k, I'm not a teacher, so I'll give you my newbie perspective... I suppose it is possible to imagine that your 3/4 shimmy involves your obliques as you are lifting a hip over its natural neutral line. Knee shimmies are good and I've had success with that style - one hip goes "up" at a time -- keep your knees SOFT. Glute shimmies I have heard of but are an advanced move a la Suhailia. And of course shoulder shimmies which are simply placing one shoulder forward while the other shoulder travels back. You start out very slowly and deliberately to control the motion. As you speed up on all shimmies, you must work harder to control the motion and therefore, by the laws of physics, the motion becomes smaller. howz at?

Hi Lyra,

I'm a big proponent of using many types of shimmies: originated largely by the glutes, obliques, legs, shift of weight, or held contraction (quiver). One of the many things I love about bellydance is the ability to find a way of originating a movement that works for our individual bodies and preference. There’s never really one “correct” way to approach an isolation. Being mindful, articulate, and precise about how you're originating a shimmy variation can be very beneficial and eventually give you more variety in your arsenal of shimmy dance vocabulary.

For the leg shimmy, I prefer a version where the legs are active, but instead of moving the knees from alternating soft to straight (fully or hyper extended), I keep the knees in a slightly bent to soft range. You never want to put force on your knees in a direction that they weren’t meant to bend. Feel how the quadriceps and other muscles surrounding the knee immediately tone up to help support the joint in both the soft and bent position, as opposed to fully extended. This firming of the muscles around the knee also aids in controlling the movement. You want to stay slightly relaxed in the knee joint, but also support the joint from above and below with surrounding muscles of the legs and also contain the range of motion. Think of keeping the hip sockets relaxed with ease of movement. The movement is not so much about the range of motion in the hips, but more a rhythm in the flesh of the legs, hips, booty, and belly. A little goes a long way with the leg movement. Try to keep the range between soft knee and bent knee small. Start out extremely slow and work on quality first, as opposed to speed. As you being to increase speed, remember to go only as fast as you can while maintaining control and clean, rhythmically even movement.

Good luck!!!
~Zanbaka

"she started out by having us straighten our legs to hit her hands with the backs of our knees"
that kindda blows my mind. keep them soft, not locked back, also a general rule for life, not just dancing.
like has been said, anyway that doesn't hurt you is "right" ^_^, just play with them and see what music seems to call for different kinds, and what the different muscle groups allow you to do with the rest of your body.

"should be using our obliques instead, but that was for doing the 3/4 shimmy...is 3/4 different in this way..."
3/4shimmy is different in that instead of being even all the way threw the count, there is a sortta "hold" on the 4. so "1,2,3,4" is "foot/hip, hip, hip, and" you don't think of the 4 because it is going to fast, but it happens. you are moving your hips for 3 of the 4 beats. (it might be more accurate to count it "1, e, and, a" rather than "1,2,3,4" but that's technically... and i don't understand music in a technical way.... ^_~)

Shimmy is sth. every dancer has to find her own way to. For me, my way is now to build it up gradually, not to do sth. fast of which I hope it'll get bigger. That I tried, and it does work, too, but I want to learn the shimmy my current teacher does mainly, which is very similar to the Randa-Kamel-shimmy (at least when done fast). The thing is, when you stand it's rather leg driven, but if you lie or kneel it isn't... the sole aim is to have the hip go up and down neatly and distinguishably and when you stand, you're legs have to go evenly with it. That is I'm just talking of a big hip shimmy and no twist shimmy and no earthquake shimmy The more you have the knees bent, the tougher it's on them so I myself almost have a straight leg when training. I like that shimmy because it's juicy and big and you can see it from far away (stage).

So when you want to see the shimmy the first time she does it it's at 0:25
www.youtube.com/watch