CyberRaks: Costume and Poses

Fifty Ways to Look So Lovely

All dressed up and nothing to do? Digiport has the answer, fifty detailed poses, many of which could serve as illustrations for a textbook on belly dancing.

Most people, when they watch belly dancers, focus on either the naked midriff or the spectacular feats (balancing swords, candelabras, or small animals on the head, executing moves some us remember from "Limbo" contests). Karolyne, a belly dance instructor in Florida, has an introduction at her troupe's site that identifies seven characteristics of the dance form:

Custom pose built from
Digiport's Pose 34
(Belly Dancer Pose Kit).

• The dance covers little space.
• The dance emphasizes a dependence on gravity rather than attempting to escape it; it is "rooted."
• The pattern and rhythm are contained within the sphere of the body.
• Little jumping or elevation is used.
• Hand motions are important and eloquent.
• The knee is nearly always bent.
• There is an emphasis on the movement of hips, spine and shoulders; muscle isolations are an integral part of the dance.

Her list contrasts belly dance dramatically with ballet and modern dance. I would only add that the dance achieves its theatricality through the dramatic shifts from dynamism to static posing, and that the aesthetic of the dance often depends on sustained lines and patterns that may look almost like contortions when captured in a still frame — Vertical 8, in the first flip chart, below is an excellent example of this. Neither of these elements is unique to belly dancing; they both apply to ballet and modern dance as well.

A woman may be a good belly dancer although neither young nor in prime physical condition, because excellence depends on skill and subtlety rather than athleticism. A beautiful appearance adds to the aesthetic appeal, but a plain woman, even an overweight or unusually proportioned one, can be a joy to watch. Which is not to say that the dance is not physically challenging; nor to suggest that one can be a great dancer without also being in good physical condition. There are considerable physical challenges. It was no irrelevant afterthought when dance instructor Aziza Sa'id included A Woman's Book of Strength on her Amazon.com list of best resources for belly dancing. A classic belly dancing move that I once saw was executed like a magic trick. Her arms providing hypnotic distraction, the dancer made subtle adjustments with her feet so that she appeared to glide motionless across the stage. It was breathtaking.

The refinements of good belly dancing are in the movements of the feet and the posing of the hands, and Digiport has paid close attention to these elements. Each of the fifty poses includes carefully modified hands and even subtle changes to the facial expression.

To best demonstrate the quality of the poses, I've set up three flip charts, which I will call Vertical, Horizontal, and Square. They could as easily be called Standing, Prone, and Squatting; of the fifty poses, all but a half dozen fall obviously into one of these categories. To keep attention focused on the pose, I have used the same model, costume, and setup within a given group of images. I've also removed the veil and loincloth (replacing the last with a bikini bottom textured to match the costume) to avoid glaring problems with the poses of these costume elements (the Digiport poses do not adjust costumes or hair).

I have sequenced the poses to suggest some continuity, but you can look at them in any order by clicking the access numbers included as a navigational aid. The graphics are not large, but there are many of them, so be patient while each one loads for the first time, please. Access numbers are the Pose id numbers you will find in the Pose library; I will use them to discuss the poses as well, so you can look at a pose while reading about it. I have sequenced each set of poses like an animation, as much as I could. Notice how the positions flow neatly into each other as you work through them. With fifty poses to choose from, animation is almost a matter of simply 'tweening the images.

The Verticals

Roughly half of the poses are standing positions, and the other half represent kneeling or prone floorwork (my Squares and Horizontals, respectively).

	44     5   24   13     9   34   18   10     6     7   22   19   26   27   28     8   37   14   39   45   38   31   17   30     3
We Request Your Indulgence The images in the flip charts are about 20k each, so they take a while to load. The image window goes black the first time you select an image, then displays a "focusing" progressive graphic. Once they are all loaded, you can flip through them instantly. Sorry about any inconvenience.

The positions illustrate static and dynamic poses, including even one unusual but absolutely authentic jump (Pose 17).

Of the upright positions, about half have the right side advanced, about half the left. By judicious use of the Symmetry switches, you can quickly double or triple your poses. Keep in mind, of course, that you may have to switch some clothing items as well, or make adjustments to elements that look unbalanced or simply don't work after switching.

My opening illustration above, customized from Pose 34, has had the arms and legs switched symmetrically, but this required rebalancing the torso and adjusting the camera angle to get a desired effect.

The challenge with the Verticals is in the extension of the shoulder and collar. For example, 10, 19, and 30 have particularly elongated underarms on the extended arm. (The same effect can be seen in Vertical 48, below.)

A few of the leg and hip positions have unfortunate artifacts (no post work was done to the sample images), but they are not as dramatic as the hyper-extended armpits. The costume masks some of them.

Attention to detail distinguishes these excellent poses. Look, for instance, at the expression on her face in 6, 8, 37, and 39. That last, with its mixture of confidence and concentration, is wonderful. And the delicate complexity of the hand positions in 44, 14, 39, and 45, surely copied from life, is exquisite as well.

