There are some videos dancers use to death. They rely on them over time practically swear by them, and recommend them passionately to others. Dancer’s Library is an attempt to list these.The list can include proven-over-time items and ones with high potential to be in this category.
A Dancer’s Library DVD should have, potentially or provenly, these:
Good structure
Comprehensive content
Long shelf life or ‘replay value’
Use across different learning levels
Dancer’s Library begins – in no particular order:
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Aziza’s Ultimate Practice Companion
In an informal too-crowded class setting, a constantly lively Aziza takes her students through a warm up and arms segment to move on to a grueling set of drills. This video could have been better produced but that doesn’t stop it from being a permanent favorite of belly dancers. The content a workshop like structure and is, years after its release, still unusual. Accessible to learners of all levels but anyone finds it tough to go through the whole lot at one go.
Instant Belly Dancer
Every belly dancer will be familiar with this vision of Neon flowing out of a teacup. The groundbreaking Instant Bellydancer, in a set of two volumes, Curves and Hipwork, still has no exact parallel in the dance DVD world. Graphic overlays and detailed instruction take the learner through all the basic moves – and then some. There are also combos and in the remake, practice sessions. Even if your style is different, this is keepable and referable for precision and technique.
The series Hard Candy joined its sister videos, Luscious and Love Potion, in my collection, a couple of weeks ago.
I love so many things about this series as a whole! First, a thorough welcome or preview tells you exactly what the instruction contains and will do for you. No false promises. Having worked with many fitness videos, I’m very grateful when an instructor takes the trouble to tell you what to focus on and what to expect rather than getting into that awful cheerleading mode that is so common.
The second thing I love is that there is a complete beginner’s guide or tutorial to belly dance basics on each of the three videos. There are subtle differences and I know that many dancers have found these tutorials great to work with, even for those who’ve been dancing a while. The tutorials are led by Neon, whose brainchild this series happens to be. Teaching absolute basics is her specialty. You can access each set of basic movements separately. There is nothing rushed about these tutorials. There’s detailed logical explanation, suggestions for replacement moves if you’re a beginner, and friendly tips delivered in Neon’s own gentle manner.
A practice flow segment adds practice basics and the combinations from the workout to music. There’s also a music-only option.
The thing I love most about this series however is that there are just hundreds of small combinations, a whole treasure trove you can dip into any time. The moves are short enough for you to drill and get into your muscle memory. And yet, there’s such a variety you can be sure you’ll use them easily when you improvise.
Luscious, my favoritest of the three because I’ve worked with it the most so far, is the easiest. It involves doing beautiful moves with the bare basics, but maintaining good form so that there is much beauty in simplicity. Love Potion steps up the footwork and gets more dancy. And finally, Hard Candy has a lot of more intermediate moves such as the Arabic hip walk, pelvic tilts layered on footwork, lots of level changes with undulations and chest circles, etc. People with knee or back problems should probably stick with the previous two, while others who want to go to the net level should not miss out on Hard Candy.
Hard Candy
In the first segment of Hard Candy, led by Elisheva, you’ll work with well-defined chest slides, pelvic tilts, hip pushes, hip downs and step touches. Anyone familiar with the previous two videos will see immediately that this involves more muscle work and is a bit tougher. It can even be a bit tiring if you’re a beginner or don’t dance very regularly. Elisheva has great range of motion and isolations show on her body perfectly. I’m personally not very fond of upper body moves, perhaps because too many chest moves won’t fit in my culture too much, but it’s quite a workout. In fact it has a more drilly feel than the counterpart first sections on the other two DVDs.
Neon leads the second segment and starts somewhat as she does in Love Potion. But again – tougher. There are arabesques with hip pushes and more footwork. You have deep lunges with chest circles on the wa up. There’s a variety of moves in this segment – too many to list, actually. Lots of accents and footwork and building on some of the moves from the first segment. You can see she’s not letting you off easy. There are also softer and sweeter moves though. The moves change much faster, so working with the flow and tutorial is highly recommended, no mater what level you’re at.
And it’s back to Elisheva for some sharp hip diamonds, and then some fast combinations that involve the hip diamond, pelvic tilts with chest ups and downs. Then there are more gooey fluid moves using undulations and pelvic circles. There are arabesques with level changes and undulations to follow. Phew. Neon is right when she says Hard Candy is both hard and sweet. This section moves really fast and speaking for myself, it will take me quite a while to keep up with it.
Sarah starts with some a fast combination of chest lifts and hip lifts with step touches. She goes on to a rich variety of sways, hip lifts and drops, figure eights and half figure eights. This segment is set to one of my favorite pieces of music, Zen Arabica. This is actually the section most reminiscent of Luscious – or it would be if it didn’t have so many moves packed into it. Perhaps it can be thought of as Luscious on steroids.
