wigglewhiz | WEEEEEEE, I Got My DVD's! (Reply)

So thanks to nikkiraqs (*eyeballs*) I found out about a one-day DVD sale from Cheeky Girls. And, me being me (spendy, dance-obsessed, needing to exercise to lose weight and practise to regain dance stamina.... but mostly spendy and dance-obsessed), I ordered four.

Yes. FOUR. I have no income of my own. And every month is a month closer to the POOR HOUSE. And yet I bought four DVDs. They were on sale, and IT WAS GOING TO BE MY BIRTHDAY SOON (Rememberance/Armistice Day, lucky me. My stock joke - and it's a truism - is that my birthday is REMEMBERANCE DAY, and yet my Evil Dad always forgot.).

So anyway, justifications aside, I bought four DVDs. I bought:

Combination Nations 1 and 2 (I figured it would give me a structure to my practise. I've been trying to just dance around and... it's not working. I just get... frustrated and upset that my technique has suffered and my stamina is shit and WOE IS ME MY DANCE CAREER IS OVERRRRRRRRRRRR, *cue Roy Orbison*)
Combin-ography with Bahaia
Ballet for Belly Dancers

So far I have only received the last two DVD's, and have given them a quick skim-through to see how I feel about them. Here's my rationale for buying them, my plan to use them,my first impressions of how they'll do:

Combin-ography with Bahaia

I'm a little disappointed in this one, and I think probably the biggest part f my disappointment with it is my unreasonable expectations of what it would contain. This was the only one I was originally going to buy, (before I went OMFG SALE, I NEEDS MOAR spendy) because what I really wanted was to understand HOW to teach other people to improvise. (NB: I was not going to rip Bahaia off. I just wanted to know how she approached the subject matter, blah blah blah DON'T FLAME ME.)

I'm strictly an improv dancer. I've been improv-ing since my baby dancer days, although my first performance (solo) was a choreography (my own). I like choreographies - well, from Egyptian teachers anyway - but I never remember them and they don't feel like me. I nick bits and pieces and combos and *feels* from them, but I'm just...not a choreo person. Which frustrates me, but hey.

When I had my regular class back home, I'd had a regular Beginners group for about a year. They were not interested in performing because it was SCAREE - and because I always got comments about "I can only remember the choreography if I'm behind YOU! I can't do it on my own!" GAH - but they were interested in dancing socially at the haflas I was always pushing them to attend. (They needed to see other dancers/teachers/student groups, get rid of the SCAREE feeling and realise that every other bellydance student was - DUN DUN DUUUNNNNN! - just like them.)

So I was always coming across the question of: How do I improvise? When I'm boogying on the dancefloor, WHAT DO I DO? My mind goes blank and I get stuck in my safety move and I don't know what to do! How do I put moves together myself?! And my answer was always completely useless: "Uh... you just do? You need to PRACTISE these things yourself at home, with music you like! Did anybody teach you to social dance to Western music in bars and nightclubs? No! You just got up there and faffed around without caring that you might look like a tit! JUST GET OUT THERE!"

Probably less than helpful, poor dears. So I figured getting Bahaia's DVD, with it's blurb about "bridging the gap between choreography and improvisation" would be just the ticket to let me see how other people approach this conundrum - perhaps if I'd been TAUGHT to improvise myself instead of just.... learning by osmosis by dint of obsessively going to any and every teacher around I might have a toolkit myself.

So I watched the DVD with my students in mind - which meant yelling at Bahaia on TV: "Yes, but HOOOOOOWWWWW?!" a lot. Hm. My overall thoughts:

Perhaps this DVD is aimed at too high a level for my lot - there's lots of great advice on here, but it seems to me to be more Performance Skills than How To Improvise.
It's a bit chat-heavy for them (which I always felt *I* was too!) to be able to really focus on and feel like they'd physically learned something.
The teaching tools of combinations seemed to be just that - combinations. My lot would be able to learn the combos, but I don't think they would finish the DVD feeling confident that they were any more able to improvise than when they began.

This is just my quick impression of having a very brief once-over - I've got specific comments and will probably do a fuller review for my own notes to add to my DVD Library Info for students.

