::more than somewhat::

Tami took a leave of absence from her dancing and like many of us who do that from time to time, she’s not sure where to take it up from. Just taking up where you left off doesn’t always wor, and even less so for beginner or savvy beginners. Having focused so much on exercise lately, I’m almost in the same boat. The difference is I didn’t give dancing up completely and have become well clued in about how to “re-enter” and what to do.

So, I decided to put together some suggestions for Tami – and invite additions from others — and see if these can help her. And this is on the blog with her permission. She keeps thinking she’s not good enough and lets this get in the way of her learning, so this is an additional challenge. She’s wondering right now whether she should just start off with five minutes a day. And my answer to that is no.

Five minutes a day won’t help because:
1. it would take more than that time to even warm up and you can’t skip that phase if you’re rusty.
2. It would typically be unplanned and by the time she gets somewhere, she’d stop.
3. It would be so little time that nothing motivating or inspirational would happen to lead on to the next day – other than just getting it done somehow.

So, I think she should give it half an hour. Feel free to chip in, other people.

First of all, I think Tami should organize her dance space or corner. Put some pretty stuff around. Some dance wear maybe, some pretty colors she likes.

Second, she should put away the mirror. It’s tough to look good or think you look good after a long gap, so we don’t want to short circuit re-dancing with any negative thoughts of that sort.

Third, Tami should choose the music that she loves and keep it ready.

And fourth, she should make sure there are no interruptions.

When she has all this in place, it’ll be easier to sustain the session.

Now, we must have a warm up. Absolutely essential. Skipping this only means leaving yourself vulnerable to injury. And one can get injured most unexpectedly even in parts not thought to be weak. I don’t know if any of you have ever just stepped and suddenly felt a sharp pain in a toe or some other part of the foot. I have and it’s always taken me completely by surprise. I immediately rest the foot and just soften up on it completely and it recovers. But it’s scary. Unless Tami has a favorite warm up already, I’d recommend East Coast’s warm up. Not the whole thing yet: just the first two segments, stopping at the point where the Solstice Ensemble descends to the floor for seated moves. If the warm up feels inadequate and there’s the feeling of kinks or bits of pain, repeat it twice the next day. Not if there’s an injury, of course.

This much of the warm up is about 10 minutes and is enough for now.

Time to dance now. But let’s not get stuck on isolations, because that’s a long hard battle even for those who have been dancing. Leave the isolations be for now. Instead, Tami should take up some of the moves she likes a lot. She loves circles, undulations and shimmies. And that’s plenty to work withy. Circles are in fact, somewhat safer.

For the first day, just do a whole lot of circles of different types with much loved music. You have 20 minutes – cuttable to 10 or 15 if really needed. So just play with the circles you know and combine them. Slow them down and speed them up. Change level a very tiny bit. This format will be a bt like Nadira’s Toolkit – except it’s just circles. Other moves are mot banmed, but they mustn’t hijack the circle session – and must’nt be strongly percussive and sharp because you need to be in good form for those. Change leg positions, like in Drills x3.

Use the same format the next day but add undulations (very very gentle ones) to the mix of circles. The next day, introduce horizontal eights. Tami doesn’t have too many combinaitons in her muscle memory, so this is the time to get them in, really. A nice opportuity, in a way. So, what she could do is to is to pick up Luscious and Love Potion and use the “combinationlets” sprinkled all over it, sticking to the ones that are in the same category of moves. And there are plenty of these moves. Pick up not more than 3 moves or mini combinaitons to play with. Trying to do a whole segment may not work for her.

Stick with the selected combinations for a few days rather than add to them each day. This is because she hasn’t yet stuck hard to a routine. Trying too many will just make them get very lightly done but not perfected.

Somewhere after one week of sticking to it, introduce isolaitons, without getting too demanding. Give it 5 minutes. Start with the ones that are partly okay to begin with.

And now introduce shimmies. Tami is good at shimmies. She’s quite the shimmy queen, in fact. So, she could quite easily add them on to the small combinations from the two videos (selected because she particularly loves them).

Add on more combinations, gradually. And then tackle one whole segment. And so on! As she gets good at a section, she’ll feel it. And step up warm up, isolaitons, eventually getting into a full-fledged session of at least an hour every day

After that, she can get into killer exercises like the ones I do. Strengthening, cardio, conditioning, tribal isolaitons – working more witht he two videos to finish them up. She can also make the combinations bigger by combining the combinations!

And she’ll be dancing again.

