It’s been almost a year since this video was released. In my mind, it will always be the very first instructional to focus exclusively on improvisation. When she announced its release, dancer and teacher Nadira Jamal said she thought this was the “year of improvisation”. She was probably right because the year saw many videos that opened up the secrets of how it is belly dancers just dance spontaneously to any music. Two that come to mind are Ranya Renee’s Baladi set and Sarah Skinner’s (to a lesser extent) Opulent Motion.

I had reviewed Nadira’s video in December last year and am echoing that review here, in preparation for a review of a similar video, Combinography, led by Bahaia.

Belly dancing is essentially an improvised dance. Certainly you have choreographies, and wonderful ones at that, but what is most remarkable about the dance is that the dancer can come up with skillful moves entirely spontaneously. And she matches the music perfectly while doing so! That’s why anyone who’s interested enough in this dance wants to be able to interpret the music and really really dance to it with self-expression, emotion and enjoyment. But how on earth do you teach creativity? It’s a tough one; which is why most belly dance videos focus wholly on muscle work and combinations and choreographies – but they’re at a loss how to figure out teaching improvisation. Some teachers say it can’t be taught whatsoever and tell the learner to “just do it” or “listen to the music!”

Until now. Nadira Jamal’s video, the first on this subject, actually does tackle the challenging area of improvisation. In this first of a three-DVD series, Nadira focuses on Movement Recall, which is what gives most people “dancer’s block”.

This video begins with an orientation to improvisation and what the video series will bring. I like that a warm up has been included here because you don’t have to stop and turn to another activity. The warm up is adequate for the activity on the video.
After you physically warm up, it’s time to get the creative side of you going with a session of “noodling” or playing with movement. Noodling is a nice fun concept meant to loosen you up and disinhibit you. The exercises Nadira puts you through while noodling make you turn off your inner critic and have fun with movements. Nadira explains the concept in detail, gives its rationale and logic, and demos how she would do it. Then you have a whirl yourself. This isn’t just an ice breaker but also leads on to the next set of explanations and exercises.

Through a series of exploratory exercises and demos, Nadira next gets you acquainted with your own movement vocabulary and helps you identify your key moves. With each exercise on this video, you find yourself exploring your moves in different ways. The exercises stop you from over-thinking and getting stuck in complex territory. What’s really nice is that relatively early beginners can use the few belly dance movements they’ve learnt and use these exercises to start being creative. The exercises are an excellent way of getting concepts into your head because you’re doing something rather than just listening to explanations of what improvisation means, conceptually.
More exercises help you take into account timing, transitions, weight changes into your improvisation.

The next chunk of exercises is most innovative. It involves arranging your moves into lots of categories. I’m not getting into more detail on this as it would take the fun out of the video. Or sort of spoil the surprise, anyway. Broadly I’d say that instead of creating with individual movements you’re now using categories. Now you’ve moved from fooling around with the alphabets into guided chunks of improvisation! You may, like me, find yourself smiling at this point because the penny has dropped. This is probably the point where you’ll be yelling – hey! I’m doin it! And did I forget to say.. it’s fun!

But the funnest of all exercises is the final one: choreographing the song, Layla. Something I’ve always wanted to do, by the way. What Nadira does here is to give you different levels of help choreographing this song. She starts backwards – and that’s a great tip I’m going to use often – and shows you how to end the song. But moving further back along the song, she leaves chunks out for you to fill in. You work your way right to the beginning of the song. With several repetitions – there you have it! It’s really too delightful.

Through these exercises, all of which use music from the CD Bellydance for Fortune and Fame by the Mogador Band, pretty scenes fill the screen at points where you have to do stuff on your own with voice cues. The whole video has a wonderful flow and is sort of butter smooth from one end to the other.

As it weren’t a wonderful enough video already, Nadira leaves you with some thoughts on what else to do – and even more exercises on her Taktaba website. Taktaba, by the way, is thename of Nadira’s podcasts. How she’s managed to make such easy work of such a difficult subject, I totally don’t know.

Why do I talk so much! In one word – fantastic.

