Thrillin Drillin

I know I saw it on the video, but I still haven’t understood how it’s humanly possible to have such precise and clean technique. Which is exactly what Sadie has. This brilliant dancer also has the figure to execute and show off her skill. There are few performances of hers that you can watch without having your jaw drop in awe.

Well, in this video, Sadie makes a wholehearted attempt to give you something of her method and control, showing you what and how to practice so that you can take your dance to another level. She takes up the layering and combining of movements that can make belly dancing one of the most skill-powered dances in the world.

But right at the outset, I’ll say that this is a very challenging video. It’s actually meant to span learners of all levels and in a way it does. A chunk of this video instruction takes you through the foundational movements and the first of three levels of difficulty in each of the practice drills here are meant for the beginner belly dancer to work on. This is not a fitness or weight loss video, even if you can see how incredibly slim Sadie is. This is a video for someone who’s serious about belly dancing and who wants to put in all the hard work needed to hard wire the brain and body to do complex moves seemingly instinctively. Not a fun and frilly party of a video, not an all-the-basics video either. I think of this DVD as the beginning of a journey into richly textured belly dancing.

Sadie begins her instruction with a technique section (one of two on this video) and takes up some foundational hip and pelvic moves. This is where the base moves that you will layer on or use in the layers, are taught or refreshed. But from this point on, you get into the realm of layering or teaching your brain and body to do different things at the same time. You walk with different hip move timings so that the hip and feet timings are different. This is done with the ¾ shimmy on the up and down as well. You work with these to the music in short practice sessions. But wait, the drills haven’t even begun yet!

The drills accompanying Technique 1 are in three difficulty levels – like all the six drill sets on this video. They involve layering drops and lifts on some of the foundation movements. This is the point from which the video begins to be unique. You then layer this on a walk. As the difficulty level increases, you now layer on compound movements. So, you may be layering small, precise hip lifts and drops on a circle. Next, timing variations, increases in speed, and doing moves on releve increase the difficulty level further. And if this weren’t enough, you now may add half turns to this lot. So you’re doing sharp hip drops/lifts layered on a circle while you’re on your toes, you’re varying the timing – and you’re taking a half turn.

Moving on to the second technique section, we bring the rib cage into the layering picture. Keeping your hips going with moves in autopilot, you now learn to layer rib cage moves on top of that. That could be chest lifts and drops, diagonal or circular moves. And then, impossible as it may seem, you layer all this on footwork. This chunk is really challenging. Drill set 4 combines the ¾ shimmy with complex rib cage movements such as the rib cage triangle and rib cage vertical circle. And as is the pattern with these drills, we add the on-the-toes moves, changes in timing and traveling.Sadie also takes up the “semiha” or flat-ball step slide move and layers the ¾ on that. She adds rib cage moves to that too. Finally, Drill set 6 works with hip squares. For layers, we have undulations and reverse undulations, pelvic drops and lifts – all coming together with hp squares and basic traveling around.

Threaded through the entire set of drills are short practice sessions with music.

And finally you can relax and watch a performance by Sadie – Egyptian with a Sadie twist.

If you’re a beginner and plan on buying this video, make sure this isn’t your only basics or drills video. As long as you’re working with easier ones that focus more comprehensively on the basics, you can take up this one to start teaching your brain how to do different dance movements at the same time. If you’re an intermediate dancer, think about where you are in your drills journey right now. Again, if you have a ton of videos but haven’t worked through any of the easier drill ones, you may not work with this tougher one yet. But, if you’d also like to work on some neglected hard wiring for layering and are ready to bring this instruction into your practice routine in chunks, it’s not at all a bad idea. If you’re an advanced dancer, this video will sharpen your percussiveness.

Trying to compare with all the general basic videos and tribal videos I own, I think that there’s a whole bulk of moves and exercises on Thrillin that are not on the others in any significant percentage. There may be moves of this type scattered here and there, but that would be across choreographies and drum solos. For the more basic portion of this video, there will be other videos that do the same, but as the drills get into different difficulty levels, the video gets more unique in its content.  And although I often have a quarrel with how expensive IAMED videos are, with this one, I’d say it’s value for money.

Photographs here are used with Sadie’s permission.

Comparison with Pop Lock and Shimmy
At first I thought that this one was the closest parallel. I went through Pop Lock (which I must admit I haven’t finished working with) and found the two videos are quite different. a) Pop Lock’s drills are quite tied to the choreography for the drum solo and while the drills on that video will improve your hip work hugely, they may not span all aspects. But a more advanced dancer will have to confirm that. b) These drills feature the regular shimmy a whole lot. c) Here, the drills and moves are easier and less layered/complex. d) there isn’t much traveling with the drills. Will Thrillin Drillin give you something that Pop Lock doesn’t? Yes. Will Pop Lock give you something that Thrillin Drillin doesn’t? Also yes.

Comparison with Jenna’s Next Level
Come to think of it, this video is also supposed to be a course in layering and traveling – and transitions. But it turns out the videos are really very different. The whole approach is different from beginning to end. The choreographies may take up some moves that the Thrillin drills night, but the approach and format is too different to make direct comparison easy.

Comparison with Drills x 3
I guess Thrillin has more similarities with Drills x 3 than it did with Pop Lock. Both videos are good, but again both have enough unique content on their own. Thrillin has more complex and challenging drills, plays more with timing, works with traveling for every drill, and has 3 levels of difficulty for each movement group. It builds, in other words. Thrillin does a lot of the hard wiring you need for layering. There’s no work with the regular shimmy here – only with the ¾. The moves are more percussive than smooth (like mayas). A lot of the sharp hip downs and ups are used along with chest moves. Drills x 3 also has its share of hard wiring, specially with zils which are missing here. So, the hard wiring focus is different. Drills x 3 has a bigger variety of exercises while Thrillin goes deeper and builds on a few. Again, both give you something.  Drills x 3 is more immediately doable and good on an everyday basis while Thrillin is probably the next level up and better for the intermediate and advanced dancer.

Comparison with Sadie‘s drum solo DVD
It’s with Sadie‘s drum solo video that I get the most feeling of overlap. But looking closely, I find that it’s really more a feeling. After all they’re both Sadies and they’re both doing tricky technique. The drum solo does have moves that are there on Thrillin, but that’s true just for a very few and they’re in any case not drilled.  If you’ve already worked with this drum solo successfully, you don’t need Thrillin Drillin — or any drillin probably. But if you’ve put the drum solo video away because it’s too tough, Thrillin is probably a good prelude to the drum solo. The drum solo is of course much more difficult and doesn’t involve any real drilling and has rapid-fire teaching meant for the advanced dancer.

Comparison with Leyla Najwa’s hips video
Now this no-frills video I don’t have. I have seen a bit of Leyla’s lessons online, and going by those, again they are simpler than Sadie‘s with Sadie‘s technique being “bigger” and cleaner. But I’m unable to give anything other than a fleeting impression on this one.

Comparison with others
Trying to compare with all the general basic videos and tribal videos I have, I think that there’s a whole bulk of moves and exercises on Thrillin that are not on the others in any significant percentage. They may be scattered here and there, but that would be across choreographies and drum solos perhaps. For the more basic portion of this video, there will be other videos that do the same, but as the drills get into different difficulty levels, the video gets more unique in its content. I’m not comparing with Yasmina’s Technqiues either because those are anyway not drills videos; they’re more like explanations and a bit of try out. The moves on the Techniques are more varied and wide-spanning. Technique 2 however does have some of the ¾ shimmy work here – it’s a whole ¾ shimmy video, after all and explores layering it on many moves.