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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I still haven’t managed to do massive bouts of exercise (not more than an hour, or two in separate sessions) but I’m definitely hooked on the stuff. At first, I needed to push myself to let go of the dancing to get to exercise – and now it looks like it’s the other way around! No one’s more surprised than me, because I had little room in my head for anything that wasn’t dancing. Oh well.This trait of mine is how I happened to choose the title “More than Somewhat” for my blog.

I’m so tempted to move on from the basic video (Pick Your Spot Pilates) and hook into any of the other wonderful choices around. But I’m forcing myself to be patient and not short circuit my “program”. Or injure myself silly. So, I continue with the same 25 to 30 basic pilates exercises I started out with. However, I couldn’t help also starting on a ballet conditioning video, which is totally wonderful! More on that later.

The pilates is showing results at the same surprising speed. Yesterday, I found I could do push ups. Not the girlie half-push ups on many dance videos, but full fledged military ones. And I know I couldn’t do these about a week earlier. I was, in fact, having a tough time stabiliizing the high plant position from which you begin these push ups and couldn’t really get my back as straight as I thought it should be. That could lead to pain. But after a bit, I find I can do them! How many, I don’t know beczuse I don’t really want or need more than a handful, but do them I can and I’m thrilled. As long as they’re controlled and in good form, a few will do for a bit of strength.

I notice that most exercises have become easier to do because of the increasing strength in the core. It’s actually palpable. And I’m amazed at how this strength contributes to dancing moves. Yesterday, I did a round of Bellydance Rhythms Flow One (to which I’m now saying goodbye for a few years) and I saw all sorts of subtle differences. I found, for example, that turning from one angle to the other was lightning quick. I found that doing 3-step turns didn’t topple me off balance. I also found a greater range of hip motion though I can’t figure out why on earth that should be.

I think I have mastered Flow One though and have somewhat overdone it. So I’m dropping it and not going on to the second one now. I think I’ll look at something else. The Autumn choreography, maybe. Anasma. And perhaps I’ll fix that one week segment from the Luscious workout, the Body Line.That’s before my Love Potion arrives.

Hmmm. So many choices!

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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Just as I’d promised myself, I kept up a dance holiday to focus on exercise. I didn’t manage the amount I would have wanted because of work pressures steppng up slightly, but I did manage to “change tracks” for a while to become as preoccupied with Pilates as I was with dance. Well, almost.

I have only managed to do a round of Pilates about every alternate day for between 30 to 50 minutes. But even in this short time of not-quite-enough exercise, I am amazed at the difference it makes. Now, I have not shed a whole lot of weight or anything like that. It’ll tke sensible combining with cardio or long sessions of intense belly dancing to do that, but I do see tangile differences in toning, strength and flexibility. Even more amazing is the fact that this seeps everyday activities like climbing the stairs… I can’t believe it.

I always resented the fact of having to climb the stairs two flgiths up to my apartment. Specially after work, when I step sleeepily out of the car and just want to eat soemthing and sit around like a lump of cement. I would find myself leaning on the railing a bit or becoming a bit unbalanced. But now, I climb them briskly and quite upright. In just ten days or so? Incredible.

I also find a difference in my balance. I have always had very bad balance and couldn’t even do that tree pose in yoga that everyone manages just fine. I’d just topple over – quite straightforward. But I tried various balancing poses recently (from general fitness exercises and ballet) and found there’s a new strength making it begin to happen! Possibly a strengthened core.

Today I got back to dancing by doing the East Coast warm up. I was gong to do mroe but had a visitor so stopped. Now I saw the difference the pilates made to this old favorite warm up. Hugely enhanced flexibility, for one. And a lot more precision and control. And also range of motion, which wasn’t small to begin with.

Understandably, I’m quite sold on these Pilates things! I’ve acquired a ton of fitness videos and will try to review them here. For now I’m sticing with a fairly basic but obviously effective one called Pick Your Spot: Pilates. It’s wonderful to work with and I’ll continue to use until I feel the exercises are being done very precisely and cripsly.

The best part of this whole experiment has been that I’ve felt no pain. Certainly some of the moves are tough and I hate having to rasie the neck and shoulders off the floor for exercises like the single leg stretch but that’s more because my neck hurts at that time, not because I’m getting post-exercise pain.

I highly recommend a spell of exercise familiarity for anyone who ins’t getting exercise. But especially for learner dancers. It makes a difference to everyone, including dance moves you thought you were already good at. I can do undulations in any direction any time, any number.

