If I were to go by which DVD I’ve used the most, it would be Asharah’s Modern Tribal which was released Jan 2008. All through this year, I’ve used this comprehensive conditioning workout until it’s become second nature. I don’t need to look at the screen any more and I can even do the entire workout by memory, hearing Asharah’s instructions in my head. In fact, many times I’ve tried to switch to another workout, without much success. My body just wants to do this one. I know that although this video isn’t so talked-about as many others, many of my friends use it regularly.
If I were to go by sheer popularity, DrillsDrills Drills would also be one of the best over 2008. This video has a lot of variety and a long shelf life because you can take any part from it to use any time. In fact, it also turns out to be very flexible because of all its varied components. What it misses is the kind of cueing that would also make it possible to do from beginning to end in one smooth flow, without even having to check the screen for what’s happening. I have tended to use this program in parts – taking whatever drill chunk I feel like to add to other exercise sessions. Like everyone, I treasure my copy of “Drills x 3″ though it’s not my everyday program.
Another video that, in my opinion, fits into the best category, is Luscious. It’s plain gorgeous. Officially a beginner’s program, it’s posed to challenge for many intermediate dancers – including for me, if I can stretch my beginner status a little. Moves that we think of as basic have been threaded together very beautifully in flows and combinations that show how lovely something can look when it’s not over-danced. I often work with Luscious and have yet to tackle its mini choreography and body line section; you can learn something just from photos from that segment in fact.
Three of the videos that Sadie has brought out this year very much stand out in my mind as being among the best as well. Her Slow and Sultry, Thrillin Drillin, and Pops Locks and Shimmies are all fantastic programs. Each one of these has depth, content and gives you enough to work on for a whole lifetime. Slow and Sultry tackles a topic that has been difficult for other video instructors and does so without ignoring the whole fabric of concepts that underlie chiftetelli dancing. Thrillin Drillin and Pops Locks and Shimmies both teach the micro components of layering and give exercises that will ingrain these into the learner. I use parts of these programs often as all of it is too much to do at one go and takes time and practice to learn. The instruction format in Pops Locks is also absolutely amazing and groundbreaking.
And finally, Bellydance Rhythms shot to the top of my list, not when I got it, but when I started working with it. The many many things this instructional program teaches you is amzzing – giving a jolly good workout at the same time. For a change, it really really does. With enough in it for the beginner, the intermediate dancer and the advanced dancer who may use it to drill and teach, it’s a fantastic DVD.
Other videos that I would also definitedly consider are Killer Ziller for its simple clarity, and Improvisation Toolkit for being the first ever full-fledged video on something that many dancers claim can’t even be taught.
All in all, 2008 may have been a rotten year for many reasons, but for bellydance videos, it’s been plain wonderful.
The first thing that struck me and several other belly dance friends when we saw the excellent and detailed preview of your upcoming DVD, was that this didn’t look like it was for the absolute beginner. The movements are so finessed. Who is it really aimed at? I created “Beautiful Technique” for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how bellydance works. It’s absolutely an accessible program for someone with no prior experience, but I focus as much on concepts and methods as on movement vocabulary, so it’s also a useful tool for anyone who needs more information on how to bridge the gap between drilling and dancing. Dancers at what might be considered a more “advanced” technical level may have already worked with the vocabulary I demonstrate in the dance-along segments, but may gain insight from the theoretical information I’ve included in the tutorials. I hope that the video will also be seen by dance teachers, dance critics, and dancers and artists from other disciplines – I’ve tried to show the enormous sophistication that can be present in our art form, and I believe that “Beautiful Technique” will go a long way in advancing the wider recognition of bellydance as a serious and skilled performing arts discipline, within and beyond the realm of ethnic dance.
But Autumn, there are a ton of basics instructional videos out there today. What compelled you to make another and how do you think it’s going to be different? In addition to 50 minutes of dance-along material and two performances, “Beautiful Technique” contains two hours of step-by-step breakdowns that essentially function as a reference guide or users’ manual. I start at the absolute beginning, defining terms (like, weighted/unweighted, stage right/stage left); I walk you through essential foundation skills and concepts such as balance, alignment, and posture; then I take just a few simple isolations and explain/demonstrate how they evolve into progressively more sophisticated movements. For instance, I build a progression from a simple side-to-side tilt into a double-side-to-side, a traveling double-side-to-side, a shimmy, a hip drop, a double drop, and finally a triplet shimmy (the traveling step also known as the “3/4 shimmy.”) As reference material, “Beautiful Technique” will be especially valuable to independent learners and to teachers setting up a curriculum. My breakdowns include “troubleshooting” tips that will make it easy to spot and correct common misinterpretations; information on the way the look and feel of movements changes as one gains experience; and I’ve also included some theoretical context that I hope will give students a clearer sense of how to present and combine movements, whether in choreography or improvisation.I’m also planning to offer some supplemental materials (notes, outlines, a glossary, indexing for the very dense “technique” section) that will offer even greater value to really serious users.