Thanks to Joy for this new DVD alert. I have this piece of music! It’s an interesting piece and I think at one time it was a free download from Amazon.

What do you guys think: does it look promising?

World Dance New York’s first salsa video arrived as a reminder of such how much I always will love this spicy, saucy dance. I haven’t danced salsa in a long while but seeing the three attractive dancers in their flirty dresses doing these once-familiar steps made me pull out my favorite salsa music and dance wildly – and not very well – for a bit.

Salsa Solo is a total beginner’s instructional. It takes you through the basic steps that make up the salsa dance and then a bunch of patterns or shines. You can dance the lot on your own (which is what I love about shines) or you can spice up your partner dancing by breaking away for a moment of extra style. And because salsa is full of constant footwork and arm movement, it makes a good low-impact aerobic exercise – provided you keep it up long enough.

The instruction is led by the lovely Yesenia Adame, who can do some breathtakingly athletic dancing.

That something or what? And here she is on Dancing with the Stars with Pail Barris, as the pros set the standard for the competitors.

But don’t be intimidated – that’s not what you’re going to try to learn with the DVD. In fact, it’s difficult to believe the same dancer can get down to absolute basics as she has on the video.

The warm up, always a good idea, is short and uses moves that you’ll need while dancing the salsa. In fact, this is where you’re prepped for the moves.

And you get straight into the first of the three combinations in this program. Typically, you have step-by-step, movement review, and practice with music sections to each. The first combo is all basics: front, side, back-back, cuban, right and left turns. Each step is broken down so you can see how the back-replace-forward, forward-replace-back really works. The only non basic part in this combo is when you do arm stylization for the left turn.

Now, the instruction here is clear and attractive enough. You get to see the dancers dancing from the back so that you can follow them as in class. For salsa somehow that’s particularly important. You’d get hopelessly mixed up if the instructor were only in front of you and you wouldn’t know which foot to begin with.

However, my feeling, when I think back to my time as a beginner in salsa classes, is that something more is needed to make the learner more comfortable with the rhythm and the basic step. A little more explanation of how the footwork fits into the rhythm, perhaps. It actually takes total beginners a long while to figure it out. And going by my class, some never do. I wasn’t a salsa natural either and often was told to go stand on the sidelines and clap out the rhythm. I think that novices can’t really hear the pauses in the beat and so they struggle. There’s nothing for it but to give it time and really listen to the music a lot and connect with it, but perhaps a little more time should have been spent on the basic beat here. Maybe even a longish round of the main front-back basic done to music. That way the learner can just repeat that section many times.

Another thing that needs more explanation is the Cuban motion. That’s another thing a learner struggles with. It just isn’t as natural and easy as it looks unless you’re born in salsa-land. So, while Cuban hips are briefly explained here, it’s not clear how they fit into the footwork – that too in all directions. It also isn’t clear how the torso shift fits in with both footwork and Cuban hips. It probably isn’t necessary to get into too much detail on a video for absolute beginners, but then perhaps one should either ignore that angle. If not, it needs a better breakdown.

Here’s Cuban Motion in one lesson on YouTube.

That out of the way, we go on to the second combo, which goes up in difficulty level. There are 6 or 7 moves strung together here. The basic with a tap, cumbia with a slide, a “squash the bug” foot stylization, a figure eight with arm stylization, etc. Together they look good. They’re not unchallenging so there’s no danger the learner will just look at the lot, get the basics and move on. this will take some doing. With my own salsa having gone rusty, I definitely would have to spend some time on this combo.

Combination Three gets further into proper shines territory with the cross forward walk or “swivel basic”, sliding box step, the Susie Q, a right turn that returns with a fast turn stylization, side to side taps, a body roll, and a saucy shimmy turn. Another thing that should have been explained is how the shimmy happens.This combo is done to faster music. There’s a session of dancing all the combos together, of course.

A short cooldown of inhale-exhales and reaches and a few stretches finishes off the program. Except for a brief demo of solo dancing by each of the three dancers. These are just a few seconds each. Why not a whole song?

