Product Details

• Actors: Michelle Joyce
• Directors: Michelle Joyce
• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Cheeky Girls Productions
• DVD Release Date: November 15, 2007
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000Z3P3OU
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,822 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The PERFECT gift for your favorite bellydancer, November 18, 2007

By 

Amanda Niehaus (Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secrets of the Stage Volume One: A Performance Course for Belly Dancers by Michelle Joyce (DVD)

So you're an intermediate or advanced level dancer who doesn't have a lot of performance experience. You've got "the moves" -- but you're thinking, "now what?"

Michelle Joyce's new dvd series "Secrets of the Stage" is made for you, the dancer who is having trouble putting all you've learned together into one nice performance package. There's something here for everyone: if you're a choreographed dancer, there's a section of improvisation drills. If you're a technically proficient dancer but aren't sure about your choreographic skills, there is ample discussion on making your dance interesting. If your on-stage energy isn't what it should be, you'll find expert advice from dancers who once suffered from the same problems. Practically paralyzed by stage fright? That's covered here too, along with many other common performance problems.

I think I can say with confidence that this dvd is the first to actually offer analysis of entire dances - by the dancers themselves! Watching this dvd is like being backstage or in the green room of a major dance event. You'll hear advice, suggestions, tips, tricks, and horror stories from professional dancers, all the while seeing performance concepts illustrated right there on the screen.

This dvd, volume 1 in the set, is arranged in three major sections for analysis: Calmness and Simplicity, You and Your Music, and Focus and Energy Projection. In between and after these sections are Practice Exercises to help get you started incorporating these concepts into your own dancing.

"Calmness" begins with an unusual approach - by showing you dance performances that didn't go quite as planned. The dancers highlighted in this section discuss salvaging their performances from wardrobe and prop malfunctions, and give advice on how to keep calm and still enjoy yourself when things don't go the way they did in practice.

After this section is a chapter on "Fight or Flight" which includes exercises and ideas to help you relax backstage and to help manage nervousness. The breathing techniques and short exercises demonstrated here are what the pros use to prevent backstage "freakout" before competitions and shows.

"Simplicity" is the next chapter and the discussion and performance analysis here centers around avoiding "overdancing" and that common phenomenon of throwing everything you know into the first 30 seconds of the song. There is so much good advice in this chapter I had to watch it several times to absorb it all.

"You and Your Music" is a chapter discussing choreography and improvisation. Many of us suffer from not fully embracing our music, and not really making it OURS. The helpful hints and advice here will allow you to look at your music in a new way, and pull more from your music than just the melody and the beat.

"Focus and Energy Projection" tackles subjects such as how to avoid the plastered-on smile, making a connection with your audience, and taking your audience on a musical journey with you. This section is followed by a series of calming exercises that involve breathing, visualization, and progressive relaxation. These exercises would be very nice to do before a performance, to center and ground yourself, or even after a stressful day at the office.

After you've relaxed, you can move to the next section of exercises. First is a chair dance exercise to help you learn and practice emotional expression in the upper body. We tend to get locked in to thinking this dance is all about the hips, and the upper body is often neglected, so this exercise brings your attention back up the upper body and torso.

Next is a long section of 7 different improvisation exercises. These exercises are harder than they look! You're given a short clip of music, which is repeated 4 times, and you're told to find 4 different ways to dance to it. After the exercise you can see what the professional dancers did to that same music. This exercise really makes you think!

The last exercise is the really brilliant "Focus" exercise, which helps you to evaluate and practice where your attention is focused when you dance. This exercise helps to make the dance more of internal process, and aids in helping you truly connect with your audience on an emotional level.

Camerawork, lighting, and sound are excellent and are comparable to Michelle's other dvds. Distractions are eliminated by having the screen go black for the improv and relaxation exercises. When Michelle is narrating, her voice is calming yet still full of energy, and soft piano music accompanies the relaxation exercises.

