I wonder if audiences ever realize just how much hard work and detailing goes into even the smallest of belly dance sequences. Well, they’d get a pretty good idea if they were to watch one of Hannan Sultan’s instructional videos, including this one.
This is dead serious belly dance class and I don’t blame Hannan’s bunch of students for looking rather tense with concentration. Hannan herself is full of funny things to say, but these girls are not easily distracted and are trying very hard to be correct. This video is very much an actual class and Hannan has no video-self-consciousness. She’s entirely at ease with what she’s doing — and it shows.
The video kicks off with a long posture lesson. These are now hygiene on most new belly dance videos, but Hannan’s is one of the most detailed. You won’t be able to help noticing almost immediately that she uses the most vivid imagery and analogies to describe what you need to do. I don’t know about you, but it made me giggle straight away. From imagining you have marshmallows between your shoulders to thinking of your body as a hot air balloon, she’s packed in some funny ideas. God help anyone who gets irritated with these because she uses this method throughout. Well, it’s one way to do it and possibly more interesting than naming all your muscles and body parts! Incidentally, when Hanan mentioned marshmallows between your vertebrae, I remembered I had a packet of the damn things and went and ate up a few.
There isn’t a warm up on this video. For the purpose of this instruction though, it’s okay-ish. Instead, we have arm exercises like slow port de bras during which you learn to be aware of your back and how it works when using your arms. You cover wavy hands (with very careful explanations including how to do it badly), hand undulations, wrist circles shoulder rolls, single and double snake arms, and more. Hannan goes though this in absolutely no hurry, with lots of reps. I like the way she goes around to check how her students are doing and corrects and explains. That really makes it feel like a real class – even though she does ask you to think you’re a washing machine at one point.
The main instruction on this video happens through a set of combinations. These combinations have footwork and poses along with belly dance moves and arm work – they’re like pieces of choreography, not just arms on top of one move. This is the basic approach she takes, and I think it’s a good one because it’s closest to how you will dance.
So with these combinations (there are just three of them), she breaks down every movement, not just the armwork. For instance, the first has a pivot turn and you see that done carefully and repeatedly. Each combination is, in fact, repeated many, many times. I lost count of how many. More than you will find on other videos. It’s like drilling. But very prettily.
What you learn is how to use arm work with a complete belly dance set of moves, right from the start. You get comfortable with footwork plus arm work. You get comfortable with all the poses through which you will transition. You learn ho to move your arms with the correct timing. You also learn coordination. The point of the exercises is not the combinations, Hannan says, the point is learning the deeper details of how your arms work during a combination.
What you do not get is a whole lot of different arm paths. I’ve always wanted a sort of encyclopedia of endless arm combos and moves – but this isn’t it.
There’s no performance here. In every sense, it’s a chunk of a real class session.
There is one big problem with buying this video. It has very little ‘replay’ value. For an abolsute beginner, it’s not bad at all and it’s probably meant for this segment. However, the number of reps will possibly be a bit boring — unless you’re actually in a class, which is after all, a different experience. For the advanced beginner or intermediate learner, it will be over in two runs of the DVD. Three short combos gone through many times. How many times would you work with that? Another annoyance is that she stops very frequently to explain something — and that’s not approrpiate for replay; it’s just okay the first time and that too just about because it breaks the flow. So that’s one thing to keep in mind if you’re considering buying this DVD.
Thanks for the review Mala,
I think I’ll skip this one, I’m one of those people who gets irritated by too many silly analogies, it was one of the things that bugged me on the Aziza’s Practice DVD. I’m sure it helps a lot of people with their visualisation, but I’m afraid I’m not one of them! For me they need to be few and far between, otherwise I end up forgetting to dance because I am so distracted.
It does sound as though it has a lot of positives, but playability is a key factor, my dvd collection has too many ‘watched once or twice’ discs in it already.
Yes, you may lose patience with this one, Ruth. I’m afraid I did. Take three combos from any choreos that use a lot of arms. Put on some neutral music and drill them 50 times each, paying very special attention to the posture through each component of every move. The direction of your neck, the lift of the upper body etc etc. Basically, get it picture-perfect. And that’s what she’s taught. You drill them so much you get an awareness of how your arm-back-shoulders move. However, I must say, the focus shifts a bit from the arms to whole-body.
It’s still not the arms video of my dreams.
Her 3/4 Shimmy is said to be pretty good. I have it but haven’t got into it yet. Perhaps I’ll review that next!
I’m looking forward to working with this… frankly, although videos that are short and simple often seem like they’re not going to be replayable, I find myself reusing them more often than really long, complex ones. Sometimes it feels really good to go over the basics, sometimes it’s necessary, and sometimes doing a combo I’ve already learned helps me to focus on grace, stylization, etc.
Irina, her videos are not bad at all. They’re very repetitive, but sometimes that’s rather nice. You focus on one thing and get a lot of it nicely in place. In fact, I think I’ll work with it myself. I’ve been off dance too much and this will do me fine. I did some Luscious today but it’s among the videos I’ve done too often so I need to move on and rediscover my dancing. It’s sort of there, but creaking. I can now feel the impact of moves on my hip joints, for example. Scary.