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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Tribal Fusion - Yoga Isolations & Drills for Bellydance Review

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(More customer reviews)I love this DVD. I want to do it over and over, unlike many other fitness/instruction videos. She does make you sweat and sore, but by the end she has lulled you down to practically being a relaxed puddle on the floor, ahhhhh...yeah. Makes your body feel great, 'Thank you sir, may I have another?!' Rare to find a video such as this that gives you the excersize you need but brings such a sense of calm and peace at the same time. I am also glad she went away from the talking to the camera with a cheesy fake smile and a perky aerobics voice. I much prefer her calm soothing voice. I don't understand why people are complaining that she doesn't look at the camera, why is that a big deal? I'm too busy comparing my hips to hers or in a compromised yoga position to worry about where she's looking. I much prefer her approach to the fake unblinking stare with a smile style of many other videos.
As for the content, this is not just for begggining dancers. She is so articulate in her descriptions, a fine tuning even advanced dancers need to practice to stay on top of their game. The camera work here is great too, seemed to read my mind at times. Right when I would think 'whats she doing with her feet right now?' and there it would go to her feet. She also adds in just the right promps at the right times like, make sure the jaw is soft and you realize you *were* clenching it.
I love the blending of yoga and bellydance. The yoga felt soooo good after the dance moves, but wasn't too much to not feel like a dance video. I think her choices in which yoga moves to utilize were excellent. I also love the music used and the atire Rachel chose to wear.
As for the performance, the camera work is a bit distracting at first, but please give it a chance. It will grow on you and you will stop noticing them so much. Theres too much awesome dancing going on for you not to watch it.
An Awesome DVD! I do hope she makes more, this one sits at the top of my DVD stack because I use it so much!! Get this DVD! Your body will thank you!!

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Bellydance Superstar Rachel Brice teaches basic tools that can be incorporated into daily practice that will bring flexibility, strength and, if practiced regularly, effortlessness into whatever Belly Dance style you choose.Instruction includes a short Yoga practice to warm up and strengthen the body as well as a final chapter on Yoga for flexibility."

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Luscious - The Bellydance Workout for Beginners Review

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(More customer reviews)Did we really need another bellydance-based workout? I wouldn't have thought so, but Neon, as usual, has gone and proven my expectations wrong.
"Luscious" is an exquisitely made program, with more good qualities than I can enumerate. The costumes and setting are gorgeous -- nothing like the typical brightly-lit aerobics studio -- and Neon advises you at the beginning to dress up for it and join the three dancers here in making the movement special. This is the kind of thing that sounds cheesy, but I did it, and it makes sense: how will you forget about bad body image or those extra pounds if you're wearing ugly workout wear? Dressing up makes you feel like you're dancing, not punishing yourself.
The instruction itself is taught in sections themed "Circles," "Infinity Loops," "Undulations," "Hip Accents," "Shimmy," and "Body Line." Each dancer leads two of the sections: she stands at the front and her voiceover describes the movements to be done. What I really like about this is that the sections weren't assigned randomly; instead, each section bears the particular dancer's imprint, and showcases her strengths. It's subtle, but you start to notice that Neon leads complicated, quick-changing combinations, Blanca shows her wonderful, large, and sensuous movements, and Sarah Skinner adds an upbeat Turkish feel to the shimmy section. This made the instructors seem much less like exchangeable dancing bodies, and much more like teachers with particular areas of expertise.
The movements are varied, and quite a few combinations are introduced and repeated from two to six times. This is not a "four of this and four of that" drill. In fact, I would suggest that complete beginners start with a different video. This would be great for advanced beginners like me, who are not expert enough for a complicated choreo with tons of layering, but get bored when everything comes in fours and is repeated ad infinitum.
All along, the dancers offer tips on putting emotion into the steps, on maintaining form, and on making movements deeper and stronger. While the dancing is rarely fast-paced, the slowness of the movements is often more challenging and grueling. The workout made me sweat (though it might not make everyone), but more importantly, it challenged me to maintain grace, form, and muscle control while learning the combinations. I couldn't believe it when the forty-five minutes were over -- it felt like fifteen!
If you have weak knees, you might want to be careful with some of the lunges and plies; on the other hand, there aren't a lot of them, and they're done slowly enough that you can be careful. I'll also repeat the warning that this might be a little hard for complete beginners who aren't already good at picking up choreography. However, the video does have a well-indexed instructional section which describes all the movements used in the workout. As a step up, there's a version of the workout with music alone, and no voice over.
In case my enthusiasm wasn't clear enough, I really think WDNY has a winner with this video. It's simple, but also simple enough to do regularly and to grow into. At the same time, even once you have learned the step combinations, adding graceful arm and handwork (to say nothing of being aware of facial expressions, head positions, and dancer's poise) poses an extra layer of difficulty. And finally, the movements are, quite simply, beautiful. You will be happy to be dancing.

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Lavish and overflowing with deep, rich, feminine movement, Luscious: The Bellydance Workout is made of 100% of bellydance moves and steps It is gentle, but it will work your body to enhance your muscle tone, flexibility, and fluidity, and promote weight loss. With a special focus on muscle conditioning and elongation, the program works each group of muscles deeply - using carefully built combinations to switch between muscle groups and add intensity to the workout.Lusscious: The Bellydance Workout features gorgeous music and a beautiful flow undiluted by conventional exercises. Systematically addressing each group of muscles to deliver a total body workout, it creates an entertaining and aesthetically fulfilling dance experience inspiring you to do your best in executing each move with the proper depth, range of motion, and articulation.A true dance experience as much as a fitness experience, Luscious is beginner level, but it offers you a perspective of challenge and growth. The workout consists of 7 sections, each building consistently upon the dance vocabulary covered in the previous sections through its own series of combinations. The combinations include classic bellydance transitions between steps to help you create the muscle memory to ingrain dance in your body. Luscious is an instructional workout. It introduces the dance vocabulary in a careful, systematic way and contains an extensive tutorial section breaking down each move used in the workout.If this is one of your first steps in bellydance, this program will be a fun introduction to all the basic groups of bellydance moves and transitions. If you are a dancer, it s a great way to practice the core of the bellydance technique and vocabulary through functional drills performed in the context of dance combinations and transitions creating an extra layer of muscle memory that isolated drills do not provide.Workout duration - 45 min.Tutorial section - 50 min.The Circles section explores circular bellydance moves. It follows a slow-to-moderate tempo, working both the lower and upper body through isolations.Next is the Infinity Loops section. Together with the stretching and toning impact of every move in this section, infinity loops are the ultimate exercise in fluidity.Undulations maintain flexibiilty of your spine and help develop deep awareness of your core. They are also a challenging full-body muscle-conditioning exercise.The bellydance hipwork section exercises your thighs, glutes, and abdominal muscles. In the Hip Accents section we ll perform traditional bellydance hip moves and then weave them together with the fluid movements: circles, infinity loops and undulations. Hipwork is what gives bellydance such vibrancy and party appeal - these steps look great on any dance floor.The Shimmy - that effortless shaking of the hips - is actually hard work! Join us to shake your way through a few styles of shimmy, and enjoy the wide range of shimmy flavors.The Body Line section is built of moves involving your total body. It shifts focus from working individual body parts to dance steps that offer the most stretching and give you a dancerly posture and carriage.The last section is a short dance routine choreographed entirely of the bellydance moves featured in the workout.

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