Flawless Floorwork is really quite a gorgeous video. From the cover to the menu, to the content – to the dancer-instructor, Ruby. A very elegant and graceful dancer, she’s a great choice as a teacher for this very challenging area of belly dance.
Strengthen first!
Floorwork is zero-tolerant of clumsiness. You have to do moves that are difficult and require a lot of strength and control and any lapses can result in your looking terrible at the very least, and getting injured at the most.
After a good long introduction and explanation of what the video program contains, Ruby goes into an all-important strength section. This is based entirely on Pilates. Unlike on other videos, it isn’t just about three ab strengthening exercises. From the breathing to the imprinting of the spine, you go through the principles that make Pilates effective and safe. The actual exercises include some of the basic favorites – the hundred, criss-cross, single and double leg stretch etc. In my opinion many more exercises could have been included = and some tougher ones, in fact. The core really does need strengthening for floorwork and it wouldn’t have been at all out of place to have a few more challenging exercises.
I also think that the preparatory section could have been about twice as long. Many yoga exercises or the usual dance conditioning routines would fit well here because you need flexibility to the max here. Of course, it’s only because I have so many other videos that I can easily just use another one and work on it before getting into Ruby’s Pilates based routine.
But thank god there isn’t an entire section on the isolations from scratch. No beginner should be doing floorwork anyway, so it’s perfectly in order to have left all that out.
It’s technique time
The Technique section, the heart of it all, is where Ruby explains how it’s done. From how to kneel and place your feet and toes, to kneeling isolations and spins and crawls to extensions, hip spins, undulations, and layouts, Ruby explains, demonstrates and practices each technique carefully with safety tips throughout. The section is broken into sub sections accessible from the menu, in case you want to work with one. There’s no skimping on the safety tips, thankfully, and wherever needed, there’s alternatives are given. These sub sections don’t include separate practice sessions but there are a few repetitions of each move. This works well, actually. You focus full time on observing, trying out, learning, taking note of precautions instead of dancing along too much and missing out on important information. All in all, I’m very impressed with how much advice Ruby gives while explaining technique.
Descents and Ascents
Often the toughest part of floorwork, ascents and descents need special attention, which is what they get on this DVD. Again, sticking to the same style as with the technique, Ruby explains different methods for each and spells out what you should be careful about. I particularly love her “Dragon Down” method of lowering to the floor, a slow graceful spiraling method that looks very elegant.
Two combinations
Giving you more than enough to work with, the two combinations are long and meaty. There’s a basic and an advanced one and they’re both full of moves that you can draw from to shorten or lengthen or make your own combinations. My only protest, as with other Cheekygirls DVDs, is that one needs drills to also have some cues and call out. A separate music only section is fine for when you’ve reached a certain level of practice, but before that, you do need voice cues as you go through a long combination. Specially so with a floorwork combo where you can’t possibly be keeping track of what’s happening on screen and must give all your attention to your form and accuracy if you’re to avoid injuring yourself.
Extras
Extras can come in all varieties and are often fairly useless. But on this DVD, you get a nice 10-minute backstage warm up. There’s also a costuming tutorial and tips on how to avoid wardrobe malfunctions. Finally of course there’s a performance by Ruby. And yes, of course it includes floorwork.
I’ll say again that I find Flawless Floorwork really well-instructed and one of CheekyGirls’ most content-rich DVDs. I’m not sure I can do any of this because of issues with my knees, but even so one can learn a lot about grace, arms and the dance in general.