All three of Jenna’s instructional videos have been incredibly generous in content. In The Heartbeat of Bellydance she teaches you three complete drum solo choreographies, beginning with a short, easy one and building up to a long, detailed advanced one. This video, one of World Dance New York’s best releases, is probably a part of every belly dancer’s video collection. Bellydance, Basics and Beyond is a comprehensive in-depth belly dance beginners course. Jenna explains and demonstrates all the fundamental moves in very solid detail. She gives safety tips all through and moves you through a warm up, basic moves, compound moves, traveling steps, arm work, combinations and practice and more. All in all it’s a three-hour workshop. I revise my basics with Jenna every so often, correcting and polishing the basics.
The Next Level: Transitions, Turns and Layers takes up beautifully where Basics and Beyond leaves off. Unlike with many videos, there’s no doubt that is a clear step up from beginner to intermediate (for want of better terms).
Tough seven-minute warm up
I’ve seen so many warm ups on so many belly dance videos. I’ll tell you straight off that this one is different. It’s not that there are new movements, but that there are complex moves that change after just two or three repetitions. You begin with some head rolls following a figure-8 trajectory. You go on to some shoulder rolls. And that’s where easy ends. From then on you go straight to undulations, double undulations with level changes, hip twists with a layer of upper body undulations and more and more moves. I personally have a big problem with movements changing after just a repetition or two. You just hear and get the explanation and begin to try out the move and it’s time to move on to the next. But perhaps more advanced dancers will find that easy. I try to solve this problem by watching a few zillion times before working with that section.
The warm up here is made up of full fledged belly dance moves rather than stretches, yoga, or pilates exercises. Whether that’s a good thing or not, I can’t say – but it’s challenging. I tend to do different warm ups when working with this video and use the warm up like a long challenging combination. I use it for skill building.
Many many moves in a hip layering drill
Much in the style of the warm up, Jenna takes you through a series of hip moves using the flow rather than the repetition method. You will not find yourself doing the same move 20 or 30 times. Rather, you’ll go from one move to the other like a long, long combination. The “drill” aspect will have to come from doing this whole sequence many many times. The moves include mayas with twists, twists with reverse undulations, one-hip horizontal circles layered on a traveling step… ah, there’re too many to list!
How I tackled this segment is by watching it many times. Then, I went so far as to record the audio part and move it to my iPod. I listen to it in the car or during other free spells and mentally do it along. Then I actually get to the sequence for real and work with it. Only with many repetitions will one get it smoothly. Nice and challenging.
This is a very different layering drill from say, Sadie’s or Michelle’s. The whole approach is different.
Upper body layering
Rib cage circles, shoulder pushes and shimmies in different patterns, shoulder shimmies layered on chest slides, torso rotations, squares, hip circles, and on folkloric steps. This is a short short intense drill. There’s no breakdown and explanation of moves here. Remember.. this is the next level. If you need breakdowns you’ll need to go back to Basics and Beyond.
Both these drills are also a lesson in transitions as you move smoothly and quickly from one move to the other.
A bit of a turn
Explanations begin in this section as Jenna breaks down each turn. She explains each in detail with all associated body movements, footwork, arm work, weight change, etc. She goes through several turns before moving into the actual drills segment. This begins with showing you how to spot. And then, systematically, you begin working on the turns, first with the main elements and adding on more as you go along. Many of these are used in the choreographies later on the DVD. Beautiful, graceful turns. I haven’t worked with this section yet, but just watching it makes me want to.
The only thing that comes as a bit of a shock is that this too is a super short section. It’s over before you know it. Thankfully, the choreographies will use what is in the drills and you’ll get practice, but I have to admit I’d have liked much, much longer drill and turns sections.
Celebration of Rhythm
I have thoroughly enjoyed learning this choreography. Thoroughly. I worked with Jenna as systematically as she has worked to teach the 9 combinaitons that make up this choreography, set to Celebration of Rhythm from Jehan’s GoddessDance CD. It’s a saidi-like piece with the second half being quite drum solo like. I’ve loved the idea of completing it.
Jenna first demonstrates the whole choreography. Not in costume. And then we go through each combination, one at a time, with two rounds of practice with music each. Each combination has only its own practice sessions, not the previous ones in a building block format. I’m fine with focusing on one combination at a time. The teaching is at a lovely pace. Not too fast at all, and not painfully slow. And it’s completely detailed.
This choreography is quite lively and I’ve performed it (informally) to small appreciative audiences. It’s a perky, cute one.
Raks Bedeya
If you add the previous 9 combinaitons to the 27 in the second choreography, you have a staggering 36 combinations on one DVD. And remember that’s not the only thing on the video. When I compare this with a lot of other videos, specially some from IAMED, I’m amazed at the amount of content one gets for less than half the money. You can’t get more generous with combinations, really. Two whole performable incredibly-taught choreographies.
I haven’t learnt this second choreo yet but plan on getting to it pretty soon. After Jillina’s Egyptian Pop. It’s a long, long tough one. Lots of turns, nuances, detail. It’s a very pleasant choreography and one from which you’d be able to take away so much. All the transitions and turns are packed into this choreography. Get through it and it would affect the rest of your dancing, for certain.
Raks Bedeya is from Wash Ya Wash 2 and is a lovely piece with lots of variation built into it. Changes of pace and all.
This choreography moves a fraction faster and does have chunks practiced together rather than only one combo at a time, going all the way through 27.
There’s a cooldown of gentle stretches.
Performances
Jenna performs both choreographies in costume. She looks cute and if you work witht his video, I’d really recommend looking at the full choreography on each practice session. You’ll take in the nuances that kick in only during a stage performance.
