bullet"Sensuous Rib Cage Movements -The Rib Cage Snake"

   As art imitates life, so dance imitates living beings. The snake, long revered in the tributes to certain Goddesses, is one of the very special movements of Oriental Dance. The Snake Movement imitates the sideways wind of the snake with the fluidity of movement as it hypnotizes the watcher.

    We create this movement from its source of energy, the sternum. wpe1.jpg (4261 bytes)The sternum pulls the rib cage in a figure 8, the infinity sign, with all of the roundness of the intercepting circles. Leading the movement by pulling from the shoulder or via the"hip hop" head doesn’t give the detailed roundness of the rib cage that is created when we use the sternum to create the circles of the infinity sign away from our center.

wpe3.jpg (17850 bytes)Imagine your straight spine with circles pulling down, side and up and back toward your center.   The sternum takes a diagonal line down, reaches to a rib cage side slide, curves up and over the apex of the circle and is then repeated to the other diagonal line down.

 wpe4.jpg (26522 bytes)To achieve the diagonal line slanting downward, try first doing your rib cage slide, side to side. (Remember that side slide position, for that is where you will be lifting to from the down diagonal...) Next take that rib cage slide and, from your sternum, tilt your rib cage and make a diagonal line that slants across your center. Come back to straight side slides and repeat on the other diagonal feeling the down and the up positions.

        Once you have the feeling of the downward diagonals, we make arcs that lift from the down position to the side slide position, to the up diagonal position, arcing up and over the apex of the circle to the other side’s downward diagonal. wpe3.jpg (17850 bytes)The two intersecting circles made by the rib cages’ progression are on either side of your center. Make sure that when you lift out of the side slide into the upper diagonal, that you are not hitting the top of the circle in your center, but on the circle to the side of your center. You will find that your weight shift as you move the rib cage on its figure 8 path; be aware of this shift of weight but do not help it along. Let the rib cage do the work! You will also feel a pulling of the hips as you change from one diagonal to the next - again, be aware of it but let the ribs do all of the work. A by-product from the upwards pulling of those hips is a small hip snake. The Hip Snake is another Figure 8 Movement with its source in the side slide hips - and fodder for another article!

Dance Well and Practice, Practice, Practice!