Do you infuse much of your own signature style into this video? You move with so much natural flow — where does that come from? I began as a relatively traditional Oriental dancer, but I never really felt at home in the “Las Vegas” aesthetic that reflects the commercial realities of most nightclub work. So, I spent several years trying to find a better fit in folklore. Studying ethnic dance proved to be an invaluable source of enrichment, but still didn’t have the feeling of a vocation; I’ve never found a way to fully express myself through the dances of cultures which are not my own. Eventually I realized that my talents are best-suited to artistic expression outside of a traditional nightclub or pure ethnic dance context, and that if no genre existed, I would simply have to create it.
I describe my work to this end as “Artistic Bellydance.” Most of my performances happen in formal theatrical settings (where the goal is something different than creating the atmosphere of celebration that is a top priority at a party or nightclub), incorporate creative ideas, and need to stand up to repeated review on video. My “signature style” is a reflection of this context: I tightly choreograph with an eye for variety and dynamic range, and use movements that read well from a proscenium stage: large isolations; small isolations amplified with echoing arm technique; turns and traveling steps; and clean lines. I use a fair number of “tricks” (backbends, splits, spins, props), but try not to let them dominate my work; I’d like audiences to come away with a primary impression of nuance and sophistication.
I love pretty dances that are soft and sweet, but I also think theatrical work often benefits from some narrative context. In particular, I’m looking forward to the video release of “Atlantis!”; this tongue-in-cheek “one-act bellydance ballet,” is one of two performances that I contributed to the forthcoming “Fantasy Belly Dance” collection from WDNY.
My second performance on this video, “Raqs Europa,” is a sepia-tinged 1930s-style bellydance from a time and place that “wasn’t.”
Other examples of artistic work are “Rose of Damascus,”, “At the Palace of Variety,” and the “Enchantress’ featured on “Magic: Fantasy Belly Dance Instructional Series.”
You use your arms strongly and beautifully when you dance. Do you give any special guidance on that in “Beautiful Technique”? “Beautiful Technique” contains a 4.5-minute dance-along segment devoted exclusively to arms, and about 15 minutes of lecture/tutorial on basic positions and pathways. Arms are also fully integrated into all the dance-along segments.
Tell me something about the choreography. Is it a complete one without a whole lot of repetition? I am delighted to say that it is a full-fledged composition! I don’t like to arbitrarily place prefab combinations on top of music with a strong melody line. All of the dance-along segments are strongly informed by the music. The practice flow segments feature more repetition, but still have a complete integration between movement and music. The practice choreography exemplifies the ideal of Oriental dance as a visual expression of music. In terms of level, the choreography is probably (forgive the expression) “Advanced Begintermediate”; stylistically, it is very soft and very sweet. (To get a sense of the mood, check out the music: ”Azure” by Solace.) I also show the choreography as one of two costumed performances. (On the trailer, the first clip from the practice choreography performance shows up at 1:45; the “princess costume” clips are from the 2nd performance, a dance from my theatrical repertoire that I don’t teach on this video.)
What music are you using on the video?
Warmup:
“Rust Metal” (The Magic Veil/Anatolian Kanoun)
“Spellbound” (Mosavo/Serpent’s Garden)
Arms:
“Lonely Star by the Sea” (Mosavo/Serpent’s Garden)
Dance-along “flows”:
“Move your Belly” (Electric Oasis)
“Gift from Sinai” (Mohamed Ali Ensemble/Desert Passage)
“Tea in Marrakech” (Electric Oasis 2)
“Sapurey’s Mantra” (Mosavo/Serpent’s Garden)
“Early Morning” (Rimarah/Eyes of the Desert)
“Layali” (Setrak Sarkissian/Masters of Bellydance Music)
“Khamsin” (Tim Rayborn/Rihla)
Practice Choreography:
“Azure” (Solace/Iman)
Performance:
“Visitors from Mt Ararat” (Mosavo/Sensual Goddess)
I really hope you have a more advanced DVD planned very very soon? Soon, yes. Very very soon, maybe not… I am worn out! But, yes, I do have much more information to share. Despite the enormous amount of content in “Beautiful Technique,” there simply wasn’t room on the disk for everything, so a few families of movements (shoulders, upper body, vertical-plane 8s, weighted tilts) didn’t make it onto the DVD at all. I decided that I didn’t want to sacrifice any detail, and it was better to leave these topics for a [drum roll]… future release. I’ve also been asked over and over again about a video for hands and arms, and I would like a chance to focus just on this topic. (Mala falls off chair in delight)
When will Beautiful Technique be available to an eagerly waiting world!