Neon’s second section begins with medium paced sharp hip work and slightly less footwork. And again, before you think you’re getting Luscious-like, you find yourself doing combinations with Arabic hip walks and alternating hip lifts and rolls.
Sarah introduces shimmies in her segment. Not from the basics up though. In fact, you do some layering of the shimmy on basic moves and combine with chest shimmies. She also does some gooey moves before going back to shimmies. Reduced footwork here as well, so that the focus is wholly on the shimmy.
The seventh segment of the workout is iled by Elisheva again and she takes you through a challenging combination of deep pelvic circles and undulations with expansive chest circles. More work with reverse undulations, pelvic circles, chest circles and eights.
The eighth segment here in which Neon goes back to some of the moves already taught. She uses a refrain which you repeat every so often. More combinations done at quite a pace.
Hard Candy is much more difficult than Luscious and Love Potion because
A greater variety of moves is used
There some layering and level changes
There are big range upper body movements
There’s faster hip work
The whole workout is faster
The setting and costumes are similar to the previous videos although they’re most luscious on the Luscious DVD. The format is similar but Hard Candy is missing the themes used in the previous ones. This is all movement. The practice flow is specially good and much needed before you attempt the workout, unless you’re advanced.
The music on Hard Candy is absolutely beautiful. Even the songs I already have and am very familiar with sound more beautiful on this video.
If you don’t have the previous videos and are just starting out, I recommend you work with Luscious first. These three videos really are in increasing order of difficulty. You could, of course, choose to work with parts of any of the three, specially if you’re otherwise taking classes and would like to pick out what you want at any given time.
A lovely series altogether, and quite topped off with Hard Candy.
I’m thinking back to when Combino-graphy was first announced, long ago. Without meaning to, I formed a set of expectations about what it should contain. What I wanted to see was instruction and ideas on how to take combinations and come up with my own variations on them – choreographing combinations. The concept of Combino-graphy, on completion, actually turns out to be broader. It also turns out to be remarkably like the Improvisation Toolkit, created by Nadira Jamal, earlier. Meanwhile, videos with lots of smaller combinations, like Luscious and Love Potion, go some way to showing me how to create variations on a theme.
A few minutes into Combino-graphy, I found myself wondering if this was a remake of Improvisation Toolkit. Further into the video, It turns out it wasn’t; but there still are many descriptions, phrases and exercise formats we saw first on Improvisation Toolkit.
Bahaia’s starts Combino-graphy with a set of tips and tricks. She tells you how to enter the stage, how to loosen up and relax – specially your face. She also explains body line, and how to prepare for transition rather than letting it take you by surprise. Bahaia also talks about how to make your dance your expressive art. These are very small sections, making up the overall Tips and Tricks segment and probably don’t need separate menu access, in my opinion. Each separate thought or piece of advice, once done with, is unlikely to be accessed again and again separately. Next, for example, is a menu item titled “WOW step”. In less than 60 seconds, Bahaia gives advices on how to use your best steps.
The Improvisation Toolkit begins with very logical and scientific and comprehensive advice on how to learn the art of improvisation. Nadira then prepares to lead you into exercises on improvisation with a longish warm up. This leads into her exercise on “noodling” which has you completely letting go and doing whatever movements you like to the music – no inhibition, no judging yourself.
Bahaia winds up her Tips and Tricks section with a sectionlet on increasing your repertoire. And here’s where the Toolkit deja vu comes back. She asks you to make a list of all the steps you know. She devides them differently from Nadira to include filler and embellishment steps. She then gets you to explore floor patterns. This is a really useful little section. So, the approach is different from Nadira’s but it does seem to use the same concepts and analysis method.
Bahaia moves on with exercises that explore intensity of movement, arm movements and poses and the feeling that powers them, and awareness in movement. The awareness exercise is an interesting one and shows you how to figure where you are at each point in the dance. I really like this one. These sections are unqiue to Combino-graphy.
Knowing a set of dance walks or traveling steps is essential to being able to improvise and pace your dance, observe your space and seeing what you can do with it. Without that, you could get quite stuck. In a sizeable section, Bahaia introduces several walks and gets you to practice with free form exercises.This too is a very useful exercise.
