Bellydance Shimmy Workout

Sarah Skinner leads this vitalizing, energy charged, tremendous shimmy work out for beginners. In my opinion, definitely more than adequate for beginners and anyone seeking strengthening in shimmy technique, and a total body workout. Aside from being an essential belly dance move, shimmies ease away tension and invigorate every part of the body-a huge physical benefit!
This is a complete workout, with a wonderful dance tutorial section. A perfect reference tool for beginners with detailed explanation of posture, layering, and each shimmy is broken down in simple explanations.Several bonuses of the workout is that each section ends with stretches, before embarking on the next chapter. I'm also a huge fan of the options for music only, or instructional voice over.

A description of the program:
Warm up-very adequate for the strength building section to follow. Toe raises,ankle rotations, upper and lower body isolations such as snake arms, hip circles, etc.

Strength building drills: Wow! This is intense! Shimmies layered on releve, hip slides, triple steps, lunges with level changes; wow, feel the burn! Some of the movement may be challenging for beginners but with consistency, this series will pay off by strengthening the legs and hips for big luscious shimmies. After only several days, I can achieve this entire section.

The next chapters follow in increments of five minutes, ideal so that anyone on tight schedules can pick from six sections as a mini shimmy work out or combine the entire program for one hour of exercise:

Shimmy drill with hip slides and weight shift: Begin articulating the knees, hips from slow to fast pace using straight leg shimmies, and more.
 shimmy and Arabic hip walk shimmy: again, begin slow placed and up to tempo for a waist sculpting workout
Hip Twist, hip pushes and shoulder shimmies, these are layered on releve, and traveling steps for entire body work out!
Choo- choo shimmy euphoria-.This is a high energy section with traveling shimmies on releve, flat feet with arm patterns.Definelty ankle and leg strengthening! A short interlude of hip circles allow a break from the intensity of traveling releve. The music by Naked Rhythm in this section becomes an energy boost.
Shimmy combinations drill: The segments are combined into a total drill for even more challenging workout. The music is not my favorite here, but my main focus was to complete the five minutes of drills!
A very thorough cool down: soft sways and undulations, full body stretches, cat cow series, spinal twists. Sarah's voice in the background in soft gentle tones was totally relaxing and there isn't much left but to melt into the yoga mat drenched in sweat!
What a fantastic workout! A must have!!!

I have been dancing for 1.5yrs now and struggle with shimmies, accordingly I was looking forward to a DVD to help me out. I have Sarah's veil DVD, and whilst I haven't worked through it thoroughly I was impressed enough to buy the Shimmy one. I am really disappointed with it - regrettfully!

It is excellent quality, Sarah is lovely to learn from and watch, the chapters etc. are great for navigation but the content is NOT for BEGINNERs!!!!

Sarah gives a quick and I mean quick overview on technique for the moves which if you are a beginner you would be struggling quite frankly. Then the first drill on shimmies has layering shimmies over figure 8's (and others) and moving arms quite a bit. Now this is my big bug bear.

She doesn't teach layering (she mentions it, but no instruction) and layering over those moves is NOT BEGINNER.

So instead of feeling encouraged with some good basic shimmy breakdown and drills I am left discouraged and will put the lovely DVD away for a year till I find something to get me up to that level!!!!

If you are clever and can do shimmy layering already then this is an excellent resource but if you are a beginner so far as shimmies then this will probably be too hard ......

If anyone can recommend a DVD for me then that would be great!

The Bellydance Shimmy Workout is World Dance New York's latest offering in their popular workout series. For those of you who are counting, there are now five DVDs (six if you count Rhythms which is a little bit of a different format), each of which feature the WDNY staples - Neon, Blanca, Sarah Skinner, or Tanna Valentine. Shimmy, like the other workout DVDs, is marketed as a DVD that's intended for beginners and is hosted by Sarah Skinner.

