Customer Reviews

Bellydance: Beautiful Technique from Step One - The Beginner's Path to Flawless Artistry

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a beginning dancer who has to mostly rely on video instruction for my practices. So, I put a lot of thought into what I buy. I bought Autumn Ward's video after seeing clips on Youtube and I'm glad I did. I was looking for a comprehensive video that would break down the dance vocabulary and focus on building a strong foundation. Ward's video provides just that.

The first section is a detailed section on basic moves such as arm work, hip work, and transitions. Autumn spends a great deal of time breaking down each move, demonstrating correct technique, pointing out common mistakes, and adding in her dance philosophies. Therefore, it is a great "reference" for dancers to come back to if they want a calibrated breakdown of a move. As a beginner, it has also greatly helped me learn and recognize dance moves when I see them. In essence, it is the language of the dance, explained for any dancer who desires a muscular and intellectual understanding of the basic moves. That said, she does not focus on coaching the viewer through drilling. If I want a substantial drill, I follow her instruction on the move, pause the video, and drill it for 3-5 minutes. Then, I begin the video again.

The second section offers "practice flows" that the viewer can use to integrate the technical practice with rhythm and flow. The warm up is not as rigorous as I like but it feels relaxed and joyful. The flow segments are short, which is good for a weeknight practice and builds intutive understanding of transitions. They are also accessible and can offer the feeling of actual dancing even for a beginner like me. A more experienced dancer might find that the flows help them integrate Ward's unique style into their own.

The third part is a choreography that I have not done. It is wonderful though and I am working my way up to it.

The video includes 2 performances, both of which are inspiring and so joyful to watch. As I learn the dance and find my own voice and identity, I really try to cue into how a dancer makes me feel when I watch her. Ward is a model for seamlessly blending and communicating playful joyfulness and earthy sensuality.

With all the right ingredients, beautiful movement flows on a correct foundation. This program has all the lovely touches that distinguish just movement from dance. Here are the embellishments to present your dance with the qualities of an experienced dancer, flawless, and finessed.

The eloquences in dance terminology and the finished result brings Autumns dance to captivation. I recall performances by Autumn in past issues of WDNY videos Her style is unique as is her look.

I chose to begin my review by viewing her performance section before beginning the program. The performances are rich, with the freedom to embrace a combination of styles; strong in oriental and classical dance; Indian hints sprinkled about. Once I studied her style of expression, I felt it would be simpler to understand her program.

The dance theory is elaborate and begins in full blown detail. There is much to the technique and the warm up is essential to prepare the body for these moves. Autumn tells you she will start at the beginning and she does.
To begin, the warm up section is extensive. The foundations, from breath to movement because proper inhalation and exhalation brings life to the dance. Orientation of space in a stage, turning, Autumn narrates and moves about quickly because there is much to learn.

The technique section defines basic posture, with several variations such as wide stance, staggered stance, building blocks, and upper body mechanics. An elaborate section on arms, basic and elaborate arm transitions. Also included are lower body movements such as:
Tilting the pelvis
3/4 shimmies
Hip lifts and drops
Circles
Undulations

In the dance philosophy segment, the practice flows and practice choreography are designed with and without voice cues. Pace yourself
in the practice flow section as it is designed in six series pending your progress. Patience and perfection is pretty much a solid theory, before moving ahead, "if you slosh through the moves, so shall you engrain into your muscle memory."

In the practice choreography Autum explains the five elements she implements into personal choreography.
The musical is mystical and allows freedom of movement without a rigid beat.The dance moves are clearly defined and the visuals were clear and pleasing to the eye.

Although this program is designed for beginner, some background of basic fundamentals will facilitate the entry to the program. Faithful use of the warm up section will allow an easier transition into some of the intricate moves as twist and shift and others simply because muscle memory makes some of the intricate moves here easier to master. Overall,
the near three hour presentation is not only interesting, but captivating as Autum moves and speaks.Autum doesnt spill out overly dressed jargon but rather she presses forward with confidence and eloquence of words that match her style. This approach to belly dance is the trajectory to artistry in a beautiful way. I loved this program and learned much from it.

This fantastic DVD will tell you how to create beauty in belly dance from the very basics to the finer details, and to "dance with the radiant feeling of an open heart." Autumn Ward is a gorgeous, graceful woman with excellent verbal skills, who can teach you both with words and visual examples the fundamentals of her art.

