Sizzlin Torso

Even as someone learning to belly dance, I was never prepared for the level of detail Ava Fleming goes into on this instructional video. Take the posture section, for instance. She spends a whole ten minutes explaining every bit of the posture you should be in. she gives you reasons, shows you errors, and tips you off on safety. This is in a section titled Theory. She also explains diaphragm breathing. I have not seen posture covered more thoroughly on any of the videos I own.

But settle down because you’re going to be doing a lot of listening. This program has a lot of valuable information you won’t find anywhere, but the focus is more on giving you that information on having a blast. So you will be standing still and listening to Ava, and trying movements with her too, but not breaking into dance too much. And I think the focus would definitely be quite lost if the program were to be lightened with dance sessions in the middle.

Now comes a Fundamentals and Basics section in which Ava takes up the isolations we all know and love. But, she breaks them down into three levels each indicating an increasing degree of control. She explains extremely thoroughly. She tells you how the breath helps shapes your advanced torso moves. She takes up how not to dump into your lower spine or hyperextend. She shows you how to keep the shoulders relaxed without bearing down with them to keep them still. Ava takes up upper body slides, lifts and drops, outs and ins, twists, several figure eights including the torso maya, squares and circles, exploring each in three different levels and showing you how to get to the advanced level of each move. She also shows you how to work a move so that it’s only on one side of the torso. She tells you how to use your spine in these moves. Moves which are precise and clear  She shows you how to connect arm movements to the isolations explored and gives you some not-so-typical arm patterns as well. Ava says she has learnt some of these from her second instructor, Sahra Saida.

There’s a drill section next. There’s horrible faint music in the background. But the drills are good. They could have been pattered better, using a better do-along  In this case, she just calls it out as she’s doing it. Still, advanced dancers will know what to do. She adds arm patterns from the start.

Combinations follow next, starting with the corkscrew. These are not separately accessible from the menu. A second combination section, aptly called More Combinations, gives longer combinations. Lots of sinuous twisty torso material here, all of it fairly “juicy”. Slow versions of these are even more mesmerizing. There are arm patters all through. Very useful for taqsim, I should think. She does mix lower and full body moves to these combinationsa, though the focus is the torso.

Phew! Tough challenging stuff, meant for the advancing dancer. Very good content. Don’t tell me I’m becoming an IAMED fan now…?

And oh, there’s a lovely performance.