Here’s more of the lovely Jenna dancing to what I think of as a difficult song. I never know what to do with a long taqsim section in the beginning (I’m talking about alone in my dance room, of course, not some stage performance ) and I wouldn’t know what to do with strong [...]
Archive for October, 2008
Belly Dance Crash Course
Gosh, has it become difficult to evaluate new basics videos or what! There was a confusing number of them when I started dancing, and now there are so many more - and good ones at that. Oh hey, one or two of Michelle’s own videos compete with this one.
While you can’t review a basics [...]
Sensual belly dance
Somewhere along the line, I got a bee in the bonnet about sensuality. Actually, soon after I began belly dancing I went on a big hunt for videos that taught “slow moves”. The sensuality bug was reinforced when I happened to see a video clip of Blanca.
There are many words that come to mind [...]
Tribal Time
Things got serious when I started to figure out that my isolations still had a long way to go. They needed depth and control. And luckily, a series of new tribal fusion videos began to be released.
East Coast Tribal
With this wonderful video, I think I moved to another level. I saw with the sinuous snaky [...]
Belly friends
Shira’s Yahoo Belly Dance Video Group played a huge, huge part in my dance journey. Not only because we’d alert the group about new videos, but because of the discussions, analysis, sharing, exploring and support for everything from knee problems to weight loss. We’ve talked about many aspects of dance and dancers.
Most of all, what [...]
Belly surprise
I couldn’t believe my luck when a friend, totally in passing, mentioned his wife was going to join ballroom dancing class. I had no idea there were any ballroom classes in Delhi! In fact, was there anything other than bollywood and bhangra in the country?
Of course there was, but clueless Mala didn’t know that. Anyway, [...]
Perfect in Ten Abs
When I got this video, long ago, I was neither exercise savvy and nor did I have any other exercise videos. So I was quite delighted with it and at finding it was doable. I hate those high-velocity aerobics videos with their flat-everything bimbette instructors whooping their way through a workout. I’ve just never [...]
Jenna: The Next Level
All three of Jenna’s instructional videos have been incredibly generous in content. In The Heartbeat of Bellydance she teaches you three complete drum solo choreographies, beginning with a short, easy one and building up to a long, detailed advanced one. This video, one of World Dance New York’s best releases, is probably a part [...]
Do cats get music?
I miss my cat although it’s been thirty years since I lost her. After a recent discussion we were having on the yahoo group I found myself remembering how strangely my cat used to react to my singing. I used to sing Indian classical and used a “tanpura” which is a four-stringed instrument that gives [...]
Gypsy Caravan’s Mirage
I first heard this hypnotic piece of music on Kajira Djoumahna’s American Tribal Style videos. And I was totally spellbound. At that time, I couldn’t even get the music because music wasn’t sold downloadable online and anything shipped from Amazon took a month and a half (it still does) by which time you get disgusted. [...]