For Beginners:
If you've never taken a dance class in your life, This DVD would be a superb first course, and should keep you busy for months because of its lengthy tutorials. You'll learn terminology, all the basic positions, and some easy to learn choreography. Because of the simple and well lit production, and Autumn's concise demonstrations which are easy to see, this DVD is a great starting point for any beginner, and those of you studying other art forms are sure to learn something too.

For Intermediate Level:
There is much to learn here even for the more advanced student because of the emphasis on style, and the many details one might have overlooked while learning the art of dance. It makes a terrific refresher course, as Autumn's technique is so precise (and shows her versatility in a variety of dance forms), and her expressive musicality is marvelous to watch.

In the "Practice Flows" segments there is a "Music Only" option which I appreciate to practice with, once one has learned from the verbal instruction, and the performances are a treat. The 1st one is continuous flow from one tempo and rhythm to the next, and the 2nd one a sultry number in a beautiful red and black costume, like a dream from the 1001 Nights come to life. Music is well balanced and lovely, and includes Serpent's Garden, Electric Oasis, Solace, and many more.

Autumn besides an artist with a wonderful talent, is also a top notch instructor. As she shows you the steps, she moves like a swan on water, regal, gentle, graceful. She breaks down every step, every movement, slowly, clearly, with grace and generosity, with patience that only a true teacher can call her own.

From her way of teaching one can truly feel and understand, that Autumn cares, and wants you to really learn, learn well, not only how to execute the steps; but how to make them graceful and fluid; therefore guiding you along the way, little by little, and transform your dance into an inspiration, a work of art. She wants you to learn, and believe me, you learn!!!

In my opinion, to watch Autumn teach, the way she moves, and demonstrates through words and actions, how to attain flawless artistry, would not only be essential for beginners, but helpful to more advanced dancers interested in belly dance, as a art.

She truly posses the gift and skill of the generous, knowledgeable and noble soul of a dedicated teacher, as well as that of an artist, a magical combination for students of belly dance. Unfortunately that "magic" is not usually found in many artists (prominent or otherwise), who "teach" .

Three more things I'd like to add:

1) Autumn teaches from different angles, in front of a mirror, in a well lit room. She wears a costume, that let you see all the nuances, of every move she's in the process of teaching you.

2) Thanks to Amazon for carrying this product!

3) Thank you Autumn for your inspiration and experience, for caring and giving so much! And last but not least, for the break you give to your students, allowing us to purchase such a wonderful tool for an affordable price.

PS I'm looking forward to your fallow up instructional DVD.!

This is a great and detailed intro into basic movements and the down-to-the-bare-bones breakdown of each. This is a great teacher. Her teaching style is very much along the lines of classical dance training and stage performance, as in ballet. I did learn something new on several movements that has helped me perfect them. I also gained several tips on arms and positioning & others that really improved my appearance to the audience (judging from a recent video). The drills are helpful and fun to do. Arms and transitions are a weak area for me & this DVD has helped that too.

One caveat for the beginner: This dancer's style, while flawless and graceful in performance, comes across a little mechanical for my taste, especially during the instruction and drills. I don't know, but I suspect her foundation is in ballet. While I do drill along with the routines, I try not to be so imitative that I look stiff. I like a little earthiness & femininity, and that isn't necessarily easy for me, either. Learn the technique with her, but be sure to watch a lot of performances before you strictly adhere to this particular teacher's style.

An excellent DVD all around, glad I bought it.

I've taken a few belly dance classes before, but that was years ago, and I can't currently afford them. But I wanted to get back into dance, so I read reviews of several DVDs and finally decided on this one as a good starter.

I wish I hadn't.

I was really disappointed in this DVD as a "beginner class replacement", and after I thought about it a bit, I realized why. There's a vast difference between explaining something to someone, and teaching it to them. This DVD *explains* things beautifully, and I imagine I'll go back to it once I've worked with the two other DVDs I've bought and gotten a bit more of a foundation, to polish technique and use the practice flows and such. But it doesn't really *teach* belly dance very much at all. In the instruction sections, Autumn explains various positions and moves in great detail. However, there's no opportunity to practice the move she's explaining along with her. She demonstrates, maybe even demonstrates a couple times if you're lucky, but then it's on to the next one.

If you're the kind of person who can watch something being demonstrated/explained once, then practice it on your own, and that doesn't frustrate you, you'll probably get a lot more out of this DVD than I did. I'm looking for more of a teaching/learning experience than a technical explanation, and Autumn's demonstrate-and-move-on just didn't do anything helpful for me. I tried one of the practice flows, but with there being such a gap between having the move explained and then having to go into a totally different section of the DVD to actually use it, I had a hard time integrating what had been explained into following the flow I was trying to do.

