Eyes of the Buddha

If you’ve wanted to spice up your tribal fusion repertoire with pretty hand moves, here’s an instructional video for you from Australia. Shameela, who apparently has Indian ancestral roots, dances and teaches a fusion style, which is a mix of tribal fusion and Indian dancing. On her very first instructional video, she teaches a complete 24-combination choreography to Solace remix, “Darban Jooth Na Boley”, which of course should be “Darpan jhoot na boley” or the mirror doesn’t lie. (The song title has been carelessly spelled to begin with.)

Eyes of the Buddha, before I get lost in details, has been created with feeling and an obvious love for the dance. Somehow, it comes through that her heart is in the right place. There’s a sincerity and gentleness you can feel.

Anyone who knows me will know that I can’t stand Bollywood (except for the occasional really good movie) and can’t handle that dancing style. I also mostly dislike Indian moves inserted into bellydancing and find it a force fit. But I’ll try not to let that bias me. And hey, fusion is fusion.

So, yes, it takes 24 whole combinations to get through this complete choreography. The tribal belly dance aspect of the dance isn’t too difficult or demanding. For comparison, it’s not as tough as Aubre’s Tribal Essence moves or as any of the tribal fusion pieces on WorldDance’s Fantasy series. There’s not that much ticking and tocking or subtle stomach work. I’d say it’s probably the same difficulty level as Sahira’s Arabian Spices.

But what could be challenging is the hand and arm work, which is also what this whole choreography is really about. The hand moves may not be difficult to execute, but unless they’re done with infinite grace, it’ll look terrible. That’s because this choreography is all hands and temple poses. Actually I’ve never seen such a hands-centric belly dance choreo before.

The intricate hand work in this dance is made up of “mudras” or hand gestures from Indian and Buddhist concepts. Every combination has one or more of them. In fact some of the combinations are named for these mudras. Oh, each combo has an exotic name. Kundalini Serpent, Flaming Lotus, Mandala Spin, and more. Shameela can’t pronounce them the way they would be in India and I had to read them to figure out what she was saying. But no matter. That doesn’t detract from the dance. Shameela teaches the combinations at a comfortable pace, showing you the hand moves close up and never omitting to show the moves from the back as well. You also see a demo of the combo and practice it with music. The teaching is fairly intuitive and you’re left in no confusion. She wastes no time and yet doesn’t sound clinical, like some instructors do.

So what you will see when you reach the video’s menu is an introduction, where you get to know the feel of the dance, a warm up with lots of the mudras and then the 24 combinations, all divided into chunks; 1 to 3, 7 to 9 etc. Once done with the teaching, you see the choreography performed my Shameela and a partner. It’s rather pretty when done by two people. There’s also a full costume performance.

Specaking for myself, I’d probably not do this choreography in full but would choose to work with individual combos and moves.  I like the hand and arm work to be more natural and spontaneous so I don’t want the entire dance to be made of these. A little less deliberate would suit me more. I also thoroughly dislike those squat-like moves in Indian dancing and the windshield wiper arm out to one and then to the other side that is also part of anything that borrows Indian classical dance moves. There’s also a move where she extends her leg back and up and grabs her ankle to lean out and reach with a hand move. That, to me, breaks the flow. But separately, I very very much like many of the combinations and can see them mixing well with other tribal fusion combos. For example, Sharon Kihara’s. But this is totally my opinion alone and I know that others who’ve bought this video really love the whole choreography. I’ll be working with individual combinations, which I find very pretty. Overall, I think this DVD counters the overly dark and Gothic overtones of tribal fusion with delicate, feminine, decorative moves.

The production quality of the video is passable. A bit dark where there are performances, but otherwise, fine. The sound quality is a little low in places too.

You can get the video on Shameela’s website indrabellydance.com.