sahiracc

You don’t need dozens of fancy belly dance moves to create a combination that feels REALLY good. 💃🔥

✨ Shimmy your way to more confidence, strength, and joy! Learn to belly dance step-by-step! 💃🎶 🎁 7-days of FREE belly dance classes for you! http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart

In this beginner belly dance combination class, we’ll start by warming up and drilling the technique we need, then take just a few foundational belly dance movements and build them step-by-step into a pretty hot little combination!

Once we’ve got the pieces together, we’ll turn up ‘Kalamantina’ by Saint Levant and dance the combination a few times so you can stop thinking about the steps and start enjoying the music.

This is one of my favorite things about learning choreography: taking movements that might feel simple on their own and discovering how much personality and musicality we can create when we put them together.

This combination is just the beginning! There’s still space to join us for the full Kalamantina choreography series. You can learn with me live in the Houston studio, join us online, or follow along with the class recordings from wherever you are.

👉 Learn the full choreography with us here: http://learn.sahirabellydances.com/p/beginner-hybrid

Clear a little space and come dance with me! 💜

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TIME STAMPS

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0:00 : Introduction

0:15 : Technique Warmup

5:36 : Combination Build

7:24 : Combination Dance with Music

🌟 Meet Your Instructor:

Sahira is an international belly dance performer and instructor with over 25 years of experience helping women around the world embrace their confidence, creativity, and health through dance. She’s taught at festivals in over a dozen countries and has been featured in major media worldwide! Learn more at SahiraBellyDances.com

💃 Let’s dance! Hit play and start dancing now!

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DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

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BELLY DANCE GEAR
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✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

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Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

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LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
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🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

In this 7-minute intermediate belly dance veil tutorial, we’re diving into two fabulous veil skills: the Windmill and the Juggle.

We’ll build the technique for each movement, drill them together and then put them together into a gorgeous, flowing combination you can use in your own practice, improvisation, or performance.

These moves are perfect for creating drama, movement, and beautiful shapes with your veil, and once you get them into your body, you can start playing with them in all kinds of ways.

Grab your veil, clear yourself a little dance space, and gift yourself seven minutes of dance! Then bookmark this tutorial and come back to it until the combination feels effortless and you can really start making it your own.

✨Need a veil? Pick up a gorgeous one in your favorite color from my favorite vendor here: https://link.amazon/B0b7DYzJG

💜 Which move is your favorite: the Windmill or the Jungle? Let me know in the comments!

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TIME STAMPS

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0:00 : Introduction

0:09 : Windmill Build

1:44 : Juggle Build

3:23 : Combination Build

5:26 : Dance with Music

🌟 Meet Your Instructor:

Sahira is an international belly dance performer and instructor with over 25 years of experience helping women around the world embrace their confidence, creativity, and health through dance. She’s taught at festivals in over a dozen countries and has been featured in major media worldwide! Learn more at SahiraBellyDances.com

💃 Let’s dance! Hit play and start dancing now!

**********
DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

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BELLY DANCE GEAR
**********

✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

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Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

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LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
**********

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

This performance holds a very special place in my heart. 💜

At 3rd Coast Tribal in 2013, we brought together a beautiful group of dancers to perform The Cymbal Dance, John Compton’s iconic finger cymbal choreography, as a tribute to John after his passing.

There was something incredibly powerful about putting this piece onstage with so many dancers, filling the room with the sound of our zills, and remembering John through a choreography that carries so much of his spirit. It is one of those performances that was about much more than the choreography itself.

And now, over a decade later, I’m bringing The Cymbal Dance back into the studio to share it with a new group of dancers.

Beginning September 23rd, I’ll be teaching the complete choreography in a special 9-week hybrid series. You can join me in person in Houston or learn with me live online from anywhere, with full class recordings included so you can continue practicing between classes and revisit the material for a full year.

We’ll dig into the movement, musicality, and zill patterns, as we explore what makes this choreography such a fun challenge to dance.

I would love to share the power and magic of this piece with you, and put a whole new generation of cymbal dancers onstage together. 💜

✨ Learn more + join the 9-week Cymbal Dance series: SahiraBellyDances.com/CymbalDance

*****

🌟 Meet Your Instructor:

Sahira is an international belly dance performer and instructor with over 25 years of experience helping women around the world embrace their confidence, creativity, and health through dance. She’s taught at festivals in over a dozen countries and has been featured in major media worldwide! Learn more at SahiraBellyDances.com

💃 Let’s dance! Hit play and start dancing now!

