on Monday, October, 18th, 2021 in Dance Coaching, Dance Inspiration, Learning, Your Dance Body No Comments


I often get asked how you best control a knee or Egyptian Shimmy – and being one of those moves that require strength as well as relaxation to work, the simple question is really: practise. But that doesn’t necessarily mean plough on and do lots of drills, as it’s also very important to take the time to actually know the technique as well as build the strength required to do the move.

The shimmy is often a move not broken down in great depth in a class – maybe because it seems ‘too simple’ or because it’s ‘just something you do’. I certainly don’t remember my first teachers spending a lot of time on it, and in a way you can get by with a ‘wiggle’ for a quite a while. But at some point you will struggle to maintain, control or layer your shimmies properly and that is normally a sign to go back and review your basic technique.

When I ran my first September Shimmy Challenge back in 2019 I was overwhelmed by the feedback and positive impact it had on dancers technique, confidence and not least love of the shimmy, so today I’m sharing a video all about the vital Shimmy technique. It was filmed as part of my Shimmy Challenge and is not publicly available on my YouTube channel but you can view it below or follow this link.

How did you get on? Do feel you need to get better at controlling your shimmies? Or what parts of the shimmy do you struggle with the most if any? Please let me know how you got on and whether you did accept the challenge and started drilling the slow shimmy for a few minutes! Doing this even just a few times a week will certainly help you develop and not least control your slow as well as faster shimmies going forwards.

If you like all things shimmy and would like to know about upcoming online courses then please sign up to my season newsletter here. I look forward to dancing with you online soon. Until then – Happy and safe dancing – always 🙂

Dorte

Did you miss my last post? Read it here:


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Pinterest
Pinterest
fb-share-icon
Instagram