Combino-graphy: review and comparison with Improvisatin Toolkit

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.