**********
DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

**********
BELLY DANCE GEAR
**********

✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

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Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

**********
LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
**********

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

Houston OR your living room? Now you can dance with me either way!

I’ve been busy upgrading my studio setup, and I am SO excited about this. Two camera views, excellent audio, and a brand-new streaming setup designed to make joining class online feel easy, interactive and totally fun. 

BEGINNER: Palestinian Pop Choreography
We’ll be dancing to “Kalamantina” by Saint Levant, a ridiculously catchy blend of new-wave Arab pop, R&B, reggaeton and Egyptian rhythm. We’ll start each week with technique and then build it into a fun, accessible choreography over the course of the series.

✨ REGISTER FOR KALAMANTINA

INTERMEDIATE: Shashkin | The Cymbal Dance
Ready to get those zills moving? We’ll be learning John Compton’s classic Cymbal Dance, a fabulous finger cymbal choreography that will challenge you to bring your dancing and your music-making together in new and creative ways. We’ll dig into some fun zill skills along the way and get grounded with some Ren Faire style combinations too.

✨ LEARN THE CYMBAL DANCE

Full-series registration includes the complete recordings of our classes with ONE FULL YEAR of access and opportunities to perform the choreography in an online or in-person showcase.

Double stroke gallop

🙌 Work your hand dexterity with this funky twist on a classic pattern.

Instead of alternating your hands with the gallop try one stroke on one hand, followed by two strokes on the other.

For example:

✋R-L-L

Or

🤚L-R-R

This forces your second hand to move pretty quickly! Keep the fingers close together and relax the hand. Tension only makes it harder to play fast.

I’m warming up this hand pattern, which I first learned from the incredible John Compton a couple of decades ago, because I’m getting ready to teach his fabulous Cymbal Dance, which uses it quite a bit!

✨ And for the first time ever I’ll be offering the choreography as a hybrid course online – so you can learn with me whether you are in Houston or anywhere else in the world!

More details coming soon.

The zilling party begins on September 23.

#zills #fingercymbals #sagat #crotales

Learn this intermediate level belly dance routine – The Layaly Combination!

*****

The Layaly combination is a Level 1 variation from one of my technique releases inside The Belly Dance Journey. I’d consider this version somewhere around a early intermediate level, with some fun movement, layering and transition concepts to play with.

But learning the combination is only the beginning!

In the full release, I use this same combination to explore the idea of leveling our dance material. We start here, then level it up not once, but TWICE, gradually adding more layers, texture, nuance and complexity until we arrive at a much more advanced version.

I love teaching this way because it’s not really about learning three different combinations. It’s about understanding what MAKES something more challenging and learning how to adjust dance material to meet you where you are right now.

Those are skills you can take into everything you learn, whether you’re working with my choreography, someone else’s, or creating movement of your own.

✨ Want to learn all three levels with me inside The Belly Dance Journey?

This tutorial is a little peek at the kind of work we do together each month inside my online belly dance membership. In addition to our on-demand releases, we meet live twice every month so members can bring their questions, troubleshoot challenges and workshop the material with me in real time.

Join The Belly Dance Journey and get access to this combination as well as over 500 hours of belly dance content – technique, choreographies, zills, props, improv and more!

TheBellyDanceJourney.com

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TIME STAMPS

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0:00 : Introduction

0:17 : Combination Build

5:16 : Combination Review

5:59 : Combination Dance with Music

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DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

**********
BELLY DANCE GEAR
**********

✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

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Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

**********
LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
**********

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

What happens when belly dance meets barbershop harmony?! 🎶💃

I have maintained for YEARS that I can belly dance to absolutely anything with a beat. So when the opportunity came along to put that theory to the test—with a live a cappella barbershop chorus, no less—well… obviously I had to say yes. 😂

This performance from a concert in Houston brought together my tribal belly dance troupe Urban Hipsy and my friends and the incredible voices of Space City Sound for what just might be the world’s first collaboration between a belly dance troupe and a barbershop chorus. (If someone out there has evidence otherwise, I genuinely want to see it!)

A HUGE thank you to the beautiful dancers of Urban Hipsy for jumping into this adventure with me—and to the leadership of Space City Sound for dreaming up this delightfully strange collaboration in the first place. 💜  @spacecitysound 

So… did it work?! Watch the performance and tell me your thoughts in the comments. And perhaps we’ve proven once and for all: if it’s got a beat, we can dance to it. 😉

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DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

**********
BELLY DANCE GEAR
**********

✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

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Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

**********
LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
**********

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

So many people think I bravely quit my engineering job to follow my belly dance dreams.

