Bellydancing with Fire with Leslie Rosen Candles & Palm Torches

Belly Dancing with Fire: Hand-held Candles & Palm Torches Belly Dance

Leslie Rosen’s classic Belly Dancing with Fire instructional video is now available from World Dance New York! DVD available for immediate shipment to you...or you can stream the instant video right now - !
Learn to incorporate elements of fire performance in your belly dance repertoire to add a powerful primal and archetypal flair to your work on stage and in commercial venues.

Created by the acclaimed fire performer and instructor Leslie Rosen, the program focuses on the technique of belly dance with two types of fire props: hand-held candles and hand lamps (or palm torches). While hand-held candles are perfect for indoors, commercial venues and theaters, hand lamps and palm torches work both indoors and outdoors. Hand lamps & palm torches can be turned upside-down, while candles can’t; hand lamps & palm torches use fuel, while hand-held candles are just regular or votive candles. Because of these differences, both logistics and dance technique for these fire props must differ. Leslie demonstrates and explains them all.
Leslie’s instructional program is by far the most thorough exploration of movement options for fire dancing - a uniquely generous offering from a spectacular fire dance artist.

Leslie opens the program by discussing in-depth the differences and similarities between various fire props, the different types of fuel, the fire each produces, and safety in handling them.

Leslie believes that dancing with fire props looks truly magical when a performer knows how to get the maximum visual effect out of trajectories of burning hand-held candles or fuel-based fire tools, since the eyes of the audience naturally follow the fire. Once you have a rich vocabulary of graceful arm and hand movement patterns and can draw a wide array of sophisticated trajectories with your fire tools in the air, Leslie teaches you how to combine fire prop manipulation with belly dance hip work, upper body isolations, and footwork. Her method enables you to present the full vocabulary of bellydance with every imaginable fire trajectory effortlessly, without sacrificing grace and ease of movement.

Leslie starts movement instruction by demonstrating poses that look stunning with candles or torches, since moving from pose to pose can create a perfect structure for a beginner’s fire dance. Leslie’s poses are evocative of archetypal imagery, such as Key to the Universe, Temple Dancer, or Isis.

In the Technique section, Leslie teaches arms/hands trajectories by type - straight lines, circles, figure 8s - and also suggests effective fire trajectories for different types of bellydance movement, such as undulations, shimmies, and turns. Leslie always differentiates between hand-held candles vs hand lamps / palm torches technique, and, once she establishes an arms pattern, she combines it with classic bellydance moves.

If you are a beginner fire performer, this section will build the foundation of your fire dance movement vocabulary, and if you already have experience performing with fire, you will benefit from exploring the endless variations of combining fire tool trajectories with bellydance hip work and upper body isolations.

The Practice section is a slow-to-moderate tempo dance-along where you will perform with music all the poses, steps, and arms/hand trajectories you’ve learned in the Technique section. Leslie leads 2 practice sessions: One with hand-held candles and 2. with hand lamps, so you can test differences in techniques of using candles vs fuel-based fire tools, and practice movement that is both safe and visually stunning.