Never underestimate Expert Village. You just never know what you’ll find there!
I was looking for something on the hagalla walk (though I do have Zahra Zuhair’s excellent basics video) and chanced upon a lovely treasure trove of instructional video clips on Expert Village.
The instructor is a Johanna Xenobia Kryntzky and she seems to very much know her stuff. She’s from Florida and is director of Hip Expressions Dance Studio. She may be fairly well-known but my belly dance world is really limited to instructional videos so I don’t know of her. Johanna has a live drummer accompanying her as she teaches. At least I think she’s alive, though I can’t be too sure. There are actually two drummers, different ones for different series.
Johanna has quite a collection of videos up on this site. And good ones too! They’re rather nice for someone who knows their belly dancing but is looking for nuancing to spice it up a bit. What may interest a lot of people is that she has many folkloric and beledi steps here. Egyptian walks, straight twists, hagalla, folkloric travel steps with hop, beledi hip push, belly pop with travel steps including triple step, shoulder drop, jewel step…. it’s quite a list, really!
The video clips are complete, but short. In the absence of much else on folkloric steps taught quickly, they’ll more than do. For me, the videos are jerky so I let them load without watching the first time around and then I replay to watch properly. This is happening on a high speed connection as well.There’s an annoying ad overlaying on each clip but you can get rid of that by clicking it shut each time. Then go to fullscreen for a better experience. If you want to download them and watch them more smoothly, use Real Player. File, Open, paste the URL, click on the prompt to download. The files are only about 6MB each.
Also explore other series from a drop-down menu on the side when you go to the main page for a series like this one. You’ll find Johanna has a lot of other series that are all worth checking out. What’s niceabout these is that there are stylizations of steps. For instance, there’s a whole series on undulation moves such as rocking undulations with turns and sunrise arms, advanced rocking undulations with switching sides, grapevine rocking undulations left-foot rocking undulations.. oh hey! There are too many to list. There are several series on folkloric and beledi steps, walks and shimmies. There’s a great series on Twists, which I have a particular problem with. This one gets into various basic twists over many video clips and then explores traveling twists, advanced traveling transitions, triangle twists, circling twists, hip drop twists, releve twists and more – over 17 video clips for this series.
There’s also a series on sensual dancing tips. In this set, Johanna does some regular moves like hip drops front-side-back but softens out the move. There’s a forward moving vertical hip circle which is quite nice. It may even be a relative of the hagalla, in fact. She squeezes in a lot of information in each of these little clips. I happen to think these are cool.
I recommend giving these a good whirl!
(Photos here are screenshots)
These videos are a veritable treasure trove of bellydance informantion. Talk about a find!!! I went to Expert Village after reading your blog and checked out Johanna’s videos and I must say they are excellent. She gets right to the point and teaches/demonstrated the moves thoroughly. She is a very good teacher and I learned more from her about the Hagalla walk than any dvd I own.
I am so glad you made me aware of these videos on Expert Village. I often study the Egyptian technique videos by by Sahira on that website but I have never taken the time to search for other bellydance instruction. (silly me!)
BTW, I also appreciate the advice on how to download the videos – I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to figure out how to do that for ages.
I could not agree more!!
)
I love the folkloric stuff I followed along right away
they re easier for me to do than most of the “polished” bellydance moves I am learning from dvd – partly thanks to your inspiration Mala!!! – and where I pretty often really suck
I did the jump with a lot of joy
)
it s great to see something good on expert village – just today I happened to become really turned off by a (personally very nice and likeable) instructor who really taught things sloppily to beginner.
I HATED her figure 8s and shimmis instructions 8-s
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=dhm0raNdF58
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhR1n5g_mI&feature=related
what you guys think????
Good to see something excellent from expert village on the other hand!
take care everybody
dina
Dina! How nice to see you here.
That instructor in the video clips is, first of all, severely annoying. She might do well to select her words before she starts filming instead of making us wait mid-eight while she searches for the right term to use to describe what she’s doing!
Everyone teaches the basic shimmy and figure eights on their videos, so I’d stay stick to those. Oh… I tend to forget that people also go to classes! I’ve never been to a bellydance class.
If you’re looking for clips though, I’m sure there’s something better on Expert Village too. This instructor’s figure eights weren’t very pretty at all and that’s sad because most people at least manage to get the basic horizontal figure eight looking really lovely.
Joy, did you succeed with downloading the videos? They really are good. I have to with these and all the different aspects she takes up for one fundamental, like the undulation. Nice that she does arms and all too!
Hello Mala
How fascinating to be in touch with my online bellydance “mentor”
Yes, that video is annoying. I held back some words to not have my first comment here be something entirely negative, but obviously you are right.
And to screw up the figure 8s and shimmies to this extent as a professional is a miracle to me 8-(
Well the folklore instructor is one treasure you found!!! i ll watch her again now I think (who needs to work? ;D)
Those are FANTASTIC, mala; thanks for sharing. And I love anything I can do in five-minute chunks.
Dina, if I’m your belly dance mentor, you’re in big trouble.
I call myself a beginner, but make myself feel better by adding an “informed” to that. Of course, I could be your beginner-bellydance-video mentor because I have so many of them!
There are quite a few more little videos in series from this Expert Village instructor you mentioned. Patricia. But she’s annoying in all of them. There’s another series by someone named Tara Nernini. Her videos unfortunately look like they’ve been filmed underwater. Very poor visibility — below what my eyes can take, anyway.
Nadira, how cool would a series from YOU have been on Expert Village! However, I’ll wait eagerly for more Taktabas and full-fledged videos.
Oh Mala, you re too modest it seems!
Judging from your reviews I KNOW you must be good
(I rmmbr the comment quite a long time ago “I can finally shimmy one shoulder at a time”? was that you?
anyways, your explanations on what has improved with which video there s for sure no need for understatement
besides I think especially this dance is so much about putting your heart into it – this is “audible” when hearing your experiences – and determined practice.
I feel my inner coward awakening just reading your stories on how you are dying for a mars bar in the middle of a 2.5 hrs drilling session
noooo, cant convince me