Meanwhile, on the Improvisaiton Toolkit Nadira continues to take the “noodling” exercises into deeper territory, from plain movement to dance movement. She also has you list all the moves you know or think of as single entities. From these you pick out three to use as safety moves and noodle (or pre-improvise, really) with them. You work with varying floor patterns, timings, level changes and other parameters, playing with the safety moves. Great exercise that all beginners should try out everyday in their dance practice. As you practice along for a good long segment, we switch between demonstrations of the concept and a quiet screen with just a picture to give ou an opportunity to try your own variations with vocal cues from Nadira. You’re cued to explore arm moves, use different stage orientations, timing, etc The exercise segments span an entire song, so the whole session is quite nice and long. On this video, we move into a section on preparing for transitions with a not-to-be-missed exercises on using your safety moves and varying timing to become comfortable with transitions – something that bothers most beginners. I must remember to come back to this section and try it out with a selection of moves.
On Combino-graphy, Bahaia goes on to explore her selection of concepts for improvisation. So, first, we play with poses. I’m afraid I didn’t like any of Bahaia’s in this section. Or the fact that they’re all similar and repeated. I’m also not sure how this exercise related to improvisation. In short, there isn’t a clear actionable. Weight transfer is taken up next with an exercise to heighten your weight awareness. Useful, but the connection to improvisation is not drawn. At least not yet. Bahaia now takes the concept of safety steps and recommends you call it a signature step, to take a more positive spin. She demonstrates with a basic arabic rocking step and adds parameters to it to vary it. You do an exercise by choosing one of your signature steps and vary it on Bahaia’s voice cues as a quiet screen goes on. It’s a rather short exercise.
Bahaia takes up how to use repetition to your advantage and how to listen for repetition in the music. There’s a great explanation of how this works in music. She also shows you the A-A-B-A or A-A-A-B type of pattern with moves and timing that you can use and how you can vary it. All of this will remind learners of the Improvisation Toolkit and the earlier Takhtaba podcasts exploring repetition and variation. You try this out with a frew exercises and variations. For some reason, this set of exercises end up becoming a little boring.
But we go on to something more interesting now combinations. Bahaia takes up rather nice combinations and applies some of the concepts taken up earlier. The first three combinations are entrance pieces. Combination Four, which I thoroughly dislike, explores floor patterns and body line. Five takes up unexpected direction change. The sixth and last is a complex combination with a variety of steps in it.
Combino-graphy now ends with two performances, one with very interesting commentary – from Secrets of the Stage 2. I have to admit to not being a fan of Bahaia’s dancing though.
Back on Toolkit, Nadira takes up the 16, 8 and 4 count variations to explore transitions further. We go through some transition drills. And then she moves on to increase the movement vocabulary. We work with the earlier list of movements and sort them into categories like smooth movements, traveling movements, accents, expansive, upward, inward, etc. You do some more full-song exercises here, this time combining safety moves with moves drawn from the categories. Finally, there’s a “plug and play” choreography. For a fuller description see the review for this video. There are also some bonus exercises on Nadira’s website.
I hope, from this overly long (and unedited) review those who wanted a comparison can understand both videos standalone as well as in relation to each other. For some of us DVD-addicts, buying decisions are not either/or. We just get most of what there is out there. But of course, there are those who might like to choose between videos and need details to be able to do so. If you’re up to acquiring both these videos, you will find enough that’s different on both. After all, every basics video covers much the same thing and many of us still buy them in cartloads. Both have lots of tips and cued exercises to “un-stuck” you if you just stop dead when it comes to improvising. If I were asked to choose between the two, I think I would choose Improvisation Toolkit because I find Nadira’s analystical, logical style completely actionable. You can’t miss. You don’t have to connect the dots. It’s all laid out and you’re led into it with her exercises. The production for Combino-graphy is undoubtedly better and smoother. Both instructors relate to the leaener, with Nadira’s style bing more personal and learner-oriented. However, if I were not asked to choose, I think that while Improvisation Toolkit started it all, Combino-graphy gives you additional advice and material to play with.
As you work with one or both of these videos or indeed some of the others out there that indirectly help your improvisation, remember that this skill also develops as a result of lots of practice, varied practice, and drilling to make a lot of movements auto pilot.
It’s been almost a year since this video was released. In my mind, it will always be the very first instructional to focus exclusively on improvisation. When she announced its release, dancer and teacher Nadira Jamal said she thought this was the “year of improvisation”. She was probably right because the year saw many videos that opened up the secrets of how it is belly dancers just dance spontaneously to any music. Two that come to mind are Ranya Renee’s Baladi set and Sarah Skinner’s (to a lesser extent) Opulent Motion.
I had reviewed Nadira’s video in December last year and am echoing that review here, in preparation for a review of a similar video, Combinography, led by Bahaia.
Belly dancing is essentially an improvised dance. Certainly you have choreographies, and wonderful ones at that, but what is most remarkable about the dance is that the dancer can come up with skillful moves entirely spontaneously. And she matches the music perfectly while doing so! That’s why anyone who’s interested enough in this dance wants to be able to interpret the music and really really dance to it with self-expression, emotion and enjoyment. But how on earth do you teach creativity? It’s a tough one; which is why most belly dance videos focus wholly on muscle work and combinations and choreographies – but they’re at a loss how to figure out teaching improvisation. Some teachers say it can’t be taught whatsoever and tell the learner to “just do it” or “listen to the music!”
