We love to dance, and we LOVE Belly Dance for the freedom it provides us. One of the beauties of this freedom is the ability to dance bare feet.  It’s an amazing feeling; to feel the earth beneath your feet and every little movement your body does. Balance, precision, strength: all are achieved so much easier when the feet are connected to the ground, feeding the earth’s energy. It’s a beautiful thing.
However, with time you realize that you need shoes.
In my opinion, you should never practice without shoes. Any accident here can affect your performance. Hours of practice without protection can lead to calluses, that can affect your performance on stage. Another fear is the ‘knee torque’, which is caused by a turn where the feet sticks to the ground and can cause severe damage to the knee joint. Also the stage area! You might perform on a festival where the previous dancer left coins on the floor, or there are those venues where the “dance floor” might be carpet, grass or concrete, making the dance floor difficult to dance at.
I picked a few examples of dance shoes that were designed to bring more comfort to your practice and/or performance. Below you will find options for the studio, performance or both

Read more…

Finding the perfect costume for what you are looking for can be tricky. To make one it takes time, to buy one it’s not always easy as most belly dance costumes are available online and to order one can take months and months since most costumes comes from the Middle East, making a last minute purchase almost impossible. That’s when you reach the community, dancers are always selling, buying, trading costumes. Read more…

This post is about how I rediscover Carmen Miranda and how that helped me improve my dance. Hopefully this will also help you improve your performance. She was not a Belly dancer, but inspiration scan also come from a variety of sources, not only Belly dance. Read more…

Octopus girl...cute but no thanks.

I’ve had several students asking me how to improve their arm movements. Arms are so important in belly dance and still, they are very often neglected.  In my early years as a dancer my arms were not what I wanted them to be. I used to feel like an octopus with arms moving all around without direction. It was frustrating and even when I thought I had it right, my videos and photos showed the opposite. Read more…

Hello, and welcome to my new freshly redesigned website and blog.

Sometime ago I read this from the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho: “You don’t need to explain your dreams, they belong to you”. I remember that day now, it wasn’t too long ago, but that phrase clicked and I went on working hard to make this happen! So I give you the new Vivi Bellydance!! Long overdue, this is a partial concretization of my dreams, more it’s on it’s way!!

Yes Vivi Bellydance is back and better than ever!!
I promise to keep it in great shape and bring new cool stuff often. Expect to see more blogs here, more belly dancing talk, more belly dance news, pictures, classes, dance tips, music tips, make up tips, recipes and everything else that I am passionate about.
So, take your time to look around, make yourself home (grab a cup of coffee or a Moroccan tea), and make you voice heard, yes, write what you think, let me know what you like, and what you would like to see more in here.

Great things are coming this way,

Look around and let me know what you think of it, and perhaps we can get together and have a real cup of tea or coffee one of theses days

Beijos

Vivi <3