Teaching Belly Dance: Certification by Shemiran Ibrahim's Method

"How to Teach Bellydance" a belly dance teacher certification program offered by Shemiran Ibrahim, has been around for some years now - but when I started comparing teacher training programs, I couldn't find any detailed reviews of it.

Luckily, I did meet some teachers who'd done the course, and their feedback was enough to convince me to buy the pack. Now I've received it and begun working my way through the material, I've decided to fill the void and provide my own review!

Shemiran is of Middle Eastern origin and has studied with top bellydancing instructors - and yet, I totally related to this quote, of her reaction when invited to teach at one of Sydney's best bellydance schools:

"I know how to do the movements, but how on earth do I explain them to a Beginner student?.....I went to a teacher training course [but it] did not cover the absolute basics that I was looking for i.e. a week-by-week course curriculum, how to structure the learning curve, what to teach in each class; how to break down the art of Belly Dance.... in a methodical way, and deliver it in simple and easy-to-digest terms."

She had to go through the pain of working out, through trial and error, a logical teaching system - which forms the basis of her “Belly Dancing from the Heart Method”.

Everyone has their own approach to teaching, but a methodical system is exactly what I need. Except in belly dancing, I've always worked to a syllabus - which means the exercises, and sometimes even the choreography, of every class is pre-set. In ballet it was Vaganova, then RAD. In modern jazz it was Luigi. Even in flamenco, I started with the Alianza Flamenca and I never taught outside that curriculum.

So I was a bit anxious when the next chapter started talking about “The Spirit of a Teacher” and “Awakening the Feminine”! I know some belly dance teachers are big on “expressing your Inner Goddess” through belly dancing, but for me, the joy I get from dancing has a far more prosaic explanation. So I worried, briefly, whether I'd paid for an airy-fairy New Age tract instead of a practical guide to teaching. Thankfully, that's not the case at all!

Yes, there are sections which deal with the spirituality of bellydance, but the majority of the advice is practical and useful – and the section on “Striking A Balance” had me questioning my matter-of-fact approach to teaching dance, and thinking maybe I'm missing a dimension.

At this point, I confess, I got impatient with reading and couldn't resist having a peek at the two DVD's. They contain straightforward run-throughs of a whole term of actual classes using Shemiran's method, covering the curriculum for an entire Beginners' course (which is also documented in the Manual).

My initial reaction was surprise, as Shemiran starts each class with a lecture, explaining the moves and philosophy of the class to come. Surely students would get bored with sitting and listening, when they've come expecting to dance? Then I went back to the Manual, straight to this paragraph:

“Overwhelming students with too much information too soon is an epidemic in Belly Dance classes in general. There is a fine balance between giving them what they need, and boring them.”

So clearly, Shemiran is aware of the need to retain students' interest. Again, I found Shemiran's approach challenging my preconceptions. As a student, one of my main complaints was always that most belly dance instructors don't explain enough – a void that her opening lectures neatly solve. Starting a class with a talk means you can start on time and latecomers won't miss the warm-up. You also get the detailed explanations out of the way, so the rest of the class can move faster.

At the end of each class, instead of choreography, Shemiran uses a kind of guided improvisation to coax her students into dancing freestyle - and it works! It's wonderful to see beginners improvising and laughing instead of standing like rabbits in the headlights. It's a good bonding exercise for the class too, as they dance for each other.

It's also clever because it frees up the time normally devoted to laboriously memorizing choreography – which means more time for that initial lecture, plus more drilling and practice. And it gives the students the feeling they're “really dancing” from the very first lesson.

Finally, it makes a lot of sense – after all, belly dance in its true form is an improvisational dance. Most Western belly dance schools focus almost exclusively on choreography because so much of our performing takes place in troupes – but in so doing, we're missing out on an important aspect of the art form. We're also creating a headache for those students who do aspire to having a career in belly dancing – it's much harder to break the shackles of choreography and learn to improvise later, than if you get used to it right from the start.

A large chunk of the Manual is devoted to the nitty-gritty of starting a belly dance business – things like finding a venue, insurance, how to handle enrolments, ideas for marketing flyers etc. There are also some very basic templates for business documents.

I didn't find this part of the Manual as useful, but then I'm familiar with most of it from other businesses. I can imagine this chapter of the Manual could be the most valuable of all to some teachers, who haven't the faintest idea about things like insurance, marketing, student retention etc.

Student Handouts

The student handouts are a great bonus – handing them out to students makes you, the teacher, look as though you've put careful effort into preparing material for them (whereas all you've done is print them out from the DVD!).

Music

A CD of music is provided for use with the classroom exercises.

Assessment and Certification

Certification is available (though it costs extra), and can also be done via correspondence. There aren't many opportunities for a bellydance teacher to get certification so it's a bonus, and the fact that you don't have to get to a course location or find a free week or weekend is a big advantage.

The video on the right is an example of a video assessment.

The course doesn't provide lesson plans beyond the first term Beginners' course. Shemiran does point out, though, that in the early days of your school, it probably won't be economic to run separate Beyond Beginners or Intermediate courses - so for your first few terms, you'll have new beginners in every class and will need to go over the same curriculum again, with a few additions for the existing students.

I guess the idea is that by the time you've progressed beyond that phase, you'll have developed your own teaching style and will feel more comfortable preparing your own lesson plans to suit your particular students.

My only other reservation is that I'd like to have seen more coverage in the Manual of injury risks and the importance of warm-up, cool-down, posture etc. in their prevention. Shemiran may be assuming that a trained belly dancer already knows all that - but in my experience, most of them have very little idea! If you're unaware of injury prevention as an individual dancer, it only affects you - but when you become a teacher, you're responsible for the safety of your students and it becomes critically important!

Overall I found Shemiran's belly dance teacher training course excellent value for money, because after years of being too scared to take the plunge, this course has finally given me the tools and the courage to get started – and that's priceless!

You can order the package here.