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I do believe the "jerky motions" you're referring to is called "Break-Beat".

It can be a little tricky at first. My tip is if you want to use this, you first need to find music with break beat in it. Beats Antique's new album "Collide" has it in pretty much every track. (And it ROOOOOOOOOOCKS omg I'm not disappointed in the album at all.)

Anywho...You need to famillarize yourself with the music. It's very hard to know when to break-beat if you dont know when it's comming.

Next, think of a move you want to to. Snake-arms are VERY popular for this.

Break down the move into however many beats there are to break. Usualy it's 2 or 3 breaks in the rythem.

So if you were doin a snake-arm with your right arm with 3 breaks in the rythem...you'd stop at your hip, ribs, then between your shoulder and head before completeting the move.

I really wish I had a web cam so I could SHOW you.

Only really gutsy dancers do what I refere to as "Belly Dance Suicide".
(It's like "Karaoke Suicide" where you just pick a song at random and preform with no prior knowlage of it.) And I've never seen one just walk out on stage and do an actual preformance that way.

I improv alot. I really love it, alot of dancers dont however. lol
I'd never get up and improv to a song I've never listened to before, at least not for a preformance.

I do however improv to live drumming. You never quite know what you're in store for when it comes to live music, but if a dummer knows what he's doing he'll keep you on a steady beat, and take cues from your body for when you want the tempo raised or lowered. And alot of the drum rythems allow a break-beat motion, although I cant remember the name of it off hand.

Anywho...yea. Find a song with the break-beats in it, and listen to the song over and over and over and over again, until litterly you know it by heart and can feel the breaks. THEN go for it!

Mmmm....throwing on music and dancing... "Belly Dance Suicide".

I'm not saying it's not do-able. I dance to random music all the time at parties and concerts.

There's just a big differance between dancing at a party for people, and getting up on stage infront of hundreds plus people, and putting on a random song. Big differance.

Oh there's a trick to that! We call it "buffet".

Alot of times there's certain combos people use in situations like that.

We do that during our drumming improv. preformances. Everyone's famillar with the moves, and there's a small cue used to let the other dances know you're about to change to something else. We "yip" but sometimes it's something tiny like a small move of the head.

I love our drumming improv....mostly because how we do it, everyone gets a solo...and I get to show off and do floor work. lol

That's why I dance fusion mostly. Nice wide group to pull moves from. Variety is the spice of life.

I've actually done a complete improv solo to a song i'd never heard before. It wasn't at a huge show, but it was a paid performance and the girl who was supposed to do it (in our troupe) backed out, so i got volunteered cause i'm kind of like the prodigy (troupe's word, not mine, i think i suck) so i was kinda outta luck on that one, but it wasn't half bad, i used my arms a lot, and lots of walking and snakey moves to cover the fact that i didn't know what i was doing lol. And just as a side note, drummers are evil lol. Power hungry little buggers, at least ours is

In my intro to bellydance class tonight we did an overview of ATS... Goodness gracious you ladies are skilled! I had a hard time keeping up. X_x It's a lovely style though.