Until now. Nadira Jamal’s video, the first on this subject, actually does tackle the challenging area of improvisation. In this first of a three-DVD series, Nadira focuses on Movement Recall, which is what gives most people “dancer’s block”.
This video begins with an orientation to improvisation and what the video series will bring. I like that a warm up has been included here because you don’t have to stop and turn to another activity. The warm up is adequate for the activity on the video.
After you physically warm up, it’s time to get the creative side of you going with a session of “noodling” or playing with movement. Noodling is a nice fun concept meant to loosen you up and disinhibit you. The exercises Nadira puts you through while noodling make you turn off your inner critic and have fun with movements. Nadira explains the concept in detail, gives its rationale and logic, and demos how she would do it. Then you have a whirl yourself. This isn’t just an ice breaker but also leads on to the next set of explanations and exercises.
Through a series of exploratory exercises and demos, Nadira next gets you acquainted with your own movement vocabulary and helps you identify your key moves. With each exercise on this video, you find yourself exploring your moves in different ways. The exercises stop you from over-thinking and getting stuck in complex territory. What’s really nice is that relatively early beginners can use the few belly dance movements they’ve learnt and use these exercises to start being creative. The exercises are an excellent way of getting concepts into your head because you’re doing something rather than just listening to explanations of what improvisation means, conceptually.
More exercises help you take into account timing, transitions, weight changes into your improvisation.
The next chunk of exercises is most innovative. It involves arranging your moves into lots of categories. I’m not getting into more detail on this as it would take the fun out of the video. Or sort of spoil the surprise, anyway. Broadly I’d say that instead of creating with individual movements you’re now using categories. Now you’ve moved from fooling around with the alphabets into guided chunks of improvisation! You may, like me, find yourself smiling at this point because the penny has dropped. This is probably the point where you’ll be yelling – hey! I’m doin it! And did I forget to say.. it’s fun!
But the funnest of all exercises is the final one: choreographing the song, Layla. Something I’ve always wanted to do, by the way. What Nadira does here is to give you different levels of help choreographing this song. She starts backwards – and that’s a great tip I’m going to use often – and shows you how to end the song. But moving further back along the song, she leaves chunks out for you to fill in. You work your way right to the beginning of the song. With several repetitions – there you have it! It’s really too delightful.
Through these exercises, all of which use music from the CD Bellydance for Fortune and Fame by the Mogador Band, pretty scenes fill the screen at points where you have to do stuff on your own with voice cues. The whole video has a wonderful flow and is sort of butter smooth from one end to the other.
As it weren’t a wonderful enough video already, Nadira leaves you with some thoughts on what else to do – and even more exercises on her Taktaba website. Taktaba, by the way, is thename of Nadira’s podcasts. How she’s managed to make such easy work of such a difficult subject, I totally don’t know.
World Dance New York’s first salsa video arrived as a reminder of such how much I always will love this spicy, saucy dance. I haven’t danced salsa in a long while but seeing the three attractive dancers in their flirty dresses doing these once-familiar steps made me pull out my favorite salsa music and dance wildly – and not very well – for a bit.
Salsa Solo is a total beginner’s instructional. It takes you through the basic steps that make up the salsa dance and then a bunch of patterns or shines. You can dance the lot on your own (which is what I love about shines) or you can spice up your partner dancing by breaking away for a moment of extra style. And because salsa is full of constant footwork and arm movement, it makes a good low-impact aerobic exercise – provided you keep it up long enough.
The instruction is led by the lovely Yesenia Adame, who can do some breathtakingly athletic dancing.
That something or what? And here she is on Dancing with the Stars with Pail Barris, as the pros set the standard for the competitors.
But don’t be intimidated – that’s not what you’re going to try to learn with the DVD. In fact, it’s difficult to believe the same dancer can get down to absolute basics as she has on the video.
The warm up, always a good idea, is short and uses moves that you’ll need while dancing the salsa. In fact, this is where you’re prepped for the moves.
And you get straight into the first of the three combinations in this program. Typically, you have step-by-step, movement review, and practice with music sections to each. The first combo is all basics: front, side, back-back, cuban, right and left turns. Each step is broken down so you can see how the back-replace-forward, forward-replace-back really works. The only non basic part in this combo is when you do arm stylization for the left turn.
Now, the instruction here is clear and attractive enough. You get to see the dancers dancing from the back so that you can follow them as in class. For salsa somehow that’s particularly important. You’d get hopelessly mixed up if the instructor were only in front of you and you wouldn’t know which foot to begin with.
