My shimmies are hotter than yours

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Forget any impression, understanding, visual or anything you may have of a shimmy. Clean it out of your memory. Wipe it... wiiiipe it.

Second, forget all the different names of shimmies - the technique is all the same for all of them in the Egyptian vocabulary of dance.

OK.

Now we are ready to work:

Starting out in folklore posture (slight turn out in the feet, hipjoint width apart, grounded, knees bent, lower lumbar of the spine lengthened down, pelvis lifted up and in through the abs, torso lifted through center back and diaphragm and centered over feet)

Keep your chest centered over your center point between your feet.

Think of the path of the movement as a curve going through the bottom of the left oblique to the tip of your tailbone and then up through the right oblique.

When your weight is even, the movement is centered at the tailbone.

Pay attention to how a weight change is happening between the feet, how the hip is rotating around the center of your pelvic floor - hipbone coming in towards the spine at the waist, allowing the movement to react all the way up to the bottom of the ribcage.

You should feel like you are squatting behind your feet with your butt underneath you, pelvis rolled in in the front and torso over your feet. Weight should remain even. You should feel a burn in your quadriceps and rombhoids/lower trapezius.

You may experiment with various distances between the feet and different degrees of bends in the knee+hip joints - as your body gets comfortable with this and you memorize the feeling of this movement (flab flab flab flab). The feeling of the movement will change with every minor change of stance, level, strength, size or speed element.

What is important is not to get confused by the visual of the movement, but to diligently drill the correct posture, path, range and technique of the movement.

 
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