Belly dancing - particularly suited to Aspies?

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When I was a child, I was sent to the obligatory childhood ballet lessons.
Foot positions, hand positions, head positions. Super, smashing, great.

Then expect me to do them together, and watch me become a tangled mess.


Anyhow, fast forward a couple of decades, and I've started belly dancing lessons. They're taught by someone who trained in ballet, and breaks down the muscle isolations. So I'm just learning how to control individual muscles. It's great.

Do you think that things like this, where they teach you one thing at a time, rather than just doing it (dancing, martial art katas, etc) and expecting you to follow, is particularly suited to aspies?

It may be the teacher and not the particular activity. I took ballet many years ago. I am working towards a black belt in Krav Maga now. They are worlds apart in methods and aesthetic, but each has it's own attraction.

I think its funny that this is mentioned, because I can do belly dancing even while sitting and I never learned it, I can do it since for ever. I can do the same thing with my tongue, and its seldom that I meet anybody else who can do it.

This is kind of strange, I guess, but I've gotten really into hula-hooping recently because I read it is one of the best ways to tone your abs. Plus, you can burn about 300 calories by hula-hooping for 30 minutes. I'm sure I look ridiculous doing it, but in the privacy of my own apartment, I don't really care.

Like belly-dancing, it requires movement of just certain, isolated muscle groups. I actually won a hula-hooping contest at work (it was part of our company's annual health fair), too, and I was suprised to learn that I'm good at it.

Slightly related observation... I'm pretty good at improvising doing the robot and the kind of electric popping type stuff, but I'm pretty sure I'd be terrible at doing choreographed routines.

I enjoy watching belly dancers, but I don't think I could ever do it.

It's really easy when it's broken down.

Stand facing forwards, feet about two inches apart.
Bend your right knee
Straighen right knee, bend your left knee.
Straighen left knee, bend your right knee.
Straighen right knee, bend your left knee.

Repeat.

Then do it in double time.

Repeat.

Then speed up the knee bending.


You're now shimmying!

And congratulations, BlueRoses!

I love belly dancing!! I've never taken lessons, but I dance around my room every night to my favorite songs to get exercise.

I also took ballet lessons when i was little. I remember falling behind the rest of the class sometimes, and once I was a step behind everyone else for an entire recital!
So I guess I did have trouble with it sometimes.

But then I did marching band in high school and actually did quite well learning the routines. (For the uninitiated, marching band can be a VERY serious thing at some schools: you need to have perfect posture, move your feet exactly right, NEVER be on the wrong foot, always be on time with the music, hold your arms up, hold your instrument correctly, memorize all of your steps for a 5-10-minute field routine, and stay in line with the people in the formation around you-all while playing music. We used to practice 5 hours a day during the summer.) I think the long hours of practice, and the way that we worked on different aspects of the routine separately (foot technique, posture, music) and learned the formations one step at a time really helped me to learn the shows.And it forced me to work as a member of a team and interact with lots of people on a consistent basis. So it was good.

But back to belly dancing-very fun

I belly dance and I love it! Never thought it could be suited to Aspies.