Customer Reviews

Improvisation Toolkit Volume 1: Movement Recall

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

 

 

Belly dancing is essentially an improvised dance. Certainly you have choreographies, and wonderful ones at that, but what is most remarkable about the dance is that the dancer can come up with skillful moves entirely spontaneously. And she matches the music perfectly while doing so! That's why anyone who's interested enough in this dance wants to be able to interpret the music and really really dance to it with self-expression, emotion and enjoyment. But how on earth do you teach creativity? It's a tough one; which is why most belly dance videos focus wholly on muscle work and combinations and choreographies - but they're at a loss how to figure out teaching improvisation. Some teachers say it can't be taught whatsoever and tell the learner to "just do it" or "listen to the music!"

Until now. Nadira Jamal's video, the first on this subject, actually does tackle the challenging area of improvisation. In this first of a three-DVD series, Nadira focuses on Movement Recall, which is what gives most people "dancer's block".

This video begins with an orientation to improvisation and what the video series will bring. I like that a warm up has been included here because you don't have to stop and turn to another activity. The warm up is adequate for the activity on the video.
After you physically warm up, it's time to get the creative side of you going with a session of "noodling" or playing with movement. Noodling is a nice fun concept meant to loosen you up and disinhibit you. The exercises Nadira puts you through while noodling make you turn off your inner critic and have fun with movements. Nadira explains the concept in detail, gives its rationale and logic, and demos how she would do it. Then you have a whirl yourself. This isn't just an ice breaker but also leads on to the next set of explanations and exercises.

Through a series of exploratory exercises and demos, Nadira next gets you acquainted with your own movement vocabulary and helps you identify your key moves. With each exercise on this video, you find yourself exploring your moves in different ways. The exercises stop you from over-thinking and getting stuck in complex territory. What's really nice is that relatively early beginners can use the few belly dance movements they've learnt and use these exercises to start being creative. The exercises are an excellent way of getting concepts into your head because you're doing something rather than just listening to explanations of what improvisation means, conceptually.
More exercises help you take into account timing, transitions, weight changes into your improvisation.

The next chunk of exercises is most innovative. It involves arranging your moves into lots of categories. I'm not getting into more detail on this as it would take the fun out of the video. Or sort of spoil the surprise, anyway. Broadly I'd say that instead of creating with individual movements you're now using categories. Now you've moved from fooling around with the alphabets into guided chunks of improvisation! You may, like me, find yourself smiling at this point because the penny has dropped. This is probably the point where you'll be yelling - hey! I'm doin it! And did I forget to say.. it's fun!

But the funnest of all exercises is the final one: choreographing the song, Layla. Something I've always wanted to do, by the way. What Nadira does here is to give you different levels of help choreographing this song. She starts backwards - and that's a great tip I'm going to use often - and shows you how to end the song. But moving further back along the song, she leaves chunks out for you to fill in. You work your way right to the beginning of the song. With several repetitions - there you have it! It's really too delightful.

Through these exercises, all of which use music from the CD Bellydance for Fortune and Fame by the Mogador Band, pretty scenes fill the screen at points where you have to do stuff on your own with voice cues. The whole video has a wonderful flow and is sort of butter smooth from one end to the other.

As it weren't a wonderful enough video already, Nadira leaves you with some thoughts on what else to do - and even more exercises on her Taktaba website. Taktaba, by the way, is thename of Nadira's podcasts. How she's managed to make such easy work of such a difficult subject, I totally don't know.

Why do I talk so much! In one word - fantastic.

Length:: 2:32 Mins

The official trailer for The Improvisation Toolkit Volume 1

I wish I wish I wish I would have had this five years ago.I ended up figuring half of this stuff out the hard way.( and with lots of chickening out, and nail biting).
She basically TEACHES you how to improvise. There are people who PRESENT material, and people who TEACH material. I have no doubt in my mind that if you don't know how to improvise your dance, or are crappy at it( using the same two or three moves)...this is an INVALUABLE dvd. She really is a teacher, and a good one. I can't wait to see what she puts out next.
I recommend this for all levels of dance. Even if every dance you do is off the top of your head, this will help you to unlock some of the stuff that is way down in the recesses of your brain, and use it. BUY THIS!