With her new video, Autumn Ward aimed to bring in the sophistication of the dance from the foundational level. Her objective has made this video different from most other basics videos, which focus on giving the beginner the full repertoire of moves.

The sophistication objective also means that this video is very "talky'. You don't just start dancing from minute one. That's both good and bad. Absolute beginners won't have the patience because they don't yet care deeply enough. On the other hand, if someone is serious enough about wanting to learn belly dancing in all its elegance, perhaps to get to performance level, then the instruction here will help build clean technique. That means detail detail detail. Even without doing a full-ish repertoire of moves, this video is long. If moves such as the one-hip circle, vertical eights, upper body moves and more had been included, this would have had to be a double disc set. Not a bad thought, in my opinion.

So really, the focus is on form here. Every aspect of form rather than every move known to bellykind.

And so we begin with a Foundation section, probably the most important on the video. Most instructional videos will take a moment to explain correct posture. Not so here. We go through complete head-to-toe guidance including the alignment of the hands and arms, feet and legs, the orientation of the whole body, balance and weight, overall stance and alignment and breath and flow.

`What Autumn does is to explain the rationale behind each concept, demonstrate how it works, how to do it, how not to do it and she also gives you a practical exercise to check or practice. I have rather weak ankles and dreadful balance, and found her advice on how to ensure you place your feet properly and how to improve balance really useful.

My own way of working with this section would be a) bring it into the regular warm up I do and b) sometimes work through any one part of the section and immediately implement it in the dancing I choose to do after that. For instance, I worked with the feet placement aspect and then when I did a round of Bellydance Rhythms, I paid deliberate attention to the placement of the feet all through. This makes the moves come out more confidently, I must say.

The Foundation section is really like an enhanced lecture. Learners may find it tedious all at one go unless they're dead serious. Breaking up working with it might make it easier. See, implement, come back and check.

The Arms segment is also foundational, which is perhaps why it follow next. It's still within the explaining and demo'ing portion of this video. Here, Autumn goes through some basic arm positions, variations, and technique. She basic technique and broken line technique. Autumn actually uses her arms a lot and very prominently and this contributes a lot to the energetic and fully-present feel of her dancing, in my opinion. It's my belief that following her tips here could make all the difference to how lifted and elegant you could look. The focus is more on energy and stength and how to use it rather than on giving lots of different arm paths and styles. So, for those looking for a mini encylopedia of arm and hand moves to pick from - this is not it. Rather, it's information and demos on how to get the simplest positions look elegant and dancerly.

We get to another big section now: Building Blocks. This section opens up with a big menu of its own. The description of what is taken up is different from what you'll typically see. There's "Full Shift Side" which we also know as a large vertical slide. There's side to side tilts, lengthen forward and back (forward and back slide), isolated shift side, and released shift back. Yes, you'll find these on most other basics videos but Autumn takes these up in greater detail, changing weight and urging you to pay attention to certain aspects of form. So again, it's for those who want a lot of finesse but perhaps not for those who would rather just get on with it without so much depth.

The building blocks are now taken to the next level. Tilts, shimmies and drops, 8s and circles, forward hips, undulations and twist-and-shift are all taight in detail, with each of these having its own menu of further broken down secitons. Many of the movements are advanced. The weighted drop, for example, is something you won't often see on an absolute basics video. Also double drops, off-center circle, forward hips, and many variaitons on undulations. The basic undulation is taught with great care in what is the longest explanation I've ever seen before. I'm definitely going to correct and align my basic unduation with this section. But no reverse undulation has been taken up. I really would have liked that.

The Twist-and-Shift section is also, I believe, a fairly advanced move and difficult for a beginner to do cleanly. The basic twist-and-shift is taken up in three variations.

It's here that we actually get into the do-along phase. Autumn explains her approach, and then gets into a medium-length warm up. It's more of a warm up than a conditioning program like Asharah's. There are many moves I've worked on with Sera's East Coast Tribal, though it's a shorter warm up on this video.

There's an Arms flow and warm up now. You need to know what's in the previous arms technique section to work along with this one. This isn't a reetitive drill but a flow, so you need to be familiar with the seauence to keep pace. I'm not very good with flows that involve quick-changing instructions so I would need to watch many times before I can do exactly what she's doing at the same time. The section will help improve transitions but you have to be nice and alert to catch the nuancing.Don't forget to also follow the gaze.