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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Love Potion is just a few days away to reaching me and I’m really looking forward to that. A nice lively dancey workout is totally welcome anytime  – and the wonders that Neon, Blanca and Sarah will do with such a workout makes it even more welcome.

But I must say that I’m even more excited at seeing the preview of Sarah’s Opulent Motion.

I’m struck afresh by how beautifully Sarah dances. And this video she shares some of her technique secrets with you, showing you how to nuance and accent to different types of music, how to use the emotiveness of the music to express your own feelings – and just how to look absolutely beautiful dancing. I can hardly wait.

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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When I get a new DVD, I tend to head straight for the choroegraphy and polish that off. I did that with Ranya’s Modern Egyptian with the result that I just sort of know the moves without really getting the Egyptian stylization. With Blanca’s Sensual Bellydance DVD, tackling the choreography first didn’t seem to make me lose out on the stylization – perhaps because I worked hard and long with it.

But with Autumn’s Beautiful Technique, I haven’t touched the choreography. And a good thing too. This video looks deceptively simple and is anything but. Continuing working on it, I find a lot of changes taking place with movements that I thought I had mastered. I guess no one should ever say mastered for belly dance. Never. Some of what’s happening:

My hip movements (plain drops and lifts, forward and tilt back) are getting some correction as I figure out how to use the standing weighted leg better to cushion the move of the opposite hip – as well as give it a really unweighted, isolated look.

My stances are looking better, with a particularly neat staggered stance when facing a slight diagonal. When it reaches a stage where I like looking at it in the mirror, I know I must be getting somewhere.

The arms… a lot is happening there, but I do have a problem with the barrage of instructions that fly at me in the Arms section. In my opinion, this hould have been simplified a little. Instructions on breathing mix in with arm pathway ones and well, there are just too many of them. I’ll have to watch that particular section a few zillion times to do-along. But working with the practice flows and other sections, a fair amount of difference to my arm work is happening. Very gradually, over the past few months, I’ve found my arms not hanging and flailing in panic around me, but actually moving through simple positions with proper transitions. This is making me realize just how difficult it really would be for a dancer to make an arms instruction DVD. I see that the armwork really seems to be a very natural part of the dance and would be very tricky to teach because it’ll be so individual.

For now, I’m really enjoying working with this video. I work with the practice flows and keep at them repeatedly even though I feel I’ve “got” them. From time to time, I go back to the foundation and building blocks sections to revise or fix something. Maybe today I’ll do the first few counts of the choreography – just to keep me happy.

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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This week has been “Autumn Week” for me. I haven’t had the chance to dance much, unfortunately, so I may well extend my little program to the next week as well.

Basically, I found that I’m trying too hard and sticking doggedly to the instructional programs I want to work with. None of them are about to be completed in a short period, so it just gets to be too much hard work. I make it even harder by always timing my practice sessions, making sure there’s some big chunk of conditioning work, building in some aerobic segment… etc. On top of that, I feel guilty if I don’t do some bit of yoga/pilates/stability ball work – even if it’s for a few minutes.

So, I decided to give myself a break, remember that dancing is a hobby not a profession, and get on with having a little more fun. I plan to do this by varying the videos I work with a little more. A period of whatever-I-feel-like.

So, I happened to find myself gravitating towards Autumn’s video. I did work with this a little bit when it first arrived, but I knew even then that this video would need a lot of watching before I got down to working with it. And now that I’ve begun, that idea is reinforced.

For beginner-intermediate dancers, I would really recommend getting familiar with the terms Autumn Ward uses. They’re unique to her and can be confusing because instruction fly at you thick and fast throughout this video. You can’t afford to keep stopping to figure out what she means when she says “pull in” or “take a staggered stance”.  She’s got some of these things all written out in her guide, but I don’t think I learn easily using notes, so I’d rather figure it out as we go along, on video.

Practice a ruler-straight side slide or “full shift side” with Autumn

I find that Beautiful Technique is a video you really need to take your time with. And I’m totally not rushing myself. Even if I think I know a move, I re-examine it carefully and inevitably find corrections to make.  for example, I’ve worked on really straightening out the hip slide so that it happens now without altering the overall posture and alignment one wants, without changing the lift of the arms or creating any unnecessary tilts and slouches. It’s obviously coming along because I’m enjoying looking at it in the mirror and finding it more and more “Autumn-like”.

Tags: Belly dancer interviews, Dance Diary by Mala
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When an instructional video, no matter what its subject, expects the learner to do-along, it must fulfill a bunch of criteria. At least that’s the way I see it! To put it in a nutshell, the instructor must visualize the many ways a learner could be learning with that video.