The Verticals reflect Digiport's understanding of the principles identified by Karolyne in the introduction above — affirmation of gravity, economy of space, sinuous line (the bent knees), and eloquent hands. Even the jumps and "elevations," although there are more of them proportionally than you would expect in an actual performance, are accurate and characteristic. Their disproportionate number simply reflects how difficult the individual extended poses are to reproduce realistically.

The Horizontals

The floorwork poses offer a variety of positions representing the showcase portion of many performances. The Horizontals offer some of the most dramatic tableaux. A handful of the kneeling ("Square") positions — 12, 32, 33, 35, for example — provide good transitions into and out of the Horizontals.

Poses 16 and 20 are two of the most animated and dynamic of the set, and Pose 11 has beautiful, eloquent lines in the positioning of the arms. It is a personal favorite in this respect, along with Vertical 3 and Square 23. A couple of the poses (notably 48 and to a lesser extent 40) could well serve for other modeling contexts entirely.

	49   16   20   25     2   15   42   11   21   40   46   48
We Request Your Indulgence The images in the flip charts are about 20k each, so they take a while to load. The image window goes black the first time you select an image, then displays a "focusing" progressive graphic. Once they are all loaded, you can flip through them instantly. Sorry about any inconvenience.

Conversely, Horizontals 16, 25, and 42 provide a good transitions from that prone floorwork to the kneeling positions. To see what I mean, select Pose 42 and then look at the starting Square pose below (47, at the bottom of the list if you have already changed the Square pose display). Likewise, Horizontal 25 offers an excellent transition to the Verticals, as do Square 23 and 35, below.

The Squares

The Squares are floorwork, like the Horizontals. I've divided the floorwork poses into two groups mainly so that I could bring the camera in closer to the Square ones without losing the extensions in the Horizontal poses.

	41   50     1   32   29     4   12   23   35   33   47
We Request Your Indulgence The images in the flip charts are about 20k each, so they take a while to load. The image window goes black the first time you select an image, then displays a "focusing" progressive graphic. Once they are all loaded, you can flip through them instantly. Sorry about any inconvenience.

As you look through the Squares, notice the attention to detail in the hand positions. For example, look at the slightly curled left pinkie on Pose 1, and the delicacy of the finger positions in Pose 35.

Note that in many poses, there is some "action" in the middle finger. Although the costume does not include zills (finger cymbals), the poses position the hands appropriately for them.

Zills are worn on the thumb and middle finger and played like castanets through almost the entire dance routine. The right hand in Pose 41 is one very clear example of a zill position.

Pose 23 illustrates what I meant by the role of lines and curves as part of the dance. The 'S' traceable from her left hand to her right is almost Baroquely sinuous. It captures perfectly the "wave" effect that the dancer may execute to demonstrate her control of isolations.

Many of the kneeling and even partially reclining poses have problems with the knees, of course. The costume actually disguises some of the problem, though you can see bad folds in Poses 41, 50, and 1. The kneeling positions present the most challenges, in my view, but it is the hyperextensions in the upraised arms that are the most glaringly visible (and unavoidable) problems. There are various strategies for cleaning the figure, but chances are you will end up doing post work regardless of your approach.

Oops...

In case you are counting: I left out two poses, one (36, first inset) inadvertently and the other (43, second) deliberately. I didn't discover that Pose 36 was missing until I had wiped out the setup I was using for the Verticals, so here it is. Pose 43 I left out because I can't imagine it ever being used in a belly dance routine, nor could I figure out how to integrate it into the Verticals without it looking memorably silly. It would be perfectly appropriate for a gymnastics or figure skating pose, perhaps, but here it just seems very odd.

So at the minimum, forty-nine superb poses and one oddity that you can at least mine for an extreme leg extension. One of the great things about the pose set is the wealth of details it can provide the industrious modeler. Graceful, expressive hand positions, which you can save into isolated Hand poses, likewise a handful of faces that express concentration, thoughtfulness, and confidence.

The Digiport poses are a bargain at around $20. Based on the quality, I will buy more sets from them in the coming weeks. And you don't need the VFDC costume or the texture Mappaks to use the poses effectively. In fact, my next project is to create my own authentic costume from custom textures applied to the basic Victoria Clothing Pak. And then, posing with Digiport. Wish me luck.

Buy Digiport Design's Belly Dancer Pose Kit at BBay.com.

The Rest of the Story

That's it, then: costume, textures, and poses. The whole thing will set you back around $80, now that the introductory prices have expired. Great costume, and if you have it, you need at least one texture kit to liven it up. The bargain of the set, though, is the Digiport poses. Even if you build your own costumes from scratch, at 40 cents a pose, they are must-haves for your dancer modeling toolkit.

• Victoria's Fantasy Dancer Costume
• The DAZ3D Belly Dancer Mappaks
• The DAZ3D Belly Dancer Pose Kit