However, my feeling, when I think back to my time as a beginner in salsa classes, is that something more is needed to make the learner more comfortable with the rhythm and the basic step. A little more explanation of how the footwork fits into the rhythm, perhaps. It actually takes total beginners a long while to figure it out. And going by my class, some never do. I wasn’t a salsa natural either and often was told to go stand on the sidelines and clap out the rhythm. I think that novices can’t really hear the pauses in the beat and so they struggle. There’s nothing for it but to give it time and really listen to the music a lot and connect with it, but perhaps a little more time should have been spent on the basic beat here. Maybe even a longish round of the main front-back basic done to music. That way the learner can just repeat that section many times.
Another thing that needs more explanation is the Cuban motion. That’s another thing a learner struggles with. It just isn’t as natural and easy as it looks unless you’re born in salsa-land. So, while Cuban hips are briefly explained here, it’s not clear how they fit into the footwork – that too in all directions. It also isn’t clear how the torso shift fits in with both footwork and Cuban hips. It probably isn’t necessary to get into too much detail on a video for absolute beginners, but then perhaps one should either ignore that angle. If not, it needs a better breakdown.
Here’s Cuban Motion in one lesson on YouTube.
That out of the way, we go on to the second combo, which goes up in difficulty level. There are 6 or 7 moves strung together here. The basic with a tap, cumbia with a slide, a “squash the bug” foot stylization, a figure eight with arm stylization, etc. Together they look good. They’re not unchallenging so there’s no danger the learner will just look at the lot, get the basics and move on. this will take some doing. With my own salsa having gone rusty, I definitely would have to spend some time on this combo.
Combination Three gets further into proper shines territory with the cross forward walk or “swivel basic”, sliding box step, the Susie Q, a right turn that returns with a fast turn stylization, side to side taps, a body roll, and a saucy shimmy turn. Another thing that should have been explained is how the shimmy happens.This combo is done to faster music. There’s a session of dancing all the combos together, of course.
A short cooldown of inhale-exhales and reaches and a few stretches finishes off the program. Except for a brief demo of solo dancing by each of the three dancers. These are just a few seconds each. Why not a whole song?
All in all, a pleasant video and if you work with it enough to get that certain Latin look, you definitely will look great on the dance floor. This one is a women only video because of the styling. No reason why men shouldn’t do all the basics and footwork which is common to both (except for which foot to begin on) but the styling will be very different for men.
Hilary Thacker: Beginner’s Guide to Egyptian Belly Dance
Instant Belly Dancer The absolute queen of beginners’ DVD, translated into many languages, uses a unique, effective system of graphic overlays on screen to teach the precise way to do a move – safely. This is a two DVD set covering every basic in the dance. The fabulously creative Neon doesn’t leave you in the lurch without actual dance moves, but gives combinations at the end of each move explanation, so that you have something to work with immediately, if you chose. Includes more material than almost any beginner’s DVD. This video set has done a lot to bring new dancers from the general public into belly dancing. Pros Simplified anAd friendly gentle instruction, totally ingenuous in the way it ueses little moves that you can dance anywhere, at the club or at a party even before you master isolations fully. Cons Purists complain about the style not being traditional belly dance and being too club or party oriented. Recco Too much content for a beginner to ignore. Use it to get your precision and combine with a more traditional belly dance video if that is what you’re after. Usable by someone who wants to take the moves to the dance floor without getting deeply into the isolaitons because the graphics and explanations tend to stick visually in one’s mind and keep the moves safe.
Jenna’s Belly Dance Basics and Beyond Encylopedic. Makes up a complete syllabus. “Beyond beginners” will also find it a great reference and move-corrector. Painstaking detailed instruction with the dancer giving it her all. Pros Covers all basics, drills, combinations and features a choreography one can pick up from – all on one DVD. Very thorough and analytic. Leads beautifully to the next in the set “The Next Level”, also a massive resource. Cons Totally “talky” with music and dancing only entering towards the last 25 percent. Recco Serious dancers-to-be don’t miss out on this one but combine with something with more actual dancing and music. Should make a refreence if you’re taking classes as well.
Shamira: Sensuous Workout I
Even today, this video is unique in its selection of content and could, if marketed more, give more recent DVDs a run for their money. Shamira authoritatively leads learners trough a warm up and the most fundamental basics. But, she uses little combinations and beautiful arm workto move you through a pretty dance workout.
Pros: Dancey right from the start. You use your arms from the beginning. Enjoyable, inspiring and wonderfully cued and instructed.
Cons: None.