When I sift through the videos in my dance and fitness collection, I find that the ones I go back to have one thing in common: they’ve got the do-along basics in place. That would be pace, vocal cuing, music, amount of extra chat, repetitions, locus of attention, instruction consistency – and maybe a few other points that aren’t in my conscious awareness. For me, the lack of attention to do-along details often means the video will get shelved and I’ll keep thinking I must get to it one of these days because the content of the program is basically so good.

Jehan’s Ultimate Fitness immediately comes to mind. I loved the look of this video right from the beginning. It has 5 or 6 beautiful segments with moves that are both workout-friendly and danceable by themselves. It’s led by accomplished and attractive dancers who do their job well. To me, what kills it is the instructions. For the first one or two segments, the voice cues don’t exactly match what is going on in the sequence, and the necessary movements are not cued. Instead, it is assumed that you’re watching so very carefully you won’t miss every little twitch.

An intermediate or advanced dancer will figure out what’s happening. But not an early beginner – and that’s what I was when I bought that video. The result is that I keep feeling a twinge of guilt for not having worked with it, but then other videos compete for attention and it stays forgotten. Which reminds me… I totally must pull it out and work with it one of these days!

Let’s not even take up here the videos that are mostly explanation-centered and happen to have a few do-along segments. We’ll look at pure do-alongs that teach almost entirely by looking a little and then learning quite enough to practice along.

One dancer whose voice-cuing I really admire, is Shamira. I’ve long since outgrown her videos, but I do remember how very easy she makes it to learn. She has a nice, comfortable pace to her instruction, but that’s not all. Shamira has perfect timing with her cues. A second or two before you have to execute a move, she calls it out, and she does this without breaking the flow of the move you’re already doing with her. The result is a nice unbroken flow to each segment of her program. And she keeps this going whether she’s teaching a choreography or separate belly dance basic moves. In addition, she switches angles and tells you whether you’re mirroring her ot not. Because of the skillful way she cues, you don’t notice the talking and instructing separately from the stuff you see on screen or even separate from your own moving along with her.

Cueing gets even better when you have to just watch the video thoroughly a few times in the beginning, perhaps stop to learn the moves, and then you never actually need to look again, except to cross-check a detail. Some instructors get that right too! I see that on many of the WDNY videos such as Sera’s East Coast Tribal and Bellydamce Rhythms. I needed to learn Sera’s wonderful 30-minute warm up by looking at it closely a couple of times in the beginning. After that, I haven’t seen it in a long time even though I do the warm up very often – with the video. This is totally because the voice instructions include everything you need. The cues are called out naturally, exactly on time, at the right pace. So, I’m free to not look at the video and instead focus on doing the move better and better and correcting myself in the mirror. By now, I actually don’t need the mirror either. In fact, I can do the entire workout, including the right number of counts, because Sera’s voice has “stuck” in my head and gives me the right cues.

Much the same has happened with Neon’s Rhythms. That, of course, is a more tightly structured program with lots more repetitions to each move, but for all of Flow 1, I no longer need to look. In this case, the dance pattern goes exactly with the drum pattern and so the drum pattern is the cue. That makes the voice cue challenge a little less, in my opinion.

Some of the dance flows that move very quickly from one move to the next drive me nuts. Jenna’s drills, on both her Basics and Beyond and Next Level, are in that genre. I have to watch and watch and memorize to be able to do them along because by the time you watch her and imitate, she’s gone on to another move. Neon’s unique Body Shaping series from much earlier, used this format but had instructions reflected graphically on the screen. Those, and counters, are cute and slick, but they still present another problem for me – calling my attention and focus 100% to the screen.

