Working with Beautiful Technique – 2
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.
I know exactly what you mean by the arms section. I found myself laughing at the picture I must have made following along. I probably liked like I was hyperventilating trying to breathe as directed while doing the arm patterns. Where I felt it natural to breathe out she said breathe in and vice versa. Rather comical when I do it.
I don’t know if this will make it into my own personal style, but I will continue to work with it. 
I love the arms section, I struggled at first to ‘breathe along’, now I don’t struggle to stick rigidly to her breathing instructions I find that I mostly get it right anyway.
I’m a little disappointed by the choreography, for me it is not really in a learnable format. I think it is a great example of how she puts her moves together, and how they go with the music, but I would call it a performance with explanation rather than a taught choreography.
The drills and technique section are infinitely more valuable in my opinion, so the dvd is more than worth it for these.
I find it interesting that when Autumn is explaining technique her face is without much expression, yet when she dances her face is so animated, it really comes to life! She looks far more relaxed when she dances than she speaks to the camera.
I mostly ignore the breathing instructions and decide I’ll handle that part later – after I get the movement path. But the instructions just come too rapidly for me. Actually it must be worse for me because I look once, take it in, and then move away to try it out with her vocal cues and looking in the mirror. The problem is also that I use my laptop, not a big huge TV. So with my eyesight, I can’t really look-and-follow with that screen. My DVD player’s remote is a bit deadlike so I’m not playing the video on the TV attached to the DVD player. Oh… very complicated!
How do you guys process those fast instructions? Float up pull in inhale push down, pull down, pull up….
I believe the choreography was a bit of an add-on or bonus. I vaguely remember someone saying that. So, it wasn’t fully taught. I think it would have been good to at least break it into segments – I know I’d manage it fine that way. Now one has to pause and return to the specific points to learn it. It also looks more like the practice choreography the DVD says it is – not a full-fledged performable one. At least I thought so. I think it would have been a bit more animated if it had been outright performable. But it’s nice, nevertheless. I don’t know how i’m going to break it up to learn it.
Oh yes, Autumn is quite luminous when she starts performing. When I first saw her in those youtube clips of Rose of Damascus and the other one with the red ball… I was totally captivated with her “presence”. Very alive and vibrant and crackling with vitality! Including her expressions.
It’s interesting how people come across differently on camera. Some are super comfortable and some are get-on-with-it. One person who looks completely relaxed and comfortable and animated seems to be Ranya! She’s enjoying herself.
This DVD is just full of so much to learn…I feel like I have to just sit down and watch it before I do anything with it…its sooo jam packed.
I tend to ignore breathing instructions too until I can do the move on its own, and then add the other bits in.