Recco: Anyone looking for an easy-to-do introduction to belly dancing should consider this. For more serious, comprehensive and in-depth belly dance instruction, choose something else, but even advanced dancers have tended to like this relaxing, feminine dance basics session.
Shamira: Sensuous Workout II
Independent of Workout I, this too is a DVD that would hold its own on content, instruction and ease of working. Shamira leads you through 22 little chapters, each of which takes up a belly dance basic movement. A few repetitions are included within each for practice. Three choreographies put all the moves to use. These are not performable as such because of the repetition, but they’re almost there and give the learner very real choreography learning skills.
Pros: Filled with content. Well instructed and cued basics, very nice choreographies of different types to different rhythms. You get basics, some basic rhythms, choreography learning skills, and a workout.
Cons: Leaves out the maya and some basic upper body moves. These could have easily been included.
Recco: Beginners find this video very easy and Shamira wonderful to relate to. Advanced dancers love working with this video when they want a drill or to be led through the isolations without too much hard work.
Sadie’s Complete Guide to Belly Dance
After many advanced instructionals, impressively skilled Sadie Marquardt covers the main basics, including traveling steps. Three combinations make up the practice session. Pros No nonsense, efficient, focused. Includes safety tips. Anticipates learner’s problems. Cons Dancing to learning ratio sub-optimal. Too brief on some moves. Claustrophobic studio and oppressive lighting. Combinations set to an uninspiring practice track. Missing in fun. Recco Better for those considerably serious about belly dancing. Consider combining with simpler more fun combinations practice.
Belly by Sandra Inspiring, beautiful music, very watchable instructor This video is fun and unhurried. But it’s only half the lesson and an arbitrary selection of moves. Pros Fantastic to watch. Relaxing and unstressful to work with. So many moves done a touch differently by Sandra. The music makes a huge difference. Sparkling picture. Nice practice moves. Cons Deeply unfair to the learner in that it has broken the instruction into parts and there is no sign of the remainder months after release. IMassive syllabuses fit – so why make the learner wait? Recco Would be well suited to a beginner if one knew when the rest of the lesson will be available. Sandra explains moves beautifully and uniquely. She makes you want to dance.
Jehan’s Sacred Bellydance This two-disk approaches belly dance from a holistic point of view, making it interesting for both beginners and intermediate dancers. It’s absorbing, unhurried and involves dancing with your whole body and mind. It’s also earthy, goddessy and culturally rooted, in Jehan’s style. Pros Encyclopedic, teaches fluidity and depth of movement, full of flavor and richness, quite unique Cons Not quite the dance-along that gets absolute beginners up and dancing, no practice combos or choreographies to play with. Overdose of mother goddess feel. Recco For serious to-be belly dancers, this is a great set. Even watching will show you how your whole body works in a dance move. It’s an encyclopedic reference. For “light” dancers, it may be overkill.
Virginia: One on One
Virginia is pleasant enough but a little self conscious and staccato as she instructs you through the basics of belly dance. She covers all the primary basics fairly well. She pays more attention to weight changes than most others. There are enough nuances to make the moves very much her own style. She also has a good warm up and stretch section.
Pros: Comprehensive, moves at a good pace, replete with tips on weight changes and more.
Cons: It would have been nice if some short combinations had been included.
Recco: No particular reason to either recommend or de-recommend it. Not inspiring, but will definitely do the job.
Hilary Thacker: Beginner’s Guide to Egyptian Belly Dance
Covered here only because dancers who have started out with this video may recommend it. Now too dated to stand up against more modern competition.
Pros: Completely outweighed by cons at this point. Cons: Dated, terrible sound quality, bad production, black costume against dark background, delivered with flat passivity and perfect lack of expression. Recco: Forget it.
Well, another lovely DVD discovery! “Facial Workout: Because muscles don’t end at the neck” is a beautifully created video, filmed in a lovely place, with exercises demonstrated by two women with two women beautiful youthful girl-next-door faces.
This video sets out to give you a facelift. But it’s not like you just there and don’t do any work. The whole theory here is that we get lines on our faces because we don’t exercise our face muscles enough. Give those muscles a workout and you can prevent or at least lessen the lines, depending on how long you’ve had them and how deep they are.
The video starts with a short explanation of its basic premise. But before you can think of getting bored, we get into the exercises. These are divided into short segments for each part of the face – forehead, eyes, mouth, and neck. There are many exercises to each segment, except perhaps the neck which only has one, disappointingly.
All the exercises are taught in a single format. First, a girl demonstrates the exercise and invites you to hold the pose with her for two rounds of 5 seconds. You get a brief explanation of what we’re doing and why and see anatomical diagrams on the side, leaving no room for confusion on which muscles we’re working. You are guided by a clear voiceover. Next, you go through 10 repetitions of the exercise. And finally 10 faster repetitions. That’s the format followed throughout the teaching segment.
