Rachel Brice: Bellydance Arms and Posture Review

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(More customer reviews)Beautiful, exotic, incomparably skilled. That's Rachel Brice for you. Known for her impossibly sinuous, serpentine movements, Rachel has been the subject of unbridled admiration for years.
In this second of her videos, she's actually giving you her secret of those snaky, seemingly boneless arms. If I were to sum that up in a few words, I'd say it's patient, dedicated, focused practice. With the right muscles for your shoulders and elbows, of course. That's what gives you the degree of control that Rachel has when she dances.
Before I bought this video, I looked around for a meaty description and reviews - and found none. I wanted someone to tell me whether this video was a bit more directly useful and usable than the previous one - and that, no one was able to say. That's one of the reasons I'm writing this out in some detail. I hope others, who are wondering whether to buy it, will find their decision easier. Keep in mind though that the video has just been released and I haven't worked with it except for once. So this is a preview.
This video is a beautifully chaptered introduction to tribal fusion arm work. If you're "into tribal" it's a must-have in my opinion. If not, it will help you build arm strength and energy - you could opt to work with it less often but frequently enough to get better control. I plan to work with it intensively at first, and then space it out for once a week sessions. If you're more an oriental dancer, add bits of these exercises to your regular routine so that you don't get too accustomed to the tribal pose. But whether you're an oriental style dancer or a tribal dancer, you'll have to be fairly serious. This is a working-hard video, not a have-fun one.
There's no warm up on this video. It's strongly recommended that you do some sort of warm up, for say, fifteen minutes before beginning. It's very easy to strain the neck, back and shoulders if you haven't yet figured out the correct muscles and work them when they're cool.
The first chapter takes up overall preparation. This video is not, like the one before it, a whole lot of yoga. But it does pull in relevant yoga poses at different times. You begin with a yoga pose (Tadasana) briefly to get the right posture for your arm work. You then go on to upper arm rotations, arm lifts, and end with a half sun salutation. This spans just a few minutes. The next section is a "dance preparation" and is also quite brief. There are 4 little sub sections involving plies and level changes with arm moves. God help my knees.
Better sit down for this one. You get into a chapter now on seated shoulder exercises. Rotations, arcs, pulls and undulations. Each is brief, but still separately accessible from the menu. You end this section with two yoga stretches. There's one little exercise I found interesting in particular - the rope pull. You grab and imaginary rope, twist it, and pull it strongly towards you.
You might say the next chapter is the main one of the video. It's called Examples of Arm Placement in Dance. This is the nicest section and is what will give you the material to make tribal style arm combinations with. You do arm cycles, the sidewinder move, arm presses, moves led by elbow rotations, full arm undulations, arm moves with rib cage circles. But again... oh so brief. As far as I'm concerned these should not have been "examples" at all but the whole range of basic arm placements for this style. The subject of finger placement and hand undulations is completely ignored. No floreos either, though perhaps they don't appear in Rachel's style of dancing that much. .
Rachel now takes you through one combination which is meant to be an illustration of how all the rotations and muscle work are applied to a dance. Just that one combination? The combination itself is not difficult but of course, everything depends on the arm work without which it won't look at all Rachel-like. It's too bad that she didn't do at least four combinations, or leave you with a sort of toolbox or bag of ideas with which to work further. I don't know about others, but I rely on videos for instruction (being in a place where there's no live classes) and that means I'll have to pick up arm combinations from other instructional and performance videos.
Well, before you know it, the video's over, with a few stretches to cool down with. How it ever added up to 74 minutes is amazing. It feels way too brief. But perhaps I'm just too greedy. Perhaps more arm work than this is inadvisable for one session. Rachel's recommendation is to take these exercises and make your own practice session to combine with your regular practice and drills.
There's a tiny and superdisappointing "interview" with Rachel. (with Miles Copeland, no less). It just covers random stuff like her jewellery. How terribly sad that they didn't talk about the arm work, which is so distinctive of her.
There's the mandatory performance on the video as well. But I have seen more stunning performances by Rachel.
The style of instruction is fast paced and uses a voice-over. So there's no relating to the learner.
All in all, this one is much more interesting than the previous one. The subject may be one of the reasons. You can get hip drills on other videos, but can you get the secret to those serpentine arms anywhere?
It still gets a 4 from though because I think there should have been more combinations.

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Welcome to Belly Dance Arms & Posture, a practice for carriage, coiling and serpentine stylization.This practice was designed to be used in conjunction with your regular dance practice to increase strength, flexibility and the illusion of bonelessness in the upper body. The practice has 5 parts: Gentle stretching to relax and prepare the body for movement, Dance movement preparation to strengthen the legs, An intense shoulder series with both strengthening and stretching segments to prepare for serpentine arm movements, A short combination to illustrate the use of arms in dance and with torso movement and layering, Finishing poses to relax the spine and prepare you to re-enter your day.

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