Practicing at Home -- for Beginners

The best way to advance rapidly with dance is to take 2 - 3 classes per week. We understand that you can't always do that! But the next best thing is to take at least one weekly class, and practice at home with a set of good DVDs, and your own ever-growing set of CDs or downloaded music.

But we understand that this is a little scary. It's one thing to go to class, and follow the teacher. It's another, altogether, to figure out what you've learned when you get at home and are all alone with it.

So to make your life easier -- and help you progress in your dance mastery -- we've compiled a list of our "best of the best" recommended DVDs, VHS vids, and CDs. When you put these together with the class hand-outs, for everything from warm-ups to technique practice, to full choreographies, you'll be able to accelerate your progress in a way that works for you and your schedule and time availability.

Just as a disclaimer: Our purpose here is to list the "best of the best" -- for specific purposes! That means, we hope over time to list our very best favorites for "Intro to Belly Dance" along with (for intermediate classes) various special-topic and choreography DVDs. If you do not see someone listed here, it means that either we haven't gotten to her yet (maybe they need to offer us a DVD for review), or we've reviewed them and really don't think that they're all that hot -- and we're just being polite by not referring to them.

And if you have put together a DVD that you'd like us to review, please do contact us; we will attempt to get you a candid assessment either way, and if positive, post our review where appropriate on the site.

CDs for Practicing At Home - Beginners

My core CD collection for teaching Beginning through Early Intermediate classes emphasizes the following CDs. An asterisk (*) is in front of the ones that I use most often for most beginner classes. Purchase roughly in the order listed; ultimately, you'll want them all!

• Strictly Belly Dancing, Vol. 2 by Eddie "the Sheik" Kojak -- absolutely retro but still lovable, especially Cut #2 for the most beautiful short chifti-telli, which is a core piece for our intermediate classes. We are building an entire choreography for Cuts #1 - 5 just to work with this Chifti!
• *The Art of Belly Dance by George Abdo -- again retro, again still lovable, several very usable cuts, especially for beginners who want a first dance piece that is about 3 1/2 minutes long; a couple of good choices here. I also teach zills with one of these pieces.
• *Mystical Garden by Omar Farouk Tekbilek -- very beautiful; we love Cut #4 (a Sai'idi rhythm originally recommended by Anahid Sofian); use it frequently to teach step-touch with double hip drops along with rhumba step and undulating turns; Cuts #5 and #7 are also lovely for veil work; this is a little more for the Intermediate students, but so pretty that you'll want it in your collection early.
• *The Masters of Belly Dance Music" by various artists -- "Layali" (Cut #2) is a new find; we're loving it, and it has a nice, moderate tempo that is very easy to work with, especially for your first year in belly dance.

Less frequently, we'll also use the following CDs, which are more typical for our Advanced Beginners / Early Intermediat classes.

• Secrets of the Eye by Hossam Ramszy -- "El Hob Halal" (Cut #3) and "Aazab" (Cut 6).
• Baladi Plus by Hossam Ramszy -- Cut #2; for practicing double-drop walking shimmies.
• Dream Dancer by Light Rain -- "Beautiful Friend" (next-to-last cut) - for cooldown, also work with arms and hands, and some turns-into-poses.
• Kali Ma by Desert Wind -- Chifti Telli (Cut #16, along with some of Cuts 15 & 17).
• Gaia, Earth Goddess by Desert Wind -- "Miserlou" (Cut #13).
• *The Mask and the Mirror" by Loreena McKennitt -- "Marco Polo" for both veil and candle dance.

DVDs/Vids for Practicing At Home - Beginners

A Good Introductory DVD
	A good introductory DVD; excellent warm-up section; I particularly like Nourhan's emphasis on breathing and also "breathing into your fingers" - this is a good "at-home class" for even more experienced students. Click on "An Introduction to Bellydance Technique" to go to Nourhan Sharif's website and order this DVD DVD referred by Ivy Rucker

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Once you've established a decent basic vocabulary, your next goal is typically to do various combinations that lead to a whole dance.

I recommend using videos/DVDs in combination with either the same or similar music, so that you can practice first with the vid/DVD and then just alone with the music. For this reason, all of the vids/DVDs that I recommend in this section are coupled with a good matching CD.

Precise Small-Movement Step Combinations with Classic Egyptian Rhythms

This is a good technique-building set. Even more, it gives you a grounding in "what movements" to do with "what rhythms." It also introduces a "classic" rhythmic sequence for Raks Sharqi, or Egyptian-based dance. Note that not all the rhythms covered in Hadia's vid are in Hossam Ramzy's CD, nor vice versa, but there is really a great overlap. These two work very well with each other!

Hadia's Oriental Dance Raks Esharquie Vol. III

Hadia of Montreal, Quebec, does a very competent job of demonstrating the different techniques, and gives sufficient time for each movement and/or combination. "Oriental rhythms with live percussion for masmoudi, maksoum, chifti-telli, khaleegy, beledi, saiidi, felahy, malfouf and karsilama. Each rhythm receives a detailed breakdown, application of appropriate finger cymbals and dance steps and transitions from one rhythm to the next. The grand finale features a complete dance routine performed to a typical rhythm progression." Order Hadia's vid of Montreal, Quebec. directly from her.

I'll put up the link to Hossam Ramszy's Introduction to Egyptian Dance Rhythms next.

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