Hi Astrid,

Glad I was able to help. Yes, you do initiate the movement with your legs. It can be done with out putting your arms down on the ground (was going over this last night to think about how to explain it) . You can start by sitting on your knees, then carefully moving over on to your hip, so you're sitting sort of like a mermaid, then you roll your legs to the other side, your torso will slowly move as well, but it does not initiate the movement. Then you end up sitting mermaid-style again, but your knees and torso end facing the opposite direction. Then you sit back up on your knees again, and repeat the sequence. I think a good drill is to practice from sitting on your knees and smoothly getting into that mermaid-position. Then the more advanced variation of this is having your legs extending, and this case you do need to use your hands for support. But the rolling is initiated by the hips and legs, not the torso, it's just along for the ride.

These moves used to be really common 60s, 70s and early 80s. They come out of the "old-school" American Cabaret style. For whatever reason, a lot of these movements went out of fashion for a while. Rachel Brice and some of the tribal/fusion dancers have been making it more popular again. But what's funny is they're recycling these old moves, and people are all really impressed because they've never seen this before. I'm pretty familiar with them because one of my teachers, Severina, was trained by Ansuya and Anaheed who still perform "old-school" floorwork. Actually, Anaheed has a really good video Classic Cabaret Floorwork which would be helpful, or possibly Delilah's Workshop vol 3, which I think someone on the CD/DVD tribe has for sale. You could adapt some of the moves for your tray dance.

www.youtube.com/watch

Also Tanna's video Floorwork for Body Shaping might have some useful info on it. I used to have this video, but lost it. It's a cheaper alternative to the other two videos.

www.youtube.com/watch