Many intermediate learners are completely derisive about the need to be looking at your own moves in the mirror while working with a video and insist that you’ll end up getting mirror-dependent forever. I beg to totally disagree. If you can learn a move without watching how you do it, you’re lucky, but to me, a do-along video should take into account the existence of learners who do need to go beyond assuming their bodies are getting it right and not checking at all. Some otherwise great videos have been badly compromised for me because of not having taken different learning styles into account. One of them is the otherwise strong Drills Drills Drills. While its predecessor Pop, Lock and Shimmy does better, this one has isolation drills for which you absolutely must focus on the screen because the move is spelt out briefly on-screen with text. Certainly, it’s explained in a previous section, but when it’s time to do along, you have to be looking to catch the change of move. Arbitrary numbers of repetitions mean that also can’t just remember and change to the next move on your own. While separating a detailed breakdown of the move and explaining its dynamics carefully at leisure in its own section is a good idea, when you get to the practice section, chatting when you should be cuing the next move, is a problem. Chatting comfortably with extra tips and reassurances is really quite nice, but it has to be timed ever so carefully if the pace of the practice is to be kept up. I’ve often found myself listening to a good tip and saying “yeah! Quite right, that!” only to find the move we were doing changed without warning, making me go oops! I lost that… The newsly released Ballet for Belly Dancers needs you to watch watch watch, while the practice sessions have no voice cues and no “plan” on how much of what we’re going to do. There are even places where there are changes in foot position going on but the camera is focused above-waist. I am going to have a tough tough time handling this one – and I so want to work with ballet basics for belly dance. There’s a change in move every few seconds, so there’s nothing for it but to watch the screen. I may get my own positions all wrong – but oh well, that’s not important.

The do-along basics go all haywire when we’re dealing with homegrown videos. Then, the instructor is usually so focused on trying to get you comfortable, she does it by chatting endlessly and distractingly. I believe that this factor adds about 30% “flab” to the video. Joking around too much is not, contrary to belief, cool on a video because if you’re going to work with the video again and again, those jokes are going to begin to annoy you and finally drive you up the wall and down the other side. Saqra, Zhaleh and Veda are some of the instructors that take the chatting too far on their videos. So, instructors have to keep in mind that those videos are going to be used repeatedly and mange the amount of talking – and the overall pace of the instruction – accordingly.

Another odd problem happens when instructors use too many different descriptions for one movement or sequence. While it’s great to describe things in different ways during the explanation, during the practice, stick to one way of referring to the movement to avoid confusion. Anasma can be seen doing just that in her new Liquid Fusion video. She describes how to do something by taking two or three different approaches and analogies. But in the drill, the reference is limited to one.

Of course, there are learners who are intensely visual and must focus wholly on the screen right through. Dancers very much value the music-only sections of instructional videos. It’s a great idea to have such sections but there are also aural learners so just as it isn’t mirror- vs non-mirror learners, it shouldn’t about visual vs aural learners. It’s about taking into account that there will be different types of learners. By the time a learner reaches the stage of using the music-only segment of a video, learning is, more the most part, over. So, the needs of the learner from a video can change over time.

I want to end this with a strange suggestion for those making videos. Try to work along with the do-along sections with your eyes closed. If you can do most of what’s happening on screen, you’re good to go. If you find that you’ve completely lost track of what’s happening and need to open your eyes and look – think it through some more.

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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Dance and exercise hasn’t been going as well I’d have liked since I developed pain in my left heel. And once you slow down, you start to insidiously lose stamina. But today I clocked 3 hrs and 45 mins and loved every minute of it. Well, except the last 15 or so.

Funny thing is I didn’t do what I’d planned, which was trying out the new Ballet for Belly Dancers DVD, working with some chunk of Autumn Ward’s Beautiful Technique, and going a few dozen rounds of Ranya’s Modern Egyptian beginner choreography. But in the end, I enjoyed whatever I did choose to do. All of it intense stuff. [Read more →]

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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I’ve been thinking lately of how nice it would be to have a section right here in which anyone who feels up to it shares a choreography with others. It could be the explorations of a relatively inexperienced learner-dancer, or it could come from any of the brilliant professional dancers we all love. There’s the option of putting up only choreography notes, or putting up a video somewhere where we can link to it.  From a little combo to a full-fledged juicy choreography, anything goes.

I’m not sure if anyone’s already done that, but if not, it’s a thought!

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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… not because I got my gmail working, but because I received a package of World Dance videos that are nothing short of incredible. Ranya’s Baladi 2-disk set is amazingly conceptualized and has enough to do for months. Lovely stuff on taqsim, arm paths and improvisation in general. Her Modern Oriental is equally mouth watering.

Anasma’s 2-disk Bellydance Hip Hop Liquid fusion is stunning. Great warm up and conditioning program, isolations done like never before, and amazing drills. The hip hop part is equally fantastic. She manages to fuse the two genres like they were never apart.

Now the only problem is… do I continue work on Bellydance Rhythms, complete Luscious like I was doing, start properly with Autumn Ward’s video, get to the baladi and all the delightful nuances, go with the Egyptian and learn her choreographies, or do I head for the Anasma programme. Oh dear! Why do I have som many troubles in life!

For today, just looking through these DVDs has taken up my dance time. Particularly amazing job from WDNY.

Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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