There’s a point beyond which the use of analogies in teaching can cross the line. If the analogy is more complex than the thing they’re trying to explain, they’re obviously counterproductive. How can you imagine a fishing hook in your hip and trying to reel in a $700 pair of shoes with it? Or a dart morphing into a pencil making a shape on a paper? I forgot if the paper morphs into something. We’re all used to the “hug a beach ball” or “imagine you’re putting your shoulder blades into your hip pockets”, but it can get a bit much if you get any more complicated with asking students to imagine stuff. It’s probably just easier to say – just watch your foot and see that it’s making a brush not a circle. That’s it. We’ll manage it, I’m sure.
But now that I’ve got that out of the way, let me say that this is a pretty good DVD. In the same style and the same class as with the other Hannan Sultan DVDs I’ve reviewed, she teaches and drills a selection of smooth hip moves. This is the list of moves she takes up:
Kicking eight: A back eight with a foot brush on each side
Dropping eight: A back eight with two hip drops plus foot release
Semiha: The regular Semiha with a bit of a scoop
One-Hip eight: Dip and scoop to the back and to the front
Half eight, half circle: A combo move of back to front eight on one side and a semi circle to the back
Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot of moves – and it isn’t. On hip work videos frm others, you’ll get a whole repertoire of moves. However, what you’ll get on this video is a whole of drilling of each move. You’ll have no excuses but to do these moves really really well. Unhurried repetitions right through along with finessing advice from Hannan that go beyond the moves themselves. From foot placement to fingertips, you’ll get instruction on how to fully and correctly do the moves selected for this class.
At the end, you do the lot in a little combo. This too is drilled several times.
There are no chapters and the video starts and ends abruptly, quite like the others.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a good solid drill of these smooth moves.
Again, I’d say this isn’t a DVD you can use many many times. A few times at best. Say, three. And then maybe again much later, if you let your dancing drop for some reason. But it isn’t something you can work with everyday for a long while.