This dvd runs about 80 minutes, but you can't just expect to watch it once and completely absorb the material in 80 minutes. There is a lot of information and inspiration packed in those minutes and it will take more than a few viewings to unlock all of what's here.

My impression of the dvd is that it seems like a conversation between professionals, discussing various facets of belly dance, but the discussion is very intellectual and thoughtful. I love the fact that the dancers comment on their own performances. I love the fact that so many dancers are involved (I forgot to count - I think it's at least 6 or 7). The analysis and commentary are presented very professionally and eloquently, and completely without giggly inside jokes or a lot of "uhs" and hemming and hawing.

I think one of the unrealized benefits of having this dvd in your collection will be how motivating it is, and how inspiring it is. Have you had a bad practice? Play the dvd and learn to grow from it. Not feeling in the mood to practice? Pop in the dvd. I guarantee you'll be dancing along with it before too long. Feeling like you're ready just to give up and quit altogether, burning your bedlah and crying into your ouzo? Why not instead give the dvd a watch. It's the best dance pick-me-up I've seen in ages - for a seasoned pro OR the dancer preparing for her first hafla.

Priced extremely reasonably for the content it contains, this dvd is a winner all around. (I already can't wait for volume 2!)

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars View Trailer, January 12, 2008

By 

M. J. Dance (oakland, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secrets of the Stage Volume One: A Performance Course for Belly Dancers by Michelle Joyce (DVD)

Length:: 2:27 Mins

trailer

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a gem for the performing bellydancer, December 27, 2007

By 

Shannon B Davis "Nepenthe" (Arlington, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Secrets of the Stage Volume One: A Performance Course for Belly Dancers by Michelle Joyce (DVD)

Just a quick one.

I got this DVD as an early Christmas present (okay, I opened it early!) and watched it over the weekend. This is a super valuable DVD. It's unlike anything else on the market and I know of very few teachers who cover this material.

There are three sections, whose names I can't exactly remember. The topics covered include Conquering Stage Fright, Slowing Down and Accepting Simplicity, Knowing Your Music, Focus and Energy, Choreography or Improvisation. Each section has a short lecture by Michelle Joyce, who is an engaging speaker. Then, there are 2-3 clips of dancers. Each clip shows the dancer performing, but has a voiceover by the dancer talking about the topic. This is a really great way to keep your interest on the screen! I really enjoyed hearing some of my favorite dancers talk about how they put together a choreography or improvisational dance, how they listen to music, how they fight stage fright, and handle issues on stage. There were certain issues that came up that really really resonated with me, like Nanna and Sandra both talking about how new dancers often feel they have to really impress the audience and be doing something complex and amazing all the time, but i'ts really okay to do a simple move and execute it really really well. I don't want to give away the "secrets" since the reason you watch the DVD is to hear this advice. But suffice to say that there was a lot in there that a beginning performer needs & wants to hear.

Some of the sections also had exercises. The relaxation techniques could be really useful for me. I'm going to try them this Sunday at my next gig. I tried the improvisational exercise. It was really good music for such an exercise. However, you were supposed to try different moves to the same music 4 different times and there wasn't enough distinguishment between one time and the next. (it just restarts - there's no announcement that time #2 is about to happen.) So I wasn't sure when to start over and reinterpret. Without knowing the music really well, anyway. I'm a pretty confident improviser and I probably won't use this exercise anyway. But it's a really good exercise to teach improvisation as it's how we learned in other classes. It was a good idea to make the screen black so that you couldn't look at the screen to follow along.

Anyway, I just loved it. I'm seeing it as something I will stick in and watch to psyche myself up before I go do a show. Sometimes I watch performance dvds before a show but those sometimes just make me feel less confident, because I start comparing myself to the dancers. But this DVD has a lot of tips that will remind me to stay calm and project energy.

Great production quality. And I really like Michelle's personality. I will probably pick up some of her other DVDs now