I took a chance on this DVD based on Mala Bhargava's review. I have never regretted a single purchase made following her recommendations. This DVD is extraordinary. I had been losing focus just doing drills and following choreography from the more than 30 belly dance DVD's I own. Within a minute or two Nadira had me captivated and hopeful that the answer to my lack of direction might be forthcoming. I just followed her instructions, (rather than give the DVD a run-through first) and by the time the DVD was over I knew this DVD was the missing link for me. I went straight to her web-page to find even more wonderful information, and some surprise treats. I actually made a list placing all of the moves I know in an order in which to make them "safety moves". Today at work, I "noodled" in the bathroom stall during my breaks. lol. Thanks to this DVD, I am more inspired to really dig deep into myself to explore this beautiful art form. This production is perfect for anyone who knows the moves, but does not really know how to make them dance. Well, gotta go now, I don't want to spend any more time online because I would rather be "noodling". (You will know what I mean if you buy the DVD). Please do not be put off by the reviewer who said she could not understand what Nadira was saying. She is articulate and easily understood. Her voice sinks into your consciousness and leads you deeper into the exercises with ease. This is a very special DVD.

Belly dancing is essentially an improvised dance. Certainly you have choreographies, and wonderful ones at that, but what is most remarkable about the dance is that the dancer can come up with skillful moves entirely spontaneously. And she matches the music perfectly while doing so! That's why anyone who's interested enough in this dance wants to be able to interpret the music and really really dance to it with self-expression, emotion and enjoyment. But how on earth do you teach creativity? It's a tough one; which is why most belly dance videos focus wholly on muscle work and combinations and choreographies - but they're at a loss how to figure out teaching improvisation. Some teachers say it can't be taught whatsoever and tell the learner to "just do it" or "listen to the music!"

Until now. Nadira Jamal's video, the first on this subject, actually does tackle the challenging area of improvisation. In this first of a three-DVD series, Nadira focuses on Movement Recall, which is what gives most people "dancer's block".

This video begins with an orientation to improvisation and what the video series will bring. I like that a warm up has been included here because you don't have to stop and turn to another activity. The warm up is adequate for the activity on the video.
After you physically warm up, it's time to get the creative side of you going with a session of "noodling" or playing with movement. Noodling is a nice fun concept meant to loosen you up and disinhibit you. The exercises Nadira puts you through while noodling make you turn off your inner critic and have fun with movements. Nadira explains the concept in detail, gives its rationale and logic, and demos how she would do it. Then you have a whirl yourself. This isn't just an ice breaker but also leads on to the next set of explanations and exercises.

Through a series of exploratory exercises and demos, Nadira next gets you acquainted with your own movement vocabulary and helps you identify your key moves. With each exercise on this video, you find yourself exploring your moves in different ways. The exercises stop you from over-thinking and getting stuck in complex territory. What's really nice is that relatively early beginners can use the few belly dance movements they've learnt and use these exercises to start being creative. The exercises are an excellent way of getting concepts into your head because you're doing something rather than just listening to explanations of what improvisation means, conceptually.
More exercises help you take into account timing, transitions, weight changes into your improvisation.

The next chunk of exercises is most innovative. It involves arranging your moves into lots of categories. I'm not getting into more detail on this as it would take the fun out of the video. Or sort of spoil the surprise, anyway. Broadly I'd say that instead of creating with individual movements you're now using categories. Now you've moved from fooling around with the alphabets into guided chunks of improvisation! You may, like me, find yourself smiling at this point because the penny has dropped. This is probably the point where you'll be yelling - hey! I'm doin it! And did I forget to say.. it's fun!

But the funnest of all exercises is the final one: choreographing the song, Layla. Something I've always wanted to do, by the way. What Nadira does here is to give you different levels of help choreographing this song. She starts backwards - and that's a great tip I'm going to use often - and shows you how to end the song. But moving further back along the song, she leaves chunks out for you to fill in. You work your way right to the beginning of the song. With several repetitions - there you have it! It's really too delightful.

Through these exercises, all of which use music from the CD Bellydance for Fortune and Fame by the Mogador Band, pretty scenes fill the screen at points where you have to do stuff on your own with voice cues. The whole video has a wonderful flow and is sort of butter smooth from one end to the other.

As it weren't a wonderful enough video already, Nadira leaves you with some thoughts on what else to do - and even more exercises on her Taktaba website. Taktaba, by the way, is thename of Nadira's podcasts. How she's managed to make such easy work of such a difficult subject, I totally don't know.

Why do I talk so much! In one word - fantastic.

The whole concept sounded so very good, but when I got the DVD, the voice quality was so bad that I understood only about 1/4 of what she said. Her words melted into one another and she spoke so fast it was impossible to understand her.

Nadira's toolkit is designed to help dancers move from choreography to improvisation by breaking down the process and helping stop that critical mind chatter that so often whispers critical comments while you're dancing. She points out, quite wisely, that dancers don't have trouble because they don't have enough movements - they have trouble because they have too many to choose from and can't remember them! She also makes the point that the difference between choreography and improvisation is only in the timing of the creative process - in one it happens before the performance, and in the other it happens during the performance.

