Customer Reviews

Seven Veils - Romantic Bellydance

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sarah begins with an introduction to veils, including some of the fabrics and types of edging that can be used. She then demonstrates several ways to wear the veils. She shows you how to wear the veils for the choreography she teaches. The choreography is beautiful and easily followed. Sarah is beautiful and a pleasure to watch. Follow along with her and you will be beautiful in your dance! Sarah demonstrates how to make an economical costume for yourself out of a bra, mirrors, trim, glitter glue and necklaces. The performances on this video are lovely. Sarah not only performs the choreography taught, but also performs "Salome's Sin" with a chorus of other beautiful dancers. This DVD would be suitable for beginners that have a grasp of most of the basic moves, but it is also appealing for any dancer that loves veils, great music, a little theatrics, and simply elegant choreography.
Sarah wears some gorgeous costumes on this DVD. She is a talented costume designer as evidenced in the costume she designed for the front cover. I found this to be a very enjoyable DVD.

Sarah starts this with a history lesson about the origin of the dance of the seven veils. (This dance has its origins in the marriage of Harrod to his brother's wife. His stepdaughter Salome is actually doing the dance. There is also some discussion of the origin of the veils; they may be symbolic of the seven deadly sins, and their removal symbolizes showing one's true self.)

After the biblical storytelling, Sarah shows you what kinds of veils that you will need and how they should be held or placed in your costume. The instruction progresses to how to dance with the veils.

The instruction is very clear, and Sarah has a good sense of humour that helps the instruction along. The dance itself is inventive, impressive, and doesn't actually take that much bellydance skill.

This would be a good purchase for a dancer who wants to be able to perform something impressive without a lot of prior experience. If you can count, you can probably do this dance. It's really imaginative, and looks a lot more difficult than it really is.

Sarah skinner-Romantic Belly Dance Seven Veils

Before writing a review, I was determined to learn the entire contents of this dvd. At great length, I did so and my reward has been an enrichment to my dance language, increased fluidity, sensuality in floor work while improving on basic veil tricks.
The floor work in this program is exquisitely performed by Sarah Skinner. In brief, Sarah marvels her audience as she goes through her 7 veils, without heavy draped on fabrics, but rather making great use of kerchiefs which are just as effective and flirty.

The romantic bellydance dvd has in content:

Sarah welcomes her audience by sharing her interpretation of the famous story of Salome and the 7 veils as redone by Oscar Wilde, the number seven coming into a curious play and interpreted into a personal vision; a brief history of veils, types of fabrics and varying lengths..
For this great, fun veil dance program, you will need:
3 long veils, 4 kerchiefs in varying sizes; (as you will learn how to drape yourself.)

Included also in the program:
*Upper body warm up, beautiful hand and arm articulations
*Spine and torso warm up, proper posture
*Hip movement using inner core muscles
*A segment devoted to floor work, how to change levels using hipwork, cute flirty tricks on the floor
*Veil tricks and switches, cascades and a beautiful choreography integrating all of the above.
*A complete step through into the choreography with Sarah guiding gently and thoroughly beginning with the first veil and to end with veil seven.
*Great tips on using the veil to interact with the audience
*How to decorate a bra top, head piece and much more!

There is so much packed into this great program. In addition, enjoy a sultry and playful choreography with Sarah and Dancers.
A very thorough veil program, for the beginner, or those well versed, there is much to learn. The material presented in a fun approachable manner.The costuming is gorgeous, the music is drawing, captivating, and lending to the dance of veils as you flow back in time to a time of Salome and her dance of the seven veils.....

This is an instructional for a short veil choreography based on the "seven veils" story. This choreo has a very exotic, feminine, sensual feel to it. It's alot of fun to dance to. She even gives tips & ideas on what to do, if you wish to mezmerize your special "Sultan" for a romantic evening. Sarah is really great, from costumes, to teaching you how to look flawless and radiate beauty & romantic sensuality in your dance. The moves taught in this choreo can be accomplished by a beginner with some experience, but for the complete beginner, it might be helpful to have some of the bellydance basics.

This choreography does not contain alot of veil tricks, (and not anything new if you are expeirenced with veil)-if you are looking for that, you might want to try Sarah's other veil DVD. It's excellent. This dance is based on the Biblical "Seven Veils" story. Simply put: draping the veils on your body, dancing, and how to take them off gracefully.