Unlike the Cocktail DVD, this one has the pieces of the workout separated out allowing you to watch each in shorter drill sections. This is a nice touch, as it means that you can select from warmup, strength building, and other shimmy drills in order to do a shorter workout if you are not up for the entire full hour long shimmy bonanza. This is something that's especially beneficial to dancers who may not yet have the stamina for Sarah's lengthy shimmy drills - while they may not be particularly technically challenging for a more advanced dancer they were definitely a test for endurance if you decide to shimmy for the long haul. You can also choose to watch the different sections all together in one long flow session with, or without, Sarah's verbal cues. I will again give WDNY kudos for this setup as I think it's a most excellent way for dancers to learn by following along and also better understand, when only using the musical section, how the movements can effectively match up with the music. Also like the other WDNY workout DVDs, there's an entire section of technique tutorial to help you better understand how to execute each movement. The movements featured in this section of the DVD include:
* bent knee shimmy
* big knee shimmy
* sustained shimmy
* straight leg shimy
* hip hits
* hip twists
* 3/4 shimmy
* arabic hip walk (a variation of 3/4 shimmy on the down)
* choo choos
* cutesy butt choo choo
* shoulder shimmies
* shimmy layering
* releve and posture
For the beginning/intermediate dancer, this is a nice variety of shimmies and I was pretty surprised to see Sarah covered so many movements. Don't expect a lengthy drill session for each move though; this is, after all, intended to be only a brief introduction to help you better understand the move (the drilling comes in the shimmy drill sections where, instead of simply drilling each move, you will actually dance them!). Even so, Sarah gives a clear description of each movement, describing the body mechanics so that even those who have never danced before will be able to follow. I particularly appreciated the fact that her costuming here so nicely displays the movements - she is in a dark color on a very light background with no flowing skirts or pants to hide her feet or legs making it very easy to study the mechanics of each move. You definitely won't get frustrated here trying to figure out what on earth she is doing.

I've got to give Sarah credit - she dances through the entire DVD. From the very beginning of the warmup to the end of the cool down she fluidly moves her body and dances. I found myself thinking, geez, she really stretches out her neck quite prettily with a nice arm flourish and hand movements - a silly thought but, hey, when you see it you'll understand what I'm talking about. She brings grace to the entire process of her movement, not just the drills or the dancing, which can really benefit your muscle memory. If you can follow her method of using every opportunity to dance - not just the time when you're "supposed" to in the DVD - you will begin to discover that no movement is wasted and that each little gesture becomes a lyrical expression.

I know, it sounds cheesy, but I was pretty impressed by how she and her two dancing companions made the warmups (and the cool down too) themselves look like their own dance. And, you can imagine, that this carries into the drills and the entirety of the workout too. Additionally, Sarah gives fantastic stage face - her enthusiasm is catching and I found I couldn't help but smile right along with her. My calves and thighs may have ached during the hour long shimmyfest, but I was grinning the whole time!

Now, I also have to tell you just how much I loved Sarah's drills. I'm a drill nerd, and so I was in heaven with this section. The workout, if you do it in its entirety, is made up of these little drill sections with stretching and other movements in between. But if you are curious about just working on a drill or two Sarah's got you covered - because you're not just going to be dancing "shimmy drill 1" or "shimmy drill 2." OH NO. What you'll discover is that Sarah's carefully planned out her shimmy drills to focus on specific technique and or movements. So, ok, sure drills usually do that. But what I liked about her drills was the combination of the movements along with dancing elements such as transitions, weight shifts, level changes, and layering. These are pieces of bellydance that we don't always consciously focus upon and it was great to see them included here (for a description of the drill sections, check out Seir's excellent reivew).

I've seen a lot of shimmy-themed DVDs out there - there are definitely some that have really cute combos and very technically advanced shimmies. But what I really liked about this one was, much like many of the WDNY offerings, it has so much to offer. Once again, this is an excellent value - what you get is definitely worth what you pay for, if not more, in this little gem. In one DVD you get not just a workout but also themed drills, the breakdown of all of the different movements, and the opportunity to actually dance through the workout rather than just follow along. And, again, this one is just a fun one - I kept going back to it again and again on my day off, reluctant to leave the fun. Other reviewers are saying they finished it feeling energized and I had the same experience too; it left me giddy and excited to keep right on dancing. While the drills gave me technique practice the workout gave me dance practice - I'm definitely happy this one is now in my collection!

You will like this DVD if:
* You would like creative new ways to build strength and technique for even, clean shimmies.
* In particular, you are a beginning or early intermediate level dancer who would like to improve your shimmy technique while incorporating it into dancing and/or would like to work on shimmy layering.
* You would like to work on strength building techniques that incorporate shimmies (this was a really nice touch - my favorite part!) to improve your level change abilities.
* You are interested in learning how to do a variety of new shimmies and shimmy-based movements.
* You would like a workout that is moderate to challenging that is bellydance-based and includes tons of shimmying.
* You are looking for a REALLY fun workout!

What might not work for you:
* I've heard some complaints from dancers if the music featured in a workout bellydance DVD is not primarily bellydance music. This one uses a variety of music, some that sounds more ambient and other songs that are classical drum solo pieces. There's even one song by Solace off of an album they did that has a distinct Asian flair. This could work for you, if you really like to be exposed to different types of music to see how bellydance can work with it, or against if you prefer just dancing to more classical pieces.
* (Ok this is the obvious one) you'd like an offering that includes more than just shimmies - for that you might want to check out the WDNY Hard Candy workout DVD.
* There are no performances on this DVD. I was hoping for one or two, after Cocktail, but really this DVD is so awesome I can't whine too much about not getting to see Sarah and her dancers shake it.

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