January 27!
She’s like a ray of sunlight. The Neon we all know and love from her many, many videos, is pure warmth. No one quite relates to a learners with the gentleness and attention to detail that Neon brings to her instruction. I talked with her about two of the most fantastic instructional videos to come out this year – Luscious and Bellydance Rhythms.
I know that I loved Luscious. But what about the world at large? How well has Luscious been received?
Luscious is very well-received. I get e-mails from across the world with very generous feedback for “Luscious.” One of the aspects most commented on is that “Luscious” provides an artistic context for practicing dance movement. It is a “creative drill” that allows you to rehearse the movement and condition your body for dance while giving inspiration to your creative mind. As creative people, we all work harder and invest more effort in learning if the learning environment honors the artist in us with a beautiful, sophisticated offering that gives us an outlet and a format in which to play. “Luscious” is a dance training “toy” designed to both entertain and challenge, and to allow us to relax and just flow with it if we choose. [Read more →]
I plan to dance every day, but look back over a week to find I’ve missed out 2 or even 3 days. Sleepiness sometimes gets in the way. I unnecessarily sleep at 2 am. so naturally there are sleepy-as-hell patches during the day. if i make the mistake of getting a little horizontal, that’s it. It’s then tough to muster up the initiative to get up and plunge into a long exercise and dance routine. Sooo much easier to stay in bed and eat popcorn! [Read more →]
Perhaps there should be an etiquette school for the media. Well, someone’s got to stop them interrupting their own guest speakers!
Watching the hysterical news debates that have become the signature style of several of our television channels, I cringe with embarrassment as I find news anchors barely able to contain themselves from getting back to doing the talking the moment a guest speaker gets all of two sentences out. It doesn’t seem to matter who the guest is, how interesting or critical what he’s saying is, or whether he’s anywhere near finished or not. Can they hold on for a moment? They’ll cut off a speaker to say “I just want to bring in our other guest here…” If they’ve got time limits can they prime their speakers instead of cutting them off rudely every few minutes?
At the end of one of their famed debates, they’ll grab the stage to draw their own conclusions and pronounce God-like judgment for the nation to lap up with gratitude.
Our channels are rude to their speakers in many other ways as well. One of their gimmicks is to pick out a sentence and replay it thrice with dramatic background music. Another horrifyingly embarrassing trick is to grab a sentence out of context and put it into a montage of some kind and have us hear it ad nauseam for months.
A promotional clip I saw today showed Arnab Goswami acting like God on Judgment Day, demanding an answer from various people. The clip is engineered so that no one gets a chance to say a thing.
But Arnab Goswami met his match in Suhel Seth here. Watch them battle it out for screen space:
So… from my original Eagerly Awaited list, I now have a bunch of new videos. But am I satisfied? No, of course not. Let’s face it, I never will be.
I did get Nadira’s Jamal’s Improvisation toolkit – Movement Recall. This was one very much what I had expected. Perhaps Nadira’s descriptions were so thorough that it would have been odd to be surprised. I haven’t worked a lot with the DVD, but strangely, after watching it, I haven’t needed to. Some of the principles have just stuck in my head and although I don’t do much “noodling” or stick strictly to 3 safety moves, something about the whole idea has been guiding my improvisatin attempts. In fact, I’d say they’re no longer conscious over-planned attempts. I just sometimes get away from my strict learning and drills routines to “just dance” and it’s happening so much easier.
I got Modern Dance a few days ago. This two disk set was somehow a tiny bit disappiinting. I find the style of instruction coming in may way, for some reason. I hate it when an instructor does the “just like a real class” scenario. Unlike many people, I don’t want a class on DVD. I want personal from-her-to-me instruction on a DVD. I find Kat Worthington’s fiddling and fussing over the dancers assisting her sort of annoying and distracting. I think she didn’t need them and could show it straight with a voice over. The pacing is also not natural and comfortable. However, this is early days and I’m going to get over this and see what it feels like later. For now I want to “steal” exercises out of it to do separately. I also have to give myself time to get over the fact that this isn’t Asharah. I think, in my mind, I just want more Asharah!
Of course, I got and have been working with Bellydance Rhythms and that turned out to be more than I expected. I liked it when I first saw the ivdeo, but it’s working with it that has made me totally love it. Also, just today two people have told me that I’m losing weight by the looks of me – and that’s music to my ears! I’m going to stick to it like velcro.
