Bellydance by Amartia battles the how to be a professional Baltimore belly dancer myths!
If I could count on my fingers and toes how many times I had been asked how long it took me to learn belly dance and be a professional ,then I’d have a million fingers and toes. When I reply that I have been studying dance my whole life in some fashion and belly dance for over ten, the facial expressions are amusing. Usually people are surprised at how long it takes and how much skill is required. Yes, it takes TRAINING- Just like any other dance form.
But Amartia, maybe they didn’t mean it like that. Maybe they were trying to say that it took a long time to learn how to do this. Most of the time, in those moments, I try to take it as a compliment: That my technique makes the movents look so effortless that they think it’s easy. Sometimes, however it is hard to convey the difficulty in the dance. Aren’t you just shaking it? Um, no, it is actually more than that. This is when I wish I could get these people into a belly dance workshop with me. So they could see how much drilling and repetition it takes.
The issue is that videos are more easily accessible than instructors. Media is everywhere. If you go to YouTube there is a plethora of belly dancing videos out there claiming they can do it faster. There are some people who believe that they can dance as a pro because they have a costume, look great in it, and have watched a few videos. There are also those out there who are marketing training classes based off of this. There are also those who are offering full online belly dance video lessons that have no actual real-time instructor input and correction. Online classes are great as a supplement to regular instruction or live mentoring, but it is almost impossible to learn a dance form without input. How do you KNOW you are executing a movement correctly? You could be hurting yourself physically and not even realize it.
Not to mention that learning how to be a professional Maryland Belly dancer is so much more than just watching a belly dancing video to execute moves, you need to know the music, the culture, the style, how to entertain, to perform, the business aspect, etc. Bellydance by Amartia could go on and on but for now this is answer to the how to be a professional belly dancer myth.