Thread: Bellydance Games

Does anyone have any ideas for games? I currently have bellydance cards and I have done the alphabet game with them. Didnt know if there was anything else out there. I am having a hard time coming up with something usuable.

I use several with my classes, I am thinking that is what you mean?

I put out hula hoops as tables and have them improv. Then I give other students secret assignments. Like: you are the drunk trying to get to the bar through the dancers dance space.
You are the wait staff with a tray. You are the old lady grabbing the dancer by the hand to bring her over to your table.
Fun silly stuff. My ladies enjoy the game.

You could do belly dance telephone. One person starts a movement and passes it on to one other while everyone has their eyes closed (can do a combo as well). Then the last person does it and sees how close it is to the first person. (also a good time to talk about learning a choreo from one person who learned it from another person who learned it from the person who took the workshop!).

You could play a game were everyone adds a movement and then keep going to have a whole dance.
Hope this helps! Then again it may not be what you are looking for.

I've used the Shimmy Challenge. It was originally a way of making my students measure their stamina and inventiveness (I work for Adult Ed, and they like to see measurable progress, so we did it at the start of term, and then again at the end of term). I use a playlist of ten minutes of shimmyable music, and get the students to divide into pairs, one to dance, and the other to watch and score her. Two goes around, so they've each danced and each watched and then the scoring feedback- it takes nearly all lesson!

So the rules were:

• they had to shimmy for as much as possible of the whole ten minutes. One point for each full 30 second period.
• at the end of the ten minutes, they swap around- we don't do the scoring and feedback till after all dancers have danced.
• they had to try and make the shimmies inventive and varied. The watcher can add one or two points for this (or if she's being very critical, could even take away one or two points, but my students are all very friendly and none of them have ever deducted points!
• they had to try and use their arms. Again, the watcher can add (or deduct) one or two points for this.
• the teacher can award (or deduct) bonus Teacher points to make sure it all works out fairly.

You could change the areas to focus on- I wanted my gals to think about their arms and using a variety of their moves, but you might have different goals for your class/students.

The feedback session can give them some ideas on what they need to work on, whether that's stamina, variety of movements, use of arms. It's a good way of learning critique, and getting students to self-critique too.

We played freeze dance (dance until someone pushes pause and freeze in that position!) and "guess the emotion" at our last hafla. It was fun!

Musical Statues- this is one for making them focus on their posture, stance, arms and hands, styling (Oriental or Baladi- sorry, I only do Egyptian!).

You play the music, they improv. You randomly stop the music, every minute or so, and as soon as it stops they have to freeze. In a perfect world they should be in their perfect dance posture. (Making them freeze in the forward part of an undulation is perhaps the meanest possible move to catch them out with!)

If you want to give them feedback, you can go around tweaking their posture, but you have to be super-quick about it, or just do one or two at a time, because it means the others are stuck in position while you're doing it!

Originally Posted by faaria

I put out hula hoops as tables and have them improv. Then I give other students secret assignments. Like: you are the drunk trying to get to the bar through the dancers dance space.
You are the wait staff with a tray. You are the old lady grabbing the dancer by the hand to bring her over to your table.
Fun silly stuff. My ladies enjoy the game.

This was my big game of my summer session last year. I made cards with the different audience members and each dancer picked a card and had to act like that person. It was HILARIOUS. And it worked - when we had our "graduation" restaurant performance, they were prepared!

These ideas are so awesome you guys. Thank you so much!

I love these ideas. I've never though about doing games in class.
The one exercise I've done is to have the students improve a dance in a 2x2 foot sqare area. They must use different levels and techniques.

I usually only do games for holidays and such. Somethimes I combine two classes so we can do belly dance games then have an informal belly dance party. at Christmas (and yes I do celebrate it!) I always say, "you've heard of reindeer games come next week for belly dance games!"

We did a "status" game in one class. Status as in how confident, extrovert and radiant (?) you are on a scale from 1 to 10. 1 being shy, introvert, maybe even scared. 10 being completely confident and certain of your right taking the space. Or something like this. Then we danced and tried to dance according to the numbers our teacher said. Then we danced on a number we decided for ourselves and the others would guess where we were on a scale. All for practicing being aware of what we project and how to control and vary it.

We also would pick an animal, think of some characteristics of that animal and let the dance express it. The others would guess the animal. That was really funny, especially those who picked a squirrel or monkey.

Once we danced a short choreo four times with different expressions every time: sad, happy, in love, indifferent etc.

From a students point of view I love those exercises and it makes it varied and you get to practice some other stuff than just steps and choreo.

Originally Posted by beafarhana

Musical Statues- this is one for making them focus on their posture, stance, arms and hands, styling (Oriental or Baladi- sorry, I only do Egyptian!).

You play the music, they improv. You randomly stop the music, every minute or so, and as soon as it stops they have to freeze. In a perfect world they should be in their perfect dance posture. (Making them freeze in the forward part of an undulation is perhaps the meanest possible move to catch them out with!)

If you want to give them feedback, you can go around tweaking their posture, but you have to be super-quick about it, or just do one or two at a time, because it means the others are stuck in position while you're doing it!

I used this in two of my classes tonight. The funny thing was, I hardly caught anyone out with bad arms/posture...which just showed them that they were capable of beautiful arms when they were thinking about it!

Thanks for these ideas, they're great. I'm planning to use the 'restaurant-with-annoying-crowd' scenario game on my advanced class at the end of term. He he he.

I just did a quick search of the forums and couldn't find the information....could anyone point me in the right direction to get myself some of the bellydance cards I keep hearing about? I would love to buy some but can't seem to find where to get them.

Thanks in advance for any help!

go to I Dream of Gia's website. You can search it. She sells them on there.

We do a sort of red light green light game. While the light is green, they have to cross the floor while shimmying. When the light is red, they have to go into a nice pose and hold their stage presence.

Sometimes we do an alternate version where they have to improvise during the red light instead of posing.

Write down moves that your class should know at the level they are at, fold over paper so they cant read what is written on it, put it in a basket and have them each pick a paper and "teach" the move to the rest of the class. You can also use this with combinations for you intermediates. Having to explain a move really helps them to learn it.

I used to do a "Movement jar". I decorated a big pickle jar to make it look fancy, wrote on each piece of paper a basic move. Some times I did one color for lower body and another color for upper body. I would have a student pick 2 cards and we'd brainstorm to come up with cool combination just using those moves. When I had smaller classes (intermediate) I would have each student pick 2-3 cards and they'd have to dance by doing only those moves. Of course they had to be creative and use different thing: different arms, different speed, angles, level changes, combos, etc.
I teach only impro, so this worked out great.

Originally Posted by safiradokos

I just did a quick search of the forums and couldn't find the information....could anyone point me in the right direction to get myself some of the bellydance cards I keep hearing about? I would love to buy some but can't seem to find where to get them.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Thank you so much for asking and thank you Belliedansa for mentioning my site!
You can find my "Create a Combo" Belly Dance Deck on my site at this link!
Create a Combo Belly Dance Game Practice Deck
Gia