What would I give it on a 5-point scale? 9.
thanks for this great review once again
The dvd is good
I don’t enjoy Jenna’s dancing nor do I enjoy her musicality
Her musicality isn’t arab enough for me…if that makes sense
I completely don’t like almost every interpretation of the music in raks bedeya
it really rubs me the wrong way
i watch the dvd for the part when she goes over turns and that’s about it
now i wish someone whose musicality i like would make a dvd chock full of good stuff like this
Uh oh… that reminds me, I must get to the turns and spins part of that DVD! I’ve only worked with the first choreography – and I did dabble with the initial drills as well.
Well, I too didn’t like Jenna’s dancing style as much as I like that of many other dancers, but I am ever so grateful for her DVDs. On her 3 DVDs – Heartbeat, Basics and Beyond, and Next Level, she’s given so much content that a video-only learner can only but say thank you! So much careful explaining…
There’s a clip somewhere here of Jenna in which she looks quite quite nice!
That clip is from a bellydance talkshow isn’t it? to a taqsim? yeah I also thought that one was good!
I love her teaching.. I must say I too do not give that much for her musical interpretation. But to be honest same holds for many American dancers, and most Russian bellydancers! Their interpretation is not good, their feeling for the music might be present in their own musical culture, but to Arab audiences many of their dances would look odd.
There is a fine Native American dancer called Leila. She wrote a very nice article on gildedserpent how when she moved to Egypt to dance she had to relearn every single movement, and most of all how to put it together for an Arab audience.
Yes Dina, from a talk show. Actually here’s the blogpost with the clip http://malabhargava.com/dance-diary/some-jenna-charm.html . I liked her here.
On dancing and interpretation and authenticity, there’s one point on which I differ. Every dancer doesn’t have to interpret things the Egyptian or Arab way. “but to Arab audiences many of their dances would look odd”. True enough, but then their audiences are not Arabs.
So for example, if I were to learn the very very Egyptian way and somehow manage to put in the exact cultural feel into my dancing and if I were then to dance here in India (presuming I was a professional dancer, which I’m not
) people won’t relate to it at all. In fact, here they’d probably like a bit of a Bollywood touch to it. Deeply Arab culture stuff just won’t connect, even if ti’s absolutely the real thing.
It’s much the same with American dancers. They may not manage to capture the Arab spirit – but why should they need to? They’re not really dancing primarily for the Arabs. Seeing the two, in fact, I find myself much much more able to relate to Americanized belly dancing.
“Every dancer doesn’t have to interpret things the Egyptian or Arab way. ”
Absolutely true!
“Seeing the two, in fact, I find myself much much more able to relate to Americanized belly dancing.”
I think that is their strength – I keep asking myself on my American produced performance dvds “hmm this is not pretty at all, is it?” and then see American or European audiences fall for it entirely. Same with Russian dancers – most of their performances are physically painful for me to watch – i HATE their way of interpreting Arab music. There again, many American dancers are completely in love with the Russian bellydancers.
It must be a matter of taste, and even if I find I say WAAY too little of what is “the real stuff” for me, there are probably tens of thousands world wide that are just happy with the way these dancers translate the music for them.
Jenna isn’t my favourite performer in terms of musical interpretation, but her technique is superb and she really is an excellent teacher. I started going through her Basics and Beyond DVD yesterday and found a wealth of information on how to fine tune every basic movement.
IMO it isn’t suitable for beginners, who might find it a bit dry and overwhelming in detail. But it is a great reference DVD for dancers who have been at it for a while and want to improve their technique, as well as teachers who want more ideas on how to explain each movement.
I also have her Next Level DVD and plan to work on that next.
Hey, I agree with you two hundred percent there! I remember when I bought a long-ago DVD from WDNY, The Heartbeat of Bellydance. It’s taught by Jenna and is quite an interesting conceptualization. she teaches three whole drum solos on that one. I actually did learn my first drum solo from that DVD. But even at that time, I was very ambivalent about her dancing. I was so new to belly dancing at that time that I didn’t really know about drum solos and was wondering where the grace and prettiness was in belly dance. It was only much later that all this fell into place.
Jenna’s Basics and Beyond is indeed too talky and dry… and yet, no one instructs quite that way on the other hundreds of videos I have. Some specialize in something, some specialize in something else. Jenna really fine tunes each move with the whole program being a big syllabus and reference. There’s also very little music on that video and it’s only much later, towards the last 1/3 of the video, that we actually get down to dancing. So anyone who wants to get down to it quickly will give right up! However, if you have other videos and use Jenna’s now and then, maybe in parts, you would end up finessing your moves and executing them with skills from the basics up. Every beginner doesn’t even want to get into that much detail…so yes, it only suits a few people who already know they really want to get into belly dancing quite deeply. I remember being quite grateful to have that video and then delighted with the next one which I worked with a bit more because it moves right into dancing. Those drills on Next Level are tough and I’m not sure I call them drills. They fly from one move to the other fast! The choreographies are not very pretty but they taught me a lot about how belly dance is arranged and done.
So yes, dry and lecture-ish, but valuable and encyclopedic!
I’m told that were she to make another DVD, it would be equally talky because that is her instruction style and it’s sort of deeply rooted.
I also hear she’s a lovely person and I found that very nice to know. Another dancer described her as a ray of sunshine!
Jenna’s Basics and Beyond sounds like a useful DVD to have – is it similar to the tutorial sections on Autumn Ward’s Beautiful Technique? I’m currently working with Autumn’s DVD and find it brilliant for refining my technique. My arms and hands look so much better now!