The exercises themselves are great and doing them just makes you feel better and more relaxed! Here’s an example or two of exercises for the yes — and there are quite a few of those. Put your fingers at the sides of your eyes and pull them towards the temples gently making them sort of oriental. Gently,, but firmly. Now try to close your eyes without closing the lids. That is, constrict the muscles. Hold for 5 seconds. And then do 10 quick 1-second repetitions. If you’re doing it right, you’ll feel a slight pull on each finger from the muscles. Become aware of which outer eye muscles are being exercised.
The exercises are taught in the first two thirds of this video. The last third involves a quicker run through of the exercises in a routine that you can use everyday. You could also make your own routine of course but I found it nice to be guided through them. I’ve put the video on to my ipod and am mow tending to do them when I lie down. Well, all except the neck slide, which i don’t feel confident is going to do much to take away the lines for me now.
I’ve known myself to have almost toppled over just standing around. And weave dangerously when walking. No, it isn’t the margaritas but some problem I seem to have with balance. It’s a balance malfunction that caused me to fall smack on my face in jazz class some four years ago, ending in a bit of a fracture and a cut in the corner of my eye. That was the end of jazz for me, unfortunately because by the time I recovered, I’d lost momentum. The abrupt cessation of exercise also kick started weight gain.
But to my major delight, I chanced upon a DVD with a balance workout. Led by Kaitlin Rodriguez, it’s from The Method series and called Standing Pilates Blend. However, I think of it more as a ballet workout. Apparently the exercises are related to those done on the pilates reformer, but because I haven’t worked with that, I can’t confirm this either way. All I can say is, the workout is wonderful. Like Element: Ballet Conditioning, it’s divided into two major segments: standing work and mat work. And both are “seaside videos”, meaning they’re filmed on the beach, where I’d love to be. Knowing me though I’d topple over in the sand!
I’ve been working with this video for a few weeks now and finally, today, I completed the standing balance segment doing it right through without a stop. I am exhilarated. My balance has improved re-mark-ably!
The standing work, which makes up most of the DVD, is made up of lovely series of exercises that include a variety of foot circles and sweeps, attitudes and left lifts/kicks, passe while doing arm work, courtesy lunges and more. For most of these you’re on one foot. Quite a challenge, which is why I’m so thrilled to have been able to do the whole thing. I stumble now and then, but it’s getting better each day.
While you attempt to balance, you obviously have to hold your stomach in and strengthen the core or powerhouse. That results in toning, hugely improved posture, and grace. The instructor teaches along with two other companions who echo her moves but with different ranges of motion. All of them look great. The instruction is clear, no nonsense, no stupid cheerleading at all, and is well-paced. The exercises are all connected in one big flow and this, I think, very much adds to the whole balance challenge. When you go from one series of exercises to the next smoothly, it takes concentration and control. I just totally love it and have a bunch of favorite exercises from among the lot. For example, the very first exercise has you standing on one foot and swinging the other leg back and forth in a walking movement, with your arms outstretched and swinging in opposition. You stay stretched right to the fingertips and your foot brushes the floor very softly at the midpoint as it swings Without a break, you move to the build up exercise for this series which is arms up in fifth and tendue foot taps with an extended stretched leg in front. So your foot doesn’t settle down on the floor throughout this series. Not until you’re switching to a new lot.
The mat segment is more like the pilates I know but somewhat modified here and there. It’s fairly gentle, actually. The pace goes very well with the standing segment but I switch to another video for pilates because I’m trying to do an intense and complete pilates routine.
Lovely workout and highly recommended for anyone who wants better balance and grace. It’s just got an average of 3.5 stars on Amazon from 16 reviews, but one of the reasons is that the title led people to expect something else. It’s not a new DVD – from way back 2003. But I have so enjoyed the balance exercises!
I am an absolute, confirmed fan of Ellen Barret’s now. Her Pick Your Spot – Pilates was so easy and smooth to work with and made a great introduction to Pilates. Now, I find her Bikini Ready Fast equally clear and straightforward to work with. It’s a 40-minute workout from Self Magazine’s fitness series and focuses on strength training and sculpting using light weights.
It’s only after working with Ellen’s DVDs that I realize how important it is to have an instructor who tells it like it is without making a whole lot of noise. In other words, Ellen’s signal to noise ratio is rather good. An occasional “good job” is about all the cheerleading you’ll hear, and yet she keeps you motivated and going. Quite possibly it’s to do with the flowing pace and clarity of instructions.