All in all, a pleasant video and if you work with it enough to get that certain Latin look, you definitely will look great on the dance floor. This one is a women only video because of the styling. No reason why men shouldn’t do all the basics and footwork which is common to both (except for which foot to begin on) but the styling will be very different for men.

1. Instant Belly Dancer
2. Jenna’s Belly Dance Basics and Beyond
3. Shamira: Sensuous Workout I
4. Shamira: Sensuous Workout II
5. Sadie’s Complete Guide to Belly Dance
6. Belly by Sandra
7. Virginia: One on One
8. Jehan’s Sacred Bellydance
9. Hilary Thacker: Beginner’s Guide to Egyptian Belly Dance

Instant Belly Dancer
The absolute queen of beginners’ DVD, translated into many languages, uses a unique, effective system of graphic overlays on screen to teach the precise way to do a move – safely. This is a two DVD set covering every basic in the dance. The fabulously creative Neon doesn’t leave you in the lurch without actual dance moves, but gives combinations at the end of each move explanation, so that you have something to work with immediately, if you chose. Includes more material than almost any beginner’s DVD. This video set has done a lot to bring new dancers from the general public into belly dancing.
Pros Simplified anAd friendly gentle instruction, totally ingenuous in the way it ueses little moves that you can dance anywhere, at the club or at a party even before you master isolations fully.
Cons Purists complain about the style not being traditional belly dance and being too club or party oriented.
Recco Too much content for a beginner to ignore. Use it to get your precision and combine with a more traditional belly dance video if that is what you’re after. Usable by someone who wants to take the moves to the dance floor without getting deeply into the isolaitons because the graphics and explanations tend to stick visually in one’s mind and keep the moves safe.

Jenna’s Belly Dance Basics and Beyond
Encylopedic. Makes up a complete syllabus. “Beyond beginners” will also find it a great reference and move-corrector. Painstaking detailed instruction with the dancer giving it her all.
Pros Covers all basics, drills, combinations and features a choreography one can pick up from – all on one DVD. Very thorough and analytic. Leads beautifully to the next in the set “The Next Level”, also a massive resource.
Cons Totally “talky” with music and dancing only entering towards the last 25 percent.
Recco Serious dancers-to-be don’t miss out on this one but combine with something with more actual dancing and music. Should make a refreence if you’re taking classes as well.

Shamira: Sensuous Workout I
Even today, this video is unique in its selection of content and could, if marketed more, give more recent DVDs a run for their money. Shamira authoritatively leads learners trough a warm up and the most fundamental basics. But, she uses little combinations and beautiful arm workto move you through a pretty dance workout.
Pros: Dancey right from the start. You use your arms from the beginning. Enjoyable, inspiring and wonderfully cued and instructed.
Cons: None.
Recco: Anyone looking for an easy-to-do introduction to belly dancing should consider this. For more serious, comprehensive and in-depth belly dance instruction, choose something else, but even advanced dancers have tended to like this relaxing, feminine dance basics session.

Shamira: Sensuous Workout II
Independent of Workout I, this too is a DVD that would hold its own on content, instruction and ease of working. Shamira leads you through 22 little chapters, each of which takes up a belly dance basic movement. A few repetitions are included within each for practice. Three choreographies put all the moves to use. These are not performable as such because of the repetition, but they’re almost there and give the learner very real choreography learning skills.
Pros: Filled with content. Well instructed and cued basics, very nice choreographies of different types to different rhythms. You get basics, some basic rhythms, choreography learning skills, and a workout.
Cons: Leaves out the maya and some basic upper body moves. These could have easily been included.
Recco: Beginners find this video very easy and Shamira wonderful to relate to. Advanced dancers love working with this video when they want a drill or to be led through the isolations without too much hard work.

Sadie’s Complete Guide to Belly Dance
After many advanced instructionals, impressively skilled Sadie Marquardt  covers the main basics, including traveling steps. Three combinations make up the practice session.
Pros No nonsense, efficient, focused. Includes safety tips. Anticipates learner’s problems.
Cons Dancing to learning ratio sub-optimal. Too brief on some moves. Claustrophobic studio and oppressive lighting. Combinations set to an uninspiring practice track. Missing in fun.
Recco Better for those considerably serious about belly dancing. Consider combining with simpler more fun combinations practice.

