These three categories are a simple way of dividing the lessons in the Dance of Shiva. Originally there were nine levels as taught by Andrey Lappa, the guy who taught me. I’ve made significant changes to the way I teach the dance and I wanted the structure of the dance to reflect this. Level 0 is the very basic movements of the Dance of Shiva, done with one arm at a time. That way you can focus on learning the movements themselves. There are only eight types of movement and 64 actual movements, but once we’ve learned them it is so much easier then to do Level 1 where we use both arms at the same time and level 10 where we learn patterns of movements based on these simple movements.

So why the jump (from 1 to 10?). Maybe it should be 0, 01, and 0… I wanted to emphasize how one level provides the foundation for the next level and that level then provides the foundaiton for the one beyond it. In level 0 we practice with one arm but in level 1 we practice with both. We learn the basics and then we express them. level 10 is both an expression built on level 1 but it is also a zero level in its own right. So it’s not so much level 10 as it is a level 0 and a level 1 combined.

Plus, if you take the time to learn level 0 well enough, level 1 isn’t that much harder. Likewise you could skip level 1 and go to 10 and it too wouldn’t be too difficult because you’ve learned the basics. 1 and 10 are actually two differnet ways of practicing the same thing. 1 tends to flow more while 10 tends to be more choppy. Check them out to see for yourself.