Random Thoughts:

I *rilly* like her eye-spot veil
I love that she's curvy. Makes me happy. And then perversely made me feel like if she counts as curvy I must be OMFG GUTZILLA and should never be seen in costume again. Because I'm not right in the head.
I was tickled that she had disappearing ink on her inside left ankle - I assume the start of this DVD was actually re-done later when she'd had new ink.
I felt the lighting wasn't fantastic, and although at first I was peeved that there was no mirror, I actually feel that's probably better for this material.
I really agree with loads of what she's saying re: conscious movement and awareness of weight position, etc. And it's what I'm always reinforcing with my own students, so... I guess how I'm approaching the issue isn't that far off the mark after all then. Score seven hundred bajillionty twelve on my Teaching Insecurities rather than Actual Content Issues.
The repetition of a tiny bit of Daret il Ayam (just the intro, before it gets meaty!) over and over and over drove me nearly berserk, and by the time I switched the DVD off I had to listen to the whole song just to relieve the tension.

Ballet for Belly Dancers

I'm absolutely HORRIFIED by how badly my balance has suffered while I've been on my self-imposed accidental hiatus. HORRIFIED. Partly my body has changed since back when I was dancing more, so my centre of gravity is VERY different - but mostly it's just complete and utter lack of practise. It's SO BAD it makes me want to cry - in fact, I've broken down in tears more than once when trying to pactise because things I've always been "good" at or at least able to do have me stumbling around like a Fantastia hippo. Actually, scratch that, those hippos never fell over.

So I decided that, like fellow dance junkie

suzycat , I would go to Adult Ballet. Now, this is a bit loaded for me - I always wanted to go to ballet classes as a little girl, but one of the girls I knew who went to ballet told me I couldn't go because I was too fat. So...I never did. I've only ever braved a ballet class once -

wooglethealien and I were... shit, somewhere at some workshop? Or residential course? Or... something? (see, this is why I can't really give my dance listings much impact, because I can never rememer the hunners of workshops I've been to)... and there were Ballet Warm-ups with a very pretty blonde girl. I really enjoyed it - although Woogle and I were our rather silly selves boinging around doing what I'd decided were clearly Frog Jumps in a rather ungainly fashion. Hrm. I was a terribly bad influence on Woogle, I think... sorry, mate!

Anyway, I enjoyed the ballet warm ups. I liked the feeling of strength in the legs, grace in the arms, balance. And I need to work on spins and turns. So BEFORE I go to an Adult Ballet class, I've decided to work from home on the NYC Ballet Workout (whenever Ma responds to my begging emails and POSTS ME THE DVD FROM MY COLLECTION, DAMMIT! Hi Ma! Love you! Plz send care packages of DVDs, kthnxbai!) And to drop MANY more kilos before I will dare show my face in a ballet class, but that's beside the point.

Giving this a quick once-over, I'm quite excited by this DVD. I like the fact that I already do so many of these moves (pas be bourre, for example), but there are variations I can remind myself of that I've really never considered or have forgotten. The port de bras makes me happy. I like that while she's got the Oriental type variations, she also does the more "proper" balletic variations first - I can "orientalise" them myself later, but for now I want to SEE and to DO those proper balletic variations.

I haven't watched all of this one yet (even in a brief scan-through stylee), but I'm liking it's potential for me.

Random Thoughts:

I thought this one was better lit
I didn't like the fact that there was no "Play All" option on this DVD - didn't really matter because I could just pick a place to start and it would continue to play through without returning to the menu.
Plenty of sub-menus is a bit annoying on the initial play-through, but will be useful for returning to specific Ballet of Oriental version exercises of particular moves if I want to workout a particular way or revise a certain step.
I didn't really feel Brianna's performance - she picked a floaty piece, which as a ballet belly dancer I can understand but.... I just didn't feel the performance at all. I think perhaps the music was overdubbed, which always leaves the performance feeling a bit funny - as if it's "off", even though it's not really visibly off... I'm not sure. Perhaps her musical interpretation is just very different from mine - there were shimmies where I didn't "see" shimmies should go, there was... a Khaleegy step bafflingly following a Saiidi step. Hm. Hard to define, but very much not my cup of tea.

My plan for today is to rush out to the mailbox and hope that the two Combination Nation DVDs are in there (because I ordered them all at the same time!). And then I shall subject them to the same drive-by overview. And then maybe even ACTUALLY follow one through and do some dancing! Shock! Horror! Etc!