Best of Middle Eastern Dance & More! (2002)

As a booking agent and multi-cultural dance choreographer, I found this video a delight to watch. Most Mid East videos show an endless parade of similar dances and after a while, no matter how well they are performed, it becomes rather ho-hum. In this video there was a LOT of variety, the dancers were obviously friends, and everyone was having fun! My two favorites were skillful, classy Anisa (Bev Pogreba) who can sustain a shimmy backbend longer than anyone I've ever seen, and the beautiful black girl (don't know her name) who, among other things, performed a rock solid shimmy solo and hit every beat without breaking a sweat! All the dancers had rhythm, knew what they were doing, and weren't trying to impress anyone -- just a demonstration of various cultural dances for the fun of it! The order of the choreographies was right on, the content was fabulous, and that inner passion for the dances shined through. All in all, one of the best videos I've ever seen!

While this video does has many examples of not often seen folkloric styles, I just personally didn't like this video. The folkloric dances are well executed and performed by dancers who obviously understand the cultures and styles they are representing, but I found many of them rather contrived, over long and boring.

The opening Cabaret dancer - Kaya performs a drum solo and has some excellent isolations. If I practiced constantly for the next 5 years straight I don't think I could achieve that level of crisp isolation. I will say however, that I also found her cane dance to be too over the top for my taste. There's a fine line (in my opinion) between being sensual and or flirtatious and taking it too far, and as I watched her dancing, I felt she had just gone too far. It didn't look like a belly dance to me, it look like another kind of dance (one that usually involves a pole.) The other cabaret dancer wasn't as good.. She is beautiful and has an excellent physique but frankly I thought her costuming seemed to be contrived not to display her dancing skills, but rather to show off her physique. The costume for her drum solo - I felt - was all wrong. It left nothing to the imagination - and by that I mean that there are movements in a drum solo that are executed by the legs but seen in the hips. Her sheer skirt took away the mystery and illusion. Kind of like being able to see the wires when a magician does a levitation trick. Although she has good extension and obvious dance training, I didn't see much layering or combinations..

There are a few worthwhile sections to the tape - the double veil routine was wonderful, as ws the Indian dance There were also a few outtakes at the end of the tape - especially the ramp rampi that were delightful. The ironic thing is that there is a short clip of the same cane dancer performing a different cane dance and frankly I liked the outtake cane dance better and would have liked to have seen the entire dance.

However the overall flavor of the video to me seemed to be that this is a compilation of performances from workshop shows (for those of you who are not familiar with that term - bellydancers frequently hold and attend workshops where a well known teacher is hired to come in and teach various aspects of the art form. There is usually a show in the evening - usually featuring the better dancers who paid to attend the workshop and starring the teacher in a grande finale).

I gave this video one star because there was no lower score. Save your money - there are tons of GOOD dance videos out there showcasing talented dancers - this isn't one of them.

Note; ***As the other negative reviewer wrote, I too edited my review (on July 7, 2005,) after my personal contact information was also sought out online by someone affiliated with this video who did not like my earlier review. In an attempt to not be contacted again personally for writing a review at Amazon-I am editing my review to "elaborate" on my likes and dislikes of this video. My rating of 1 star, however, remains the same.

The first thing I noticed is that this video has a few dancers re-appearing numerous times throughout the video in different dances. From the feel of this and the way it was done, it leads me to believe that a lot of this video isn't really "The Best Of Middle Eastern Dance & More" but more like a great dancer here, and a great performance there, with a lot of "friends" or an area of particular local dancers put in the video in between the really good acts. Many of these dancers are from the same area, and there is a same live drummer in numerous acts, so this adds to this feel (at least for me). This is just what I noticed, of course.

There were a couple of acts that I liked-there was a very enjoyable Tunisian pot balancing dance with a live drummer, a good example of Classical Indian dance, a whirling dervish act with a marvelous skirt. These were what I would consider the "gems" of this video. There were some "okay" performances as well-a few sword balancing acts in various styles, a candelabra balancing act, and various others-nice pieces, but average. There was nothing about them that really struck me about any of these particular dancers, at least the performances that were showcased in this particular video. Along with the few performances that I really like, I feel like there was a lot of "filler" in between the really great acts/performers.