Also included, is Sarah's lavish "Seven Veils" performance that is just fantastic --really beautiful to watch. Sarah is such an amazing dancer! The production quality is excellent. It feels like theater.

Again, this artist puts out such beautiful videos. The costumes are beautiful, the setting is goregeous. These are things that a lot of videos don't have and I really enjoy this kind of beauty. While i enjoyed the presentation and the way this artist expresses her intention, i did not enjoy the choreography. However, this is a great video for getting the imagination going and creating your own story. This is a good DVD for begginers who would like to transiton from basic movement into dancing with a veil. All levels of dancers may be interested in the imagination this artist taps into.

This is a Very well produced DVD that has lots of information while not being too advanced for those who are just moving up from say, a Dolphina DVD. This is not a long or involved veil choreography and there are only a few different dance movements used.

The dance and veil movements are explained quickly in the technique section- if you are a brand new dancer this would not be enough instruction, but she does give good tips on different moves. (I would reccomend this to someone who has done a couple of bellydance videos for fun and already know how to do some moves already.)
Then she does a performance of the routine, then step by step choreography.

I give it 4 stars because the veil work does not match the level of the bellydancing- she uses very basic veil work with sort of medium bellydance. for instance, she uses floor work, one-hip figure-8's, and chest figure-8's that most baby dancers won't know, but if they were at that dance level already, they probably would have already learned harder veil moves, so it doesn't quite fit together for me. I am a bit disapointed in the veil work used - i expected more from a DVD called 7 veils, I guess. I also found it distracting that she taught in full costume- it didn't really make it harder to see what she was doing, my eyes just kept getting caught by sparkles coming off her cleavage. :)

That said, its not a bad little video. There are extra sections on how to slap together a home-made costume, how to put on your veils for the choreography, a little bit about different kinds of veil fabric and what you'll need for this DVD, and a little section called "audience interaction" that is basically how to turn this into a playful almost-lap-dance for your Man(or Lady). I found that section pretty cheesy and a little too stripper-y for me, but I'm sure some people are buying this just for that purpose, so that's just my opinion.

There is also a performance piece by Sarah and her troupe of a longer Salome story. I found this a rather strange mix as well in that their costumes looked home-made and Sarah has a very 80's look going on with her lace and headbands (ick!) and she rolls around on the floor during her floor work section i a way that i found a little too much, but parts of it were very avant-garde too- khaleegi in Kimonos? That turn out to have 6 of the 7 deadly sins written on the back? gosh! But overall, i thought it to be performed in the "30yr old cheerleader" style- you know, cute and perky and theatrical, but not much depth beyond their new tummy-tuck.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up this DVD for me. it's not bad, it just wasn't enough.

Sarah Skinner does a good job of explaining veil placement, and how to put them on so they don't fall off. The choreography isn't particularly complex. This is a good starter video for belly dance with the addition of fun veil technique.

Sarah Skinner is a talented costume artist and performer. She has an approachable style of teaching belly dance. This DVD teaches a fun routine with veils and even shows you how to make the veils and create your own costume. You also get to see Sarah Skinner perform. The major flaw with this video (hence the four stars rather than five) is that it presents macabre details about John the Baptist's murder that are not only historically inaccurate, but offensive. There really is no connection between belly dance and Salome's dance, and tying belly dance to gruesome murder just ruins the fun. It really reminded me of making light of the deaths of those who died by guillotine in the French revolution. This is the 21st century and our art should have progressed beyond tasteless ridicule of those who have been oppressed and murdered. Just because something evil happened in past doesn't make it funny. It would be like making fun of the holocaust or the Armenian genocide. Those segments referring to Herod and Salome and showing representations of John's bloody head on a charger should just be removed. If I had the ability to import the video and cut those parts out, I would, since the rest of the video is really quite good.

have a LOT of dvds, but this is the best
yet. Very clear easy to understand and
Lots of GOOD info!

In this dvd Sarah Skinner teaches a very sensual and simple choreography you can dance for your "special someone". She also explains how to create a nice and simple costume. Recommended for bellydancers of all levels!