Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns
“Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns” starts with an optional warmup that leads into a 7-part series: Hand Position; Isolated Outside Hand Circle; Sweeping Wrist Articulation; Hand Circle Outside with a Moving Wrist; Hand Circle Inside; Hand Undulation; and Wrist Circles.
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Conditioning for Articulate Wrists and Hands
The exercises in this program are designed to build strength, improve range of motion, reinforce clean technique, and pamper the hands and wrists. Use this program:
As a stand-alone conditioning program to level up;
As a warmup, for the “Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns” Series, or bef... -
Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 1 of 7: Hand Position
Learn and practice, step-by-step, a detailed breakdown of the placement for soft, relaxed hands. This segment also touches on idiomatic Egyptian hand placement, and concludes with specific instructions on avoiding hand placement that may inadvertently be construed as rude gesturing.
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Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 2 of 7: Isolated Outside Hand Circle
In this segment, we examine a foundation movement where the wrist stays in one spot, and the hand sweeps around from that base. Although this movement, on its own, is infrequently used, it is important as a building block that will help you to pick up subsequent hand vocabulary much more quickly....
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Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 3 of 7: Sweeping Wrist Articulation
In a sweeping wrist articulation, a dancer layers together either flexion or extension of the wrist with movement of the wrist through space. We need the wrist sweep to build the more sophisticated circles and hand undulations that we’ll breakdown later in this series, and we also need it for flu...
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Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 4 of 7: Hand Circle Outside with Moving Wrist
For this soft and sophisticated hand circle, we layer together the isolated outside hand circle taught in section 3 with the sweeping wrist articulation taught in section 4.
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Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 5 of 7: Hand Circle to the Inside
To circle to the inside, we use the sweeping wrist articulation taught in section 3, layered with an inside-circling sequence for the hand. In this video, we’ll: break down and practice the four steps to this movement; learn where, when, and how to use the movement; look at hand positioning for P...
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Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 6 of 7: Hand Undulation
The hand undulation—a defining characteristic of Oriental dance— is created by sequencing together the wrist sweeps we examined previously in this series with a sweep of the knuckles. We’ll look at refining and coordinating fine articulations to make a gesture that is pure relaxation: soft, sensu...
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Wrist and Hand Movement Breakdowns 7 of 7: Wrist Circles
In this final video, we’re looking at an isolated circle of the wrist: both fingertips and elbows are anchored, and the wrist circles the fixed points of the fingertips and elbows.
We have 8 variations:
unlayered circle to the outside, palm down
circle to the outside, palm down, layered... -
Persian Snap
A tutorial on the Middle-Eastern 2-handed snap or “Persian” snap, followed by tips on how to incorporate the snap into belly dance presented in cultural context.
