Bellydance: Opulent Motion - The Artistry of Slow Moves
by Sarah Skinner
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DVD details
Actor: Sarah SkinnerDirector: Sarah Skinner
Brand: STRATOSTREAM
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 160 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-06-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 30183
Studio: StratoStream - World Dance New York
Product features:
- BELLYDANCE: OPULENT MOTION (DVD MOVIE)
DVD Reviews of Bellydance: Opulent Motion - The Artistry of Slow Moves
DVD Review: The most beautiful secrets of the dance, from Sarah
Summary: 5 Stars
Think silk, cinnamon and spice. Think rose petals, soft breezes and pearly white sands. Think of the most beautiful things you ever saw. And the saddest. Things that touched your heart, made you reach out, withdraw, feel pain, feel joy...
All of these are embodied in the dance that Sarah dances.
In this video, Sarah shows you that it's not enough to dance with your body. You must dance with your thoughts, your imagination, your feelings and your dreams. If I were to watch this video once, and put it away, the one message I would go away with is that you must fill every movement and moment with whatever affects you most deeply. Remember something you yearned for, think of something that awes you with its beauty, and draw it into your dance. Take the music and make it your own story.
Forget your isolations and muscle conditioning drills and authentic Egyptian moves and your flawless technique and watch as Sarah Skinner tells you what it is in her heart and mind that makes her dance the way she does.
This video must have been so difficult to conceptualize. How do you explain what passing thought or feeling you called upon while dancing to hold your audience? To a seasoned dancer, this must come so naturally so as to be inseparable from the dance itself. And yet, in this remarkable instruction, she has explained and illustrated her beautiful slow lyrical dancing from all aspects.
By now if you're impatient to know what on earth is on that DVD that's so special, let me explain bit by bit.
In her first section, Sarah takes up foundation moves. This is just a brief introduction to each of the basics. Starting with posture, dance walks and turns we run quickly through arm positions, poses and how they are used including how to maintain energy while holding a pose to further enhance an emotion. Sarah's hand moves are fluid and lovely and she explores the basics of this movement here. Head circles, hip and pelvic circles, chest slides and circles, figure eights, hip rolls, one-hip eights are introduced. So are full body snakes, undulations and basic shimmies, contractions, and even stomach rolls. All brief reviews.
The second section teaches organic movement, or how to dance naturally. That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but you could certainly use the technique explained here to bring more naturalness into your movement. All I'll say is that it's about leading with different parts of your body in a way that makes the entire move fuller. Practiced regularly, this will impact the overall look of your dancing.
The next section explains the meaning of taqsim and how it relates to rhythms are how these are interwoven in slow dancing.
Rhythms used in slower forms of belly dancing are now taken up in their own section. Sarah shows how to move to these rhythms. This is a unique and very interesting section where she gets you to try with her some movement sequences. Frankly I'd love a companion video just full of these. Say about a thousand of them. Watch every nuance and accent in this section - and there are many of them. The chiftitelli rhythm segment is particularly intresting if you've seen other videos that cover this (not that there are many). The slow and playful 9/8 is also covered here. This movement to rhythm is practiced in motion sequence chapters, step by step.
Rhythmless taqsim (the real taqsim, as many would say) is also explored. There are movement sequences with lots of tips on execution. From how to breathe to how to place your foot - Sarah takes you through this with lots of analogies for you to draw upon later.
Practice flows invite you to improvise a little on your own with minimal prompting, using the concepts just learnt. Each rhythm is taken up. Sarah will cue you on how to lead or what sort of moves to come up with. This section reminds me of some of the concepts used by Nadira Gamal in her improvisation toolkit. There are practice flows for rhythmless taqsim as well.
In a beautiful section on expression and musicality, Sarah dances to John Bilezikjian's chiftetelli (a piece which totally gets me) as she analyzes and explains how she interprets the music and translates it into emotive movement. There are a lot of lessons here, as there are in the next section which is a music-only demonstration of many of the movements and sequences taken up until now. You can pick up so much from here for all the times you don't know what to do when there's a long slow entrance to a piece of music. Watch the relationship of emotional expression to music to movement. See how to use slowness, how to be inward oriented and outward. Watch also as Sarah uses the shamadaan to completely change the mood of the same movements. Sarah teaches may ways to engage an audience, when to be warm, when to be cold, when to look mysterious... amazing insight into the complexity of this beautiful dance. This long music-only section gives you the opportunity to focus on each move, distraction-free. She dances to several pieces of music. She includes a mysterious lethal-looking snake dance - not with snakes, but in a snake mood. There's a clip with swords as well. For each, watch the complete change of mood and expression.
Finally, there's her lovely performance to Lama Bada. This one is with the veil. It's filled with both joyousness and emotional turmoil.
Description of Bellydance: Opulent Motion - The Artistry of Slow Moves
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