Welcome to Mirror Dialect: A systematic approach to training your dance style equally on both sides, left and right. This project was born out of the desire to avoid injury, rebuild strength after injury, and expand the dance experience for group improvisational style dancers, first within the context of FCBD® style dance and then for any dancer looking to double their vocabulary by training everything in pure mirror image.
What Do You Mean, Mirror Image?
“Canonical” or original FatChanceBellyDance® Style presents a dance angle on stage so that the dancers’ right hips are closer to the audience (down stage) and their left hips are further from the audience (up stage). Steps start with the right foot on the count-of-1 in the music. And many moves have recognizable left versus right identifying sections. When dancers face one another, they each dance in their own canonical direction or posture, which means they are not mirroring one another.
“Mirror Image” is exactly that: As if you filmed the performance in a mirror. The dance angle is flipped, the feet now step the left foot on the one, and all the moves are flipped in their orientation.
How Can I Avoid Being Confused?
Here’s the great thing about training with Mirror Dialect: It’s no longer about Right or Left. The key to practicing either “in the mirror / not in the mirror” is learning to think about “Audience focused / Away from Audience” or “Leading foot / Following foot” and other analysis based on the core content of the moves, not the actual words of “left or right.” This improves the core understanding of both the canonical and the mirror image versions of any move.