I’ve also reviewed Sadie’s Pops Locks and Shimmies. I think that one was also pretty much as expected, apart from the instruction style, which I think was surprisingly amazing. Since I got the video, I’ve been checking with a friend or two and they think the video is actually much more and much better than the workshop. I haven’t got down to working with this, except for one drill. I tend to pick up a drill almost at random from here or from Sadie’s Thrillin Drillin. I find that an enjoyable way to do it. Any of these all at once can kill.
Bellydance Crash Course is one video I liked at first, but got a little disenchanted with over time. It seems to have a big chunk for beginners, a big chink for intermediates, and nothing in between. I mean, the connection between the different parts of the instruction are somehow not there. In a way you could say that the program itself has no flow. I also find some of the combinations are not really, really danceable in a choreography. For instance, the circles combo.
Now, on the top of my Eagerly Awaited list happens to be Autumn Ward’s Beautiful Technique. If there’s another dancer I totally love, that’s Autumn Ward. She is an “organic” dancer, a natural. From this preview, every movement looks beautiful. And none of it looks particularly beginner, though if she can get a beginner to do this… I’m all hers!
Here are two performances of hers I love watching:
Like the rest of the wrold, I too am waiting for Ranya Renee’s videos. First The Baladi and then Modern Oriental. Though I’m sure it’s Modern Oriental that leads to the Baladi.
I’m also waiting for Sensual Passion, the Tamlyn Dalal video I bought. I don’t quite know what to expect from it because everyone was extremely enthusiastic about it before it came – but a little more neutral after it did.
And there are still these, of course…
Combino-graphy with Bahaia
In this soon-to-be-released video, Bahaia explores similar concepts to those taken up in Nadira Jamal’s Improvisation Toolkit. How to understand your space, direction, timing, repetition, variation, sequence movment and more, She feels that students have lots of technique drills and choreography but there’s very little guidance on how to create dance. This is what she gives you in her new video. I’m looking forward to it as much as to Nadira’s videos as I’m totally sure each will bring something exciting to work with in improvisation – a struggle for so many beginning dancers. This video is from Michelle Joyce’s Cheeky Girls Productions.
1-2-3 Drum Solo with Bahaia
This video looks like a drum solos-made-easy kind of instruction, and it looks good. From the trailer it looks like one would learn a simple, confident style and moves for drum solos in general. That sounds good to me! I love drum solos and I think that audiences in India relate to them immediately. Can’t hardly wait for this one either!
1-2-3 Bellydance with Bahaia
I also look forward to this video because the trailer looks so doable and because Bahia dances so beautifully and looks like she teaches as well.
Instead of dancing, I found myself watching a python on Discovery trying to swallow a man. Now why would I want to spend myself looking at something so utterly gross!
I soon figured out what it was. I often find, when I’m halfway through a DVD, or when it gets into difficult territory, that I need a little bit of distance from it. Or some time off. Maybe my head needs to wrap around it or something; I don’t know. But whatever the reason, I find I’m looking for exercuses to not work on what I’ve started.
But just as abruptly, I found I snapped back into it and took up where I’d left off and doing better at it than when I’d stopped. So yes, Flow 1 moves are looking much better and I now know what Neon means about how working with drum combinaitons will help understand the whole dance better. I always knew how you’re supposed to mark drum accents with your own accent moves, but this understanding sharpened while working with these combinations. I also learnt a zillion other little things — too many to list. For example, I figured how you have to keep your feet real close when you’re in a diagonal doing a camel and quickly changing orientation. The closeness of the feel makes moving from one prettily pointed foot to the other look much more delicate. I liked that! [Read more →]
I think most people seem to agree that almost $13 is way too much for a video that you a) can’t go back to if you happen to lose your internet connection even for a moment b) can’t download and view whenever you want c) can’t know what will be covered in until you pay and d) won’t get anything earthshakingly unique out of. In a time when more or less $13 will get you more content than you can cope with, the pricing and restrictions aren’t fair. The Bellydance Rhythms DVD I’m working with these days costs just one dollar more. But it has 40 zippy drum solo combinaitons that are doing great things to my dancing each day. The fact that you can rewind and fast forwrd Ansuya’s online video is hardly a USP. Not when you get it for a single session.
Nope… I give it a miss. Ansuya has wonderful aspects to her dance, but there are also many I’m uncomfortable with and always have been.
I must say, the more I work with this video, the more I love it.The number of skills this program is teaching me is mind boggling.
Getting through a round or two of the shorter version (the review) of the first flow, I decided today to focus on learning the intermediate flow. First lesson. Just because the first few moves were variations of their counterparts in Flow 1, didn’t mean they could be taken forgranted. Oh hey, they were tough! Of course they were tough only because I’m aiming for clean, sharp execution. [Read more →]
