belly rolls, flutters, what's next?

So today in Ms. Lalwani's Dance Conditioning class in FCBD studio, the one and only Carolena Nericcio dropped in, stayed the whole class, and in between the sets, drilled us on belly rolls and flutters.

And yours truly here, being placed in the Intermediate group, experienced the Staggard position that, at two times, was led by Ms. Nericcio herself. And since it's Staggard (meaning everyone in the group (there were five people) had to go clockwise to be the lead), I got my turn to lead. AND I WAS LEADING MS. NERICCIO. Of course I failed on the first attempt. Miserably. I mean, I thought I was in a movement where we weren't dancing on the beat and I tried to match it but the transition wasn't as smooth as I had imagined. It was good in the end, though.

Like I've blogged earlier, flutters are easier to do than belly rolls. I was lucky because the day before, at ODC, Jill Parker drilled us on belly rolls. When a very nice woman (with an incredible Tribal arm tattoo) told me that my flutters were good, I thanked and replied that I learned from Tribal Basics volume 4. It did take me a year to learn it. My Oriental teacher, Ms. Miftahul Jannah of the velvetRAQS is probably the first Indonesian Oriental dancer to ever master the flutter. She learned it during a workshop with Sadie in 2009. When she attempted to teach it to us, I still couldn't understand it. With Tribal Basics volume 4 and Ms. Jannah's explanation, I put the pieces together and slowly started fluttering.

However, belly rolls are totally different. It takes serious muscle conditioning to suck in the tummy and make it roll. Sharon Kihara has killer flat abs, but when she sucks her tummy in, it's just... IN. It's as if she's creating a vacuumed plastic. If that makes sense.

When Aiza from Malaysia guest-starred in Dancewave Center's / velvetRAQS's second annual hafla "1001 Nights", she did perfect belly rolls. And she has six-pack abs.

Ms. Nericcio doesn't have washboard abs, but they're made of damn steel. Or titanium. Holy crap that woman can suck in her tummy.

And just as I thought I finally got the hang of belly rolls, Ms. Nericcio showed us how she rolled her belly from side to side.

Yeah. That should probably take me about ten years to master.

She gave us a tip, though: practise the belly rolls by doing belly rolls. You can do crunches and whatnot, but it won't enable you to ROLL your stomach (from up to down or down to up anyway).

How I wish I'd taken photos of her and the class. Then again, I might've looked like a dorky paparazzi cum stalker.

And talking about flat objects: (courtesy of ICanHasCheezburger.com)