As far as I can tell it's like a dj scratch on a vertical fig 8. :) If that makes sense. It's like she starts one and does a drop reverse lift type thing, heads the other way and mixes it up again. And then she added a side bend to it, it think

I only watched it one time thru... so I may have the ordering wrong on that. But play around with you fig 8s by stoping droping or lifting, reversing direction ect with a fast choppy beat execusion

I don't know, but hope that helps. :)

Belly rolls/mayas with sharp stops/locks, and a vibrating shimmy!

Looks like maybe half of a maya followed by a hip up/down on the same side, then the other half of the maya followed by another hip up/down.... then.... something. LOL

Looks a bit like a Suheir Zaki-step to me, just a bit modified?

Looks like mayas with sharp locks to me.

Thank you all for the quick response! I can do the maya or vert 8's if that is the ONLY thing I'm doing lol! The torso movement looks like it is going in another direction, opposite the hips, so that is what I can't figure out. Maybe I am just trying to analyze this too hard....

~~~Michelle

You may want to post this on Zoe's tribe, someone could probably give you an answer there.

I just took class with Zoe at Elevation in Golden, Colorado. They look to me like a miyah with a lock down and a pop back up then a smooth follow through. I think the lock is not a straight down. The only analogy I have for the move is to imagine your hips like a paint can. You are tipping the top of the hips like you would to show someone the paint inside the can. It uses your obliques to push out at down on the hip.

She absolutely loves those pops and locks that have smooth follow through and recoil. And she tends to do a belly roll without even knowing that she is doing it sometimes. She taught us a combo in class that looked like she was doing a roll down, but it actually wasn't. She is just that muscular.
I like the combo.
Just keep practicing. Do it slooooow a few times, then speed it up, then sloooow again. That is how she teaches things, just as in Kathak dancing.

Good luck.
Trish

these look to me like "hard downs" driven by the obliques. you contract one oblique really hard (in/upwards) and that "pushes" the opposite hip down. if you add a little bit of a hip slide to it, you can get the "down" to happen out to the side a little bit -- this is like when the hip gets to the bottom part of an up-to-down vertical figure 8. once you get the power in that kind of a move, you can sneak it into a vertical 8 pattern like she has and basically add breaks to the smooth vertical 8 that we're all used to.

it looks like the first pattern is down right, down left, up-to-down vertical 8 starting right downbeat at the bottom of the right side, then left, then right

then down left, down right, up-to-down vert8 left right left

where the "down"'s here are those pushed out to the side downs.

This is one of my favorite Zoe choreographies. Looks to me like a full mia and 1/2, drop, full mia and 1/2, drop. Only put together with one side of the mia quicker and smaller than the other, and shifting weight to turn. If we are all wrong, you may want to join Zoe Dances in fancy pants tribe, and ask her yourself. :)