Online Belly Dance Classes - Breaking the Ice

This course designed by instructor Soumya Syal introduces beginners to Oriental Belly Dancing with a focus on basic techniques -

• Expressions
• Muscle Awareness
• Musicality
• Choreography
• Skeletal and Muscular mobility and flexibility

The techniques we will be learning can be broadly categorized as - Percussive, Serpentine, and Locomotor. They include -

• Basic hand movements and footwork
• Chest isolations and Hip isolations in vertical, horizontal, and sagittal planes and their variations
• Chest & Hip undulations
• Getting the figure of infinity using chest, hip in the horizontal plane, hip in the vertical plane (Maya), hip in vertical plane reversed (Taqsim)
• Layering with footwork
• Shimmies - Chest shimmy, Knee shimmy, Hip Shimmy, Twist shimmy, 3/4th shimmy, Chu-Chu shimmy

We will be incorporating these techniques and adding basic layering to them on short choreographies. Each choreography will be completed over a span of 2 weeks. Thus, the students will learn 6-8 choreographies covering all the beginner-level belly dance techniques by the end of this course.

About the Teacher

Soumya Syal is a creative entrepreneur, dancer, choreographer, content creator, and social media influencer based in Hyderabad, India. She has a community of over 250k on YouTube and 35k on Instagram.

She started her dance journey when she was just 4 years old. She is Senior Diploma in Bharatnatyam from the Prayag Sangeet Samiti, Allahabad (Prayagraj), and is professionally trained in Oriental Belly Dance from Payal's Dance Academy and international artists. Bollywood, Salsa, Contemporary, and Hip-Hop are some other dance forms she has trained in.

Currently, she heads Soumya Syal Dance Co. (SSDC) and is an instructor/choreographer for belly dance, Bollywood, and semi-classical to students offline & online in private and group sessions. Her company has organized dance workshops in various cities of India including Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Leh, Bhopal and also choreographs private events (incl. Wedding/Sangeet) and corporate events.

Apart from dance, Soumya is a B.Tech. in Computer Science Engineering from NIT, Bhopal. She has worked at Microsoft for 3.5 years before pursuing dance as her full-time career.