Practice time! The practice flow section has seven little flows of about five minutes each. These are not dance-ready combinations though they do involve coordinating witht he msuic. These do increase in difficulty level as they go up to the more complex moves. While the first flow-bit is easy enough for me, the rest need to be carefully done if this beautiful form is to be maintained. When I tried it, I too wore a bra and hip scarf, as Autumn's suggested, and this definitely helped me see if the move and stance was turning out neatly or not. Each of these flow-bits is to a different piece of music. You can choose to do the entire set of seven with music and no voice cues.

The choreography is meant to see the movements taught in context; technique transforms into dance with the music of Solace - Azure from Iman. I must admit though that I'm not very fond of this piece of music. It's too peaceful for me. This is a full-fledged choreography and it isn't broken down a lot. You will get voice cues for moes that have the moves. You dance to both melody and rhythm. There are patterns in the choreography. The focus is on what Autumn refers to as stylistic integrity. This will be difficult for an absolute beginner to follow because choreography learning skills will not have developed. But otherwise, it's not overdanced or brimming over with gimmicks - it's clean and simple - which means it must be done with perfect technique to be worth looking at.

Again, you can choose a music-only option.

Autumn performs the choreography in costume and also another Autumn-style passionate performance on this video.

Belly Dance Beautiful Technique from Step One

If you need a break-down of the basic steps and music playing in the background (sometimes even the foreground) distracts you, you need this video. Autumn Ward is an intelligent and philosophical instructor. She breaks down the basic moves clearly, making sure that you take note of your alignment. You will have the opportunity to practice each step with her initial instruction, during practice flows, and during the choreography. You have the choice of doing the practice flows and practice choreography with or without voice cues. You will learn about stage direction, orientation of your limbs to your body, basic classical arms, breathing, balance and philosophy of dance. This is a 2 hour video that has a lot in it. I would recommend taking notes as you watch the portions on philosophy and what you should think about when analyzing your dance.

She really is concerned about you getting a foundation. She takes her time to teach the moves in a very detailed manner with various illustration of what to do as well as what not to do. Very different approach from most instructional dvd's. I think this is a good instroduction foro sensual belly dance. You are taught full body awareness.

She shows you what it looks like when your form is not right. She really zones in on the many mistakes people make when learning the posture and when your body is out of alignment for each move what it looks and feels like. She uses the wall and the floor to teach you undualations. She uses the clock and other naturual things to help you visualize the direction your body should be moving into and what part of the body is doing most of the work. Not bits and pieces here and there. Very detailed explanations. After buying other dvd's I can see the importance of her illustrations.

Her drills are great at the end because she combines the moves in a smoothe way that makes you feel like you are floating into the moves. Relaxing and just feeling your every movement from within. She makes it an internal experience because belly dance expecially sensual belly dance is a from of expression. This would be good for praise dancers. You learn to put feeling into your performance. She teaches with feeling. You should have this one as a part of your collection for variety. You can see her every move when she does a performance. This should be a variety to your collection.

I should preface this review by saying that I'm not a natural dancer. I'm not coordinated and I have a hard time remembering choreography (without constant repetition). I also have bad knees, which like to partially dislocate if I turn them wrong. Add to all that, I'm over fifty years old and overweight. Much less than before I started using belly dance to exercise, but still.

I bought Autumn's video after beginning with "Luscious" and having a hard time with some of the movements, specifically undulations. I used the tutorial section to strengthen my form in the areas that worked for me as well. I like the way Autumn demonstrates different ways to execute movements. Her instruction on undulations was especially helpful to me because she provided more than one way to execute the movement. Autumn has grasped the concept that every body's different and no single style of learning works for everyone. (I *so* appreciate that!) Her teaching style is clear, precise, and methodical. Moreover, Autumn anticipate and warns against common mistakes, some of which I was making. I enjoyed learning the form for arm movements and finger and hand exercises, and became more graceful as a result. (Well, as graceful as I ever get.)

I had difficulty with the practice flow, but not because of any flaw in Autumn's pedagogy. The hip shift-twist, etc., which begins with a single knee bent straight forward, proceeds in such a way that my knees became sore. (My knees need to face forward, so the twist was a problem.) I did eventually master the techique insofar as I am able, but my kneecaps wanted to move out of line so I executed the movement sparingly.

Autumn's online bio doesn't say that she has a background in ballet or modern dance,possibly because hs enow focuses on traditional ethnic dance, but she did tale gymnastics as a child and she might have learned [some] ballet as a result. Mostly, her style of dancing reminds me of the way my high school modern dance teacher moved. I would certainly reccommend this video for anyone who wants to pay attention to proper form, as it's clear to me that's what you get.

As a parting aside, I wish I knew where she got her practice hip scarf. That thing is cool looking!