Belly Dance Every Day - Isolations
One of the most important aspects of belly dance is isolation. Isolation involves only moving the part of the body that you are focusing on. This means moving your shoulders without moving your arms, moving your ribcage without moving your shoulders, etc. Isolations are important because it gives you the ability to layer moves without making them “mushy”. The only way I have found to make isolations crisp is to practice practice practice. It helps to be in front of a mirror, then you can see whether you are performing the isolations correctly. When you practice your moves, pay special attention to keeping the rest of your body out of the move, “aftershocks” are to be expected (especially with shimmies), but as you practice and get better they should be minimized.
When you start using props, the ability to isolate will be even more important, but we’ll get to that later.