~Anisa appears a few times in this video. Nice dancer, and seems to be enjoying what she is doing out there-but I was very distracted from her dancing skills by the two cabaret costumes she wore in a couple of the acts she was in. I feel (as someone who makes costumes for Middle Eastern dancers) that the costumes were attracting more attention than her dancing. They took away from her performance, and were unflattering to her.
I am not puritanical, or offended by a dancer showing skin-so this is not the reason for my dislike of the costumes. I just thought that they were unflattering to the dancer, and to the particular piece they were worn in. For instance with cut, color, style-you can show the same amount of skin in many costumes, but sometimes the details of it can make all the difference. One dancer may look better in traditional straps in a bedlah bra, and another may look better in a top with straps that are halter style. It is just a matter of what looks good on a particular person. In her drum solo she wore a costume made of a metallic sheer fabric that in an up close shot was nice, but from a further distance back (where most of the audience was) it looked like a very wide weave fishnet with a TINY handkerchief-like skirt. I thought especially for a drum solo that this was unflattering. You could see so much of the legwork that fuels the hipwork in this costume-that it took a lot of the focus off of her hipwork. In a drum solo with fast hipwork-I personally think it looks a million times better to have a long of flowing skirt-or harem pants on, because what is then the focus is your hips. I didn't like this particular costume at all, but if it had to be worn, it would have looked much better with a slow veil or sword routine-something with slower, rounder movements. There was also a gold costume that was also unflattering and distracted me from her dancing near the end of the video.
Her best act was in a Persian costume with the live drummer (also the same drummer who drums for other dancers in this video) the dance style and costuming seemed to be the most fitting and and flattering to her, and the costume was complimentary to her, not distracting from her, so I could focus more on the performance itself.

~There was one dancer named Siovana that I did not care for at all. She did a zils/drum solo piece in a yellow costume, and did a folkloric piece in a caftan. She played very fast zils, but I came away from that zil piece thinking that was all she did in the piece-it seemed like there wasn't really all that much going on other than the zil playing. (meaning not anything all that interesting as far as the dancing) I also found that her feet were very wide apart during certain portions of this number, and it really kept drawing my attention on her feet, and not her hips and torso. Maybe she is a great performer, and it didn't show through in the particular performances in this video, I don't know. I just wasn't impressed with the dances that I viewed on this video. Of the two on this video, however, I preferred the first piece that she did in the caftan and hip scarf.

~Kaya is the "vulgar cane dancer" talked about in another review here at Amazon. (I did not call her this, there is another reviewer that did say things of this nature-but I am finding that sometimes this review shows after mine, and other times it does not. Click on various links to see all of the reviews to read their commentary if it shows up.)The dancer is very good, has great isolations-but needs to tone down the "sexiness" a little-because she is coming across as "sexual" and not sensual. She did a nice drum solo and had great isolations-but I kept thinking "Leave your hair alone!" as she wildly whipped it around, and kept sexily piling it up on top of her head with her hands like a pinup model. I would have much rather had seen a little more creative arm and shoulder work now and then throughout the drum solo-rather than her hands in her hair through the piece. I wasn't feeling a natural "sensual persona" from her. I felt like she was purposely "trying" to be sexy by playing with her hair, and putting the cane between her teeth during her second performance on this video. I have since found out that Kaya also does regular modeling-so maybe the extensive come hither faces and hair playing are a modeling thing that carries over into her dancing??? She is pretty enough, a very good dancer, and has a natural presence that makes the added fluff, just "too much".

In the end of the video are some bits and pieces of other acts-some that I wish had been included in their entire length-over some of the more mediacre full length dances shown. Some of the snippets and clips looked like they could have been promising.

If you are interested in seeing a nice example of Tunisian pot dancing, Classical Indian dance, or in seeing a whirling dervish in an authentic skirt-then the cost of the video would probably be worth it to you to have a nice performance of either of these types to enjoy. Other than that, I found the performances on this video to be "hit and miss", just like if you would attend a hafla, or a large dance show after a workhop/seminar. A couple great acts, some good, and some not so good inbetween.

***I edited this review on July 5, 2005, after my personal contact information was sought out online by someone affiliated with this video who did not like my earlier review. In hopes of rectifying this situation-and in an attempt to not be contacted again personally for writing a review at Amazon-I am editing my review to "elaborate" on my likes and dislikes of this video. My rating of 2 stars, however, remains the same.
I would prefer not to be contacted in the future by any stars of, or producers of, any videos here that I review at Amazon-just because I may or may not have liked the product I am reviewing. I would also like to add that at LEAST 2 of the positive reviews here were given by the maker of the video, and a family member of hers. I checked into them myself. They were put here during the same week that the other negative reviewer and I were both contacted about our negative reviews-and simply for the purpose of counteracting our reviews. I wanted the general public to know this. Thank You.***

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