Refurbished Fitness Equipment: Sultry Slow Moves with Sadie Belly Dance DVD Video Review

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(More customer reviews)In what is actually one of the best videos to have come out this year, Sadie has tackled the difficult-to-teach area of "slow moves". Why difficult? Everyone wants instruction on how to do slow sensual dancing, but interpretations of what this even means are different and expectations vary. To top it all, the slower moves or taqsim in belly dance are often improvised and always highly emotive - which means they usually come from the dancer's own feelings. How on earth do you go about teaching all that?

I happen to think Sadie has done a rather good job of exploring this through the chiftetelli rhythm (Turkish-Greek rhythm often played slow and sensual) taking up concepts as well as technique. She also leaves you with combinations to play with and build upon. Altogether, I'd say that's quite a package. I'm usually outraged at IAMED's prices - about thrice those of other equally content-rich videos, but in this case is hard to resist and is definitely value for money.

As with most IAMED videos, this one is divided into Technique and Combination sections. There are five technique and combo sections ont his video. But first Sadie begins by explaining the chifti rhythm in detail. She doesn't just tell you the counts and break up of the rhythm and leave you to figure out the rest. She explores the different ways it will be played and accented. So far, this really is the best explanation I've seen on video.

The first technique section starts with undulating arm moves, adding the torso wave and going on to bends and sweeps. This warms you up a bit, though it's best to do a separate warm up even before this. We then go on to some moves like undulations and other rib cage moves that experienced beginners up will know well, but this is still a good way to align with the way Sadie will do them here. Each collection of moves is speeded up and done to the music. There are also some breathing exercises and stomach basics. You then go through the basic all-directions moves of the hips and also circles, eights and mayas. This really big technique section opens up the video to include beginners.

The technique section gives way to the first combination and it's the one that beginners can attempt most easily as it's the simplest one on this video. Made up of snake arms, undulations, hip circles and omis, mayas and eights, the combo is a nice one to begin a chifti piece with. The pace of instruction is really comfortable and very natural with everything that needs some breaking down being addressed and shown from different angles. It's finally practiced to music several times. This particular combo has become instantly ingrained for me and I use it or parts of it quite happily.

The second technique section takes up varying movement speed and accenting the rhythm. The movements used here are the more difficult ones though - pelvic rolls and controlled small undulations, interior hip circles, one-hip circles, and stomach pops. There are also some optional level changes and you also see how to use the demi point. Chest figure eights are brought in. Sadie shows you how to both dance the melody and dance the rhythm. This combination isn't that easy because it features moves in a controlled and slightly layered manner.

Angles, poses, eyes and where to look - that's the focus of the next technique section which takes up more demi point poses, body line and extension tips, and we also take up arabesques and the chiftitelli walk. The combination that goes with this section is very graceful and again, one that I really love doing - and it is doable, not Sadie-difficult. This combo is also possible with a veil. She also shows you easy ways to drop to the floor, though there's no floorwork taken up here, only graceful but to-the-floor level changes.

Technique 4 is all about accents. This is a very useful section because you can take away this learning and use it with many different movements. The moves here have more subtlety because they draw on small precise accents to add richness and texture. The difficulty level for this one is a bit higher. You could be combining a pelvic drop with a stomach pop, for instance, or tiny accents to the maya.
Technique 5 goes on to work with the faster 4×4 chiftitelli. Sadie show you here how to translate some of the moves learnt so far to faster rhythm. But then she goes on to take up moves that were inspired by the faster rhythm to begin with. This includes a fast chifti walk layered with eights. Alternating back chasse, and some hip work on top of that. This combination too is doable and nowhere near the difficulty level of her drum solo, even though it's a fast rhythm.

I've grown to love this video as I work with it - unhurriedly. I normally have a huge quarrel with IAMED for pricing their videos so high, but this one is every bit worth it. It's one of those videos that makes a difference fast and permanently.

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Product Description:
n this DVD, Sadie teaches you the basic elements of a Taksim and the Cifti Telli, and how to dance to the two together in a Cifti Telli Taksim.