That is definitely NOT what happened. 😂

Want to know what I did?

I was recently interviewed and asked about how my belly dance business began.

And I shared the gritty, uncensored truth.

Sometimes there’s a beautiful, brave story about following your dreams.

And sometimes you’re 23, unemployed and pissed off and think, “Well. I guess I’ll try being a belly dancer.”

Guess which one I was. 😝

26 years later, I’m still here.

*****

Follow Stu online and check out his awesome “Marketing Your Business” podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/ ⁨@StuMe⁩

🌟 Meet Your Instructor:

Sahira is an international belly dance performer and instructor with over 25 years of experience helping women around the world embrace their confidence, creativity, and health through dance. She’s taught at festivals in over a dozen countries and has been featured in major media worldwide! Learn more at SahiraBellyDances.com

💃 Let’s dance! Hit play and start dancing now!

**********
DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

**********
BELLY DANCE GEAR
**********

✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

**********
Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

**********
LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
**********

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

💃🔥 In just 7 minutes, learn one of Shakira’s signature belly dance choreographies!

This fast-paced tutorial is designed for dancers with some belly dance experience who are ready to jump right in. We’ll move through the choreography quickly, putting the pieces together so you can stop drilling and start DANCING.

Expect plenty of shimmies, attitude, and those unmistakable hip movements that have been part of Shakira’s signature style for decades.

✨ Looking for bigger, bolder shimmies like Shakira does in this video? 💃🎶 🎁 Check out this FREE shimmy class and unleash your most powerful shimmy! http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips

✨ Want a little more help with the movements? Check out a longer, more detailed tutorial where I slow things down and break down the individual movements more thoroughly here: https://youtu.be/7ZQN7x1PTfA?si=chf1Zd3qcANCfUJQ

Grab a hip scarf, turn up the music, and give me seven minutes. Let’s see how much Shakira you can channel! 🔥💃

Tell me in the comments: Which part of the choreography is your favorite?

TIME STAMPS

0:00 : Introduction
0:09 : Choreography build
6:16 : Choreography review
6:52 : Dance it with Shakira!

🌟 Meet Your Instructor:

Sahira is an international belly dance performer and instructor with over 25 years of experience helping women around the world embrace their confidence, creativity, and health through dance. She’s taught at festivals in over a dozen countries and has been featured in major media worldwide! Learn more at SahiraBellyDances.com

💃 Let’s dance! Hit play and start dancing now!

**********
DANCE WITH ME
**********

🎁 Snag your FREE 7-day beginner belly dance jumpstart course:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Jumpstart
🚀 Improve Your Shimmy: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/ShimmyTips
⭐️ Become a Zill Star:http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Zillstar

**********
BELLY DANCE GEAR
**********

✨ Get a hip scarf and start dancing now: https://amzn.to/4jLNscv
💃🏻 Stunning and affordable belly dance costumes: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Costumes
🔥 Keep Calm and Zill On and Zillin Like a Villain Merch: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/Spring
💖 The best finger cymbals on the planet: http://SahiraBellyDances.com/SaroyanCymbals

**********
Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I’ll receive a small commission.

**********
LET’S CONNECT ON SOCIAL
**********

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SahiraBellyDances/
🔸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SahiraBellyDances

Zills in 6/8 🎶 #fingercymbals

Learn this finger cymbal rhythm in 6!

✅ Counts: 1 &a2e& 3 &a4e& 5 6

🥁 Drum: D tktk D D tktk D D T

🎶 Zill Tones: B TtTt B B TtTt B B C

B = Basic T = Tick C = Clack

⭐️ Learn to play finger cymbals with this FREE class: SahiraBellyDances.com/ZillStar

And enjoy the early morning mist from this Yellowstone hot spring!

Karsilama 9/8

Counted in a fast 9 like this: 1 2&3 4&5 6&7 8 9

B TtT TtT TtB TT

B = Basic T = Tick

🎶 Zills by @Saroyan_Zils

✨ Grand Prismatic hot spring by Mother Nature

Zill frill in 3 🎶

Ode to the lake 💧

Zill along with me! Sounds complicated, but it’s mostly singles with one fancy frill.

1 2 3 (Basic Clack Clack)

1 2 3 (Basic Clack Clack)

1 2 & 3 & (Basic FRILL Basic Basic Basic)

1 2 3 (Basic Clack Clack)

Bonus points if you can tell me where the lake that inspired this riff is. ✨