We typically don’t think of arm and hand moves as layering, but when you think of it, that’s precisely what it is. You have to do your intricate repertoire of belly dance moves and do something creative and beautiful with your hands and arms at the same time. That’s the big challenge. So: any arms instructional should look not just at pathways and poses, but show you how to combine them with the other moves.

In her DVD, Aziza does try to do just that – work at your muscle memory. Has she done a brilliant job? No, I wouldn’t say so. But is her DVD worth working with? Yes, I definitely thought so.

Aziza starts with a welcome and advice and goes straight into a gentle short warm up. Although the warm up doesn’t have a lot of arm moves, that’s really okay because the drills that follow ease into exercises.

The drills involve two sequences that take you through various positions. One of these is balletic and the other oriental. But instead of just standing there and going through the positions, Aziza has you doing hip pushes and then circles and finally staggered hip pushes – side center side center. This is a useful method because you obviously start to learn how to multi-task, a skill without which you may as well forget about belly dancing. The drills also involve lots of wrist isolations and hand undulations. And Lotus hands. I was happy to find I already knew Lotus hands from god knows where, and do just fine with wrist isolations to begin with. But the multi-tasking drills were a challenge.

Now, oddly enough, we move on to a set of two foot patterns. That’s just another way of saying combination, really. In this section, Aziza first teaches the footwork and then repeats for practice several times, now adding the arms. There’s no discussion of the arm moves here. All I can is that her arm work here is natural, has variety within a move, and is easy enough. It’s useful to do this if you’re just learning arm work because again, it means doing a complex foot pattern, hip moves, and using your arms. But this is what you’ll get with most combinations taught in any case. Unless the instructor is keeping her arm movement to a static minimum for some reason, any combination will involve similar foot, hips and arm work. In fact, I’d say that my arm anxiety has mostly reduced from working with lots of combinations and choreographies. So all in all I’m a little baffled by this conceptualization.

Aziza’s next big teaching segment involves poses. Not static ones, but poses within combinations. Now this one makes more sense because it involves much more intense arm work. There’s no time, in fact, when they’re just held still at the sides. This section reminds me of Sarah Skinner’s video, Opulent Motion, where she takes you through shorter but more of these moving poses.  I haven’t got to this segment of the video yet, but it looks as if it’ll be good to work with.

The combinations get a little more difficult, though there are only three short ones in all. They’re smooth and involve transition smoothly and repeating them a lot should very much help a learning dancer be less inhibited and stuck with her arm work. Aziza gives you some tips on breathing during transitions that are helpful. Rushing it really ruins arm work.

All too quickly you move into a cool down which echoes the warm up.

Aziza is feminine, sweet and likeable on video. She’s entirely comfortable doing what she’s doing and it shows. She constantly tells you to “be amazed” to bring some emotion into your moves. While this is nice, I think that arm work can be very eloquent and some tips on how to bring in richer emotion into it would have been appropriate.

At the end of all the instruction, Aziza weaves the combinations and poses and everything together into a whole dance. This is beautifully done and when you’ve worked with the instruction enough, you can dance along and pick up many more arm moves and nuances.

The special section on this DVD, for a change, has lots of interesting stuff. A performance, an old performance, a set of beautiful photos of Aziza that make you want to see many more, and an interview with Aziza. She has a beautiful smile.

The set or studio for this video is lovely and looks like a palace.

So, all said and done, this video would, I think, do two important things:  Make you use your arms naturally and uninhibitedly, and it will help you multi-task to do arm work while doing other moves, including complex footwork. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first choice for beginners who could consider some of the others including Aruna’s Dancer’s Arms, Fahteim’s Beautiful Arms and Hands or just stick with some of the videos that include arm work in addition to other stuff. It’s more suited to advanced beginners and intermediate dancers who can immediately begin working with it without worrying over how to do the basic dance moves.

The Luscious and Love Potion experience continues through one more delicious bellydance feast, Hard Candy. The preview explains it all in detail, as always. “Two candies in one wrapper”, Neon calls it. Fitness and bellydance. The music is particularly lovely and sounds quite inseparable from the dancing. I totally look forward to it.

Thanks to Joy for this new DVD alert. I have this piece of music! It’s an interesting piece and I think at one time it was a free download from Amazon.

What do you guys think: does it look promising?

Another advanced tribal fusion video, this one looks like the next step on from Anasma’s 2-dicc set. I’m not likely to be able to do any of it – I haven’t even worked on any of the combos from the beginner tribal videos, for that matter. But I do like looking at them and when possible, working with the isolations.

Rubylooks beautiful as she dances, and she also looks like she knows what she’s talking about. I’m not a hundred percent sure I can manage a lot of floorwork, but I like the look of her approach and conditioning.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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”.