Travel Steps Study Guide 1.2: Defining and Naming Vocabulary

Organizational Methodology

Travel Steps builds literally from the ground up, describing each piece of dance vocabulary in terms of a foundation unit of either “step,” a full transfer of weight from one foot to the other, or “hold,” a count of choreography that does not transfer weight. Layers on steps and holds create a variety of movements; when linked together with sequencing, timing, and style variations, plain and layered steps and holds form combinations and choreography.

While traditional belly dance hipwork and isolations are included in this presentation, Travel Steps focuses mainly on timing variations and on articulations of the feet and legs.  For steps, I show walking and other patterns of steps in even succession, but emphasize ball-change and step-ball-change weight transfers.  I treat pivots, hops, heel lifts, knee lifts, and leg extensions as movements that happen between steps, and describe these articulations as layers on holds.  To show holds in the context of travel steps, I demonstrate each layered hold variation in a step-hold sequence.

Style and Nomenclature

Foot and leg movements are inherent to belly dance but were not historically emphasized or refined in the dance’s countries of origin, so some belly dancers may be accustomed to thinking of polished use of this vocabulary in terms of ballet, jazz, or other western forms.  Travel Steps uses three terms shared with ballet:  arabesque, attitude, and chassé.  I used these names (along with another generic term, grapevine) because they are used in common by many styles of dance, and widely understood in belly dance classes to refer to belly dance moves danced with belly dance technique; I’ve avoided other ballet terminology because I believe its use suggests that polished foot and leg technique in belly dance necessarily represents fusion.  Although precise foot and leg placement is a Western-influenced and contemporary development, I do not regard beautiful and intentional use of the feet and legs as inherently alien to a pure belly dance aesthetic or necessarily requiring cross-training.  While not appropriate or useful to every style, technique and clean lines for the whole body can be conceptualized from a belly dance perspective, developed within a belly dance training program, and proudly claimed as integrated and proper components of belly dance. 

To support precise dance, Travel Steps describes movements with precise language.  For this project I favored English-language movement names that describe skeletal placement and joint articulation, with the goal of transmitting “styleless” foundation technique, and helping dancers break down unfamiliar layered movements into identifiable components.  Travel Steps establishes and defines clear foundation terminology, and then applies that terminology with internal consistency to describe the mechanics of each movement.    Some dancers may find my language to be “plain English,” while others may see it as technical – from either viewpoint, it is not poetic.    When teaching a movement in the context of a choreography, genre, or particular dancer’s individual style, evocative language or nicknames (such as "Samia," "the butterfly," "the persnickety camel") may do a much better job of cuing a move or conveying its feeling than do my formal designations.  I encourage dancers to adapt my foundation nomenclature just as they adapt Travel Steps’ foundation technique—to suit their own style and purpose.

→ Next in the Travel Steps Study Guide: Attire 

←Previous:  Using Travel Steps and the Travel Steps Study Guide

↑      Travel Steps Study Guide Table of Contents 
↑↑    Travel Steps
↑↑↑  Autumn Ward Presents Artistic Belly Dance Student Resource Center