Belly by Sandra
Inspiring, beautiful music, very watchable instructor This video is fun and unhurried. But it’s only half the lesson and an arbitrary selection of moves.
Pros Fantastic to watch. Relaxing and unstressful to work with. So many moves done a touch differently by Sandra. The music makes a huge difference. Sparkling picture. Nice practice moves.
Cons Deeply unfair to the learner in that it has broken the instruction into parts and there is no sign of the remainder months after release. IMassive syllabuses fit – so why make the learner wait?
Recco Would be well suited to a beginner if one knew when the rest of the lesson will be available. Sandra explains moves beautifully and uniquely. She makes you want to dance.

Jehan’s Sacred Bellydance
This two-disk approaches belly dance from a holistic point of view, making it interesting for both beginners and intermediate dancers. It’s absorbing, unhurried and involves dancing with your whole body and mind. It’s also earthy, goddessy and culturally rooted, in Jehan’s style.
Pros Encyclopedic, teaches fluidity and depth of movement, full of flavor and richness, quite unique
Cons Not quite the dance-along that gets absolute beginners up and dancing, no practice combos or choreographies to play with. Overdose of mother goddess feel.
Recco For serious to-be belly dancers, this is a great set. Even watching will show you how your whole body works in a dance move. It’s an encyclopedic reference. For “light” dancers, it may be overkill.

Virginia: One on One
Virginia is pleasant enough but a little self conscious and staccato as she instructs you through the basics of belly dance. She covers all the primary basics fairly well. She pays more attention to weight changes than most others. There are enough nuances to make the moves very much her own style. She also has a good warm up and stretch section.
Pros: Comprehensive, moves at a good pace, replete with tips on weight changes and more.
Cons: It would have been nice if some short combinations had been included.
Recco: No particular reason to either recommend or de-recommend it. Not inspiring, but will definitely do the job.

Hilary Thacker: Beginner’s Guide to Egyptian Belly Dance
Covered here only because dancers who have started out with this video may recommend it. Now too dated to stand up against more modern competition.
Pros: Completely outweighed by cons at this point.
Cons:  Dated, terrible sound quality, bad production, black costume against dark background, delivered with flat passivity and perfect lack of expression.
Recco: Forget it.

As if it weren’t bad enough that an Air India flight caught fire not so long ago, and a bunch of the top pilots went on strike not so long after and a rat made itself at home on the Maharaja’s airline, now we have the crew involved in a game of fisticuffs in the aisle? Excuse me?

This illustrious timeline probably makes aviation history, for heaven’s sake. While I fully respect the beleaguered airline’s right to go ahead and dig its own grave, I do hope it doesn’t plan on taking its hapless passengers along with it.

Who cares what the crew was scuffling about. Who cares what interpersonal dramas were bubbling under the surface. Who gives a single hoot about the crew’s behavior and sense of decorum? All I can say is thank god the auto pilot held out. If one little thing had chosen to go wrong during those ten whole minutes, they’d have all made it to the next episode of Nat Geo’s Air Crash Investigation.

There are a dozen theories of what really ails Air India and who’s to blame, but what worries me is the sneaky thought that the shameful scuffle incident could just be the symptom of an overall malaise up in our not-so-safe skies. Why is it that the crew of Flight IC884 came to be so uninhibited in their expression of conflict? Are they overworked? Underfed? Under-trained? Or just plain unhappy? What prompted this ready air rage?

What I find even more alarming is how the fact that everyone has been drawn into the who-did-what first drama. Police complaints and cries for justice are all just detracting from the one question everyone should be asking: what would happen if an emergency were to happen along right then? An air accident is usually a whole chain of events, each problem spiraling into the other and a combination of factors finally resulting in disaster. Well, to me, the whole crew slugging it out while the aircraft flies itself definitely sounds like it could be one of the events in a lethal combination. If the auto pilot were to go off, like it did for another plane in long ago aviation history, the Maharaja’s chief guest, the rat, would have to do the job.