How to Do Large Hip Circles | Belly Dancing

Belly dancing is sexy, fun, and burns up a lot of calories to boot! In this video, belly dancer Irina Akulenko teaches you how to do large hip circles. You'll be shaking it like Shakira in no time.

So now we're going to try a large, exterior hip circle. Step out right underneath your hip bones, so nice and wide, keep the knees slightly bent, chest up, arms out, lower abs engaged. We're gonna shift the weight all the way out to the right, and again all the way out to the left. Once again, all the way out to the right, and all the way out to the left. Keeping the knees slightly bent, and once again do not let yourself bounce up and down in space. And slide out, and out, and out, and out. Now turning sideways, keeping the knees slightly bent you're gonna push your hips all the way forward, and all the way back, and as you push forward make sure that your chest does not lift so you're not pointing chest up, but you're actually staying neutral, the same way you normally are when you're standing. And when you shift all the way back, as well, you wanna keep the neutral lift. As you push front, you're going to feel your upper abs get engaged, nice and tight. And as you push back, you want to make sure that you're dropping the tailbone down, engaging the lower abs, so you're not arching your back, you do not want to release it back, keep it neutral. And sliding forward, and back, and forward, and back. Now we're going to combine those into a hip circle. Pushing out to the right, pushing forward, pushing over to the left, and back. Out to the right, forward where you should feel your upper abs, left, and back and you should feel the contraction in your lower abs. When you connect them you create a hip circle. Now this hip circle is traveling outside of your normal alignment so when you're standing neutral, this is your normal alignment, but when you push into the large hip circle you're going to come outside of that. Let's try that with music. Let's try going in the other direction. So that's how you do a basic, large, exterior hip circle.