I worked on Bikini Ready Fast today for the first time. And loved it. In fact, I feel like having another go at it now, a few hours later, am thinking I’d better not push it. Obviously the Bikini Ready workout is set on the beach. How wonderful it must feel to work out there… but for those of us who can only but dream of that, we’ll have to remain contented with just looking.
The workout starts with a good warm up. It uses lots of wide plies and reaches, which keeps it close to the moves you’ll actually be doing in the main workout. You pick up your weights straight after the warm up. Now, Ellen and her two companions keep to a restricted set of exercises. To add variety, challenge and to target more muscles, they introduce variations on the same exercises. That makes easy to learn the workout. I managed to do the workout straight through without watching it first — and that’s saying something.
The exercises include lots of squats (with the weights), expansive arm moves, curls and reaches, plies. Nothing goes on long enough to become boring, though overall I can see that one will need to move up to something mroe challenging soon enough or perhaps add it to a collection of favorite workouts to do now and then.
Have a look
The beach girls then move on to a segment of the workout in which you do a few easy enjoyable jumps and one-leg squats. That’s minus weights, thankfully.And then you slow down and cool off.
But before the end of the DVD, there’s a 10 minute bonus workout. This is a pilates section targeting the abs in particular.
Ellen gives some solid and good advice on exercise and diet. She says to lose weight, you have to add cardio aerobics to this workout. Walking, cycling, aerobics, dancing.. anything that keeps your heart reate up and keeps you moving. Also, a sensible diet, which doesn’t mean giving up stuff so that you go about craving it but rather, eating what you want more carefully, now and then, in nice little quantities.
For the past two or three months I’ve been exercising more than I’ve been dancing. And having reduced my legendary tummy somewhat through pilates, ballet basics and guided walking,, I must say that I’ve become more than little skeptical of just how much a light bit of belly dancing can do in this department. All I can say is, I’ll see it when I believe it.
Rania’s Belly Abs DVD is typical Rania. I haven’t been overly familiar with her videos, but do own about half a dozen and can tell signature Rania when I see it. The moves, the format, the instruction – it’s all very Rania. Nice-ish. But, as an exercise program, I have several quarrels with this sort of thing. Actually, I have a problem with it as a dance program too. Here’s why:
First off, I think dancers and video-makers had better move on from giving a tiny handful of combinations as content. There should either be lots of them, or there should be a challenge to them. I say this because there are videos out there now that have changed the rules. Neon’s Bellydance Rhythms workout gives you 40 combinations – none of them simplistic. Well, maybe a few. Videos like Luscious and Love Potion are sprinkled with tons of little combinations. Aradia’s Rhythms video has just a few combos, but all challenging and complex. And I was working with Michelle’s Killer Ziller combos and find these too quite complex.
The combinations on Belly Abs, on the other hand, I can learn in one session. And while you might say well, what about newbies, the video does not seem to be aimed at beginners. There are 5 (or maybe 6) little combinations on Belly Abs. They’re not unuseful at all – but if you know your basics, all you need to do is see them once.
Now you may argue that the simplicity makes these combinations more easily repeatable and that’s what will give you a good workout. I’d agree if only I felt really really working the abs. Unless you’re unexercised, I’m not sure they do much. At least I believe that it would take more than these six little conbos to put a sizable dent in a self respecting stomach. A few undulations, very light hip drops and kicks, pelvic tucks, a twist or two – my tummy would laugh at that. The workout needs to be tougher, more varied and sustained for a good long time. I did round after round of these combos and couldn’t feel the slightest tiredness. I also am very skeptical about Rania’s breathlessness at the end of it all. She’s done some highspeed performances and must be used to a hundred times this level of activity.
Of course, the combos are not the only thing on the video. It begins with a warm up. This is really your typical dancer’s warm up with plies and reaches etc. Just more abbreviated. Again, if you want your abs reduced, it’s going to take more. We then move on to a few crunches. Very few. My problem with these is that they are all from the same category. They seem to me to target the obliques. They’re standard crunches and side crunches. This again is too short and unvaried a stint to do much.
And that’s really it. There’s a cool down at the end, but that’s neither here nor there. This video is about 43 minutes in all. It’s errrr..okay. If you’re doing no other exercise and have a lot of weight around the middle to lose, it won’t be enough. If you’re slim and just have a hint of a paunch, this – or any exercise – will surely help. If you haven’t been exercising, this is a start. But it is not a full-fledged and solid exercise program. There are too many alternatives, both in the fitness category and in the belly dance category – that will do a better job. In fact, other than Rhythms, Jillina’s Shape Up ‘n Hip Out comes to mind. That’s a whole cardio routine (120 minutes) and it would give your abs a thing or two to think about though it’s not targeted at abs alone
So yes… this is overall a disappointment for me. It needed to be way tougher to do some real damage!
