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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fabulous for beginning transitions & choreography; not so great for learning beginner moves, Aug 4 2008
I've been using this DVD, along with several others, for a month now while starting to learn to belly dance. I'm a beginner -- until I purchased these DVD's, I had never belly danced before.
Although it does give a brief explanation of isolations and moves accompanied by helpful graphics, in comparison with a video such as Jenna's "Bellydance Level 1, Basics and Beyond," it does not teach the foundational moves completely or precisely enough, in my opinion.
In this video, Neon gives a brief explanation of a move, followed by a combination including that move, and any or all others taught before it in the video. The combinations require the ability to execute the moves quickly and precisely and transition between them. This is great, but I think if I had studied with this video alone, I would be dancing very sloppily indeed.
So, if you are a total beginner, and are serious about really learning to belly dance, make sure you buy another instructional DVD that will SLOW DOWN and teach you how to do each movement correctly. Practice the moves slowly and correctly, over and over, and then work up to the speed used on Neon's DVD.
That said, I AM finding Neon's DVD to be tremendously fun and useful now that I have some familiarity with basic movements (and have practiced them a lot), because as I do her combinations I get a chance to speed the movements up, combine them, and find out where my weaknesses are and what I need to work on.
So, this DVD is definitely useful, but I wouldn't buy it as a standalone and expect to become competent in basic belly dance from it. It is a crash course, as it says, but some of us (at least I) needed a little more simple approach to start with.
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