In Volume 1 - Movement recall, she leads you through a series of exercises that she describes, demonstrates and then coaches you through. The exercises involve both movement to music as well as written exercises - and it's the latter that I found surprisingly useful, so much so that I'm going to be using a notebook more often in my dance practice!
The first steps are to just move, not necessarily with dance vocabulary, just moving to music - and if your critical voice gets in the way, Nadira's demonstration of how to deal with it will at the very least make you laugh!
Then she takes you through simply moving within your current bellydance vocab, in order to notice some of the themes you already use. Thereafter she asks you to identify several 'safety movements' that can form your 'home base' while dancing an improvised piece.
Once the safety movements are firmly in your muscle memory, it's time for more themes and variations of moving in and out of these safety movements, adding new movements before and after them, and then dancing a 'plug and play' choreography where the improvisation is limited to several points within a simple framework that is already choreographed.

There's more - but you need to get the DVD yourself to really appreciate the thought and planning that has gone into developing what is a well-structured instructional DVD.

Points I liked above Volume 1: fabulous production values, clear graphics, nice pace and no unnecessary frills. The structure of learning is excellent, and I enjoyed Nadira's no-nonsense straight-up approach. I also liked the listing of all the movements, the use of journalling and the instructions to the critical voice! I really enjoyed the advice at the end of the DVD about adding new movements or movement combinations to your improv practice: add the new movement into your diary under one or more of the movement vocab headings, then practice moving from one 'safety movement' to the new movement, then onto another 'safety movement' etc until the movement transitions become easy and you don't have to think as hard.

Points I'd like done differently: maybe a nice overview or index so it's easier to flick through each section, because you have to scroll down the entire list to get to the section you're currently working on. Some of the music could be a little longer especially in the 'transitions' section to have a bit longer practicing moving from one movement to another - although nothing is stopping me from putting some of my own music to 'noodle' to!

Volume 2: This DVD extends and adds to the improvisation by looking at how to structure your improvisation so the audience can follow your train of thought. Now at this juncture I have to lay my cards on the table: I do prefer a less symmetrical dance from the style Nadira discusses, but at the same time I really appreciate some of the information that she provides. Nadira is quite clear that her style of dance is American Cabaret, or Vintage Orientate, and her movement patterns and the structure of her dance shows this heritage. By this I mean she uses symmetry, floor patterns and repetitions that I don't think I see as much in Egyptian dancing. This isn't to detract from the DVD at all - but if you're unfamiliar with the differences between the styles, you may be caught out.
Back to this DVD. Nadira takes you through 'physical continuity' where your movements link from physical points eg hip slides to hip circles to horizontal figure 8s' - all connect through the hip extended to the side. This makes it easy for your audience to follow the movements without having to think too hard! Once again she uses journalling, and really clear demonstrations to help your learning.
Repetition is another category of structure - either straight repetition, or variations such as A, A, A, B or A, B, A, B where one movement is A and one is B. Nadira takes you through many variations along this line which both drills the movements into your muscle memory, but also helps you develop nice transitions between each one.
She also takes you through strcutured observations - asking you to watch YouTube or other DVD's to identify how the dances are structured, which not only helps you to see how a dancer achieves a 'look', but also adds to your dancing vocabulary (& who needs an excuse to watch YouTube anyway?!).

Once again, things I liked were the use of journalling, great examples danced by Nadira, clear and explicit instructions and graphics without any silly video effects, and lots of examples. And again I'd have liked an overview menu so I could skip to the section I want without having to run through a whole lot to get there. Or maybe I just need to learn to operate my DVD player better!

Would I buy these again? You bet - they're probably in the same league as Ranya Renee's Baladi instructional but quite different. And now that I have a dancing journal, I think there will be a whole lot of reflective writing going on.
Oh and did I add that if you get bored with the exercises on the DVD's, you can down load some more from the website? And if you video yourself, she'll give you a video critique.

I loved the care taken with this product and would love to see more really ADVANCED DVDs..but, it does run a bit slow. I need a little more pizazz to stay totally interested and to make me want to watch it again. Maybe chat AS the information is demonstrated. I think that I am still in on future DVDs...and for sure more info. from well spoken instructors.

Nadira does an excellent job giving practical advice about how to improve improvisational skills. It is a structured, well thought out curriculum that is full of exercises designed to ease you into the process of improv. As a teacher, this dvd gave me a lot of great ideas about how to work with my students around this process.

While I agree with some other reviewers that the sound quality leaves something to be desired, I think the quality of the information in this DVD far exceeds any technical problems involved. This is an absolutely invaluable resource in my belly dance collection. This DVD has really helped with my performance anxiety and with my getting stuck mid-improv with no ideas. I would recommend this program for any dancer as the principles can be applied to improvisational dance of all styles.