Tribal Fusion - Yoga Isolations & Drills for Bellydance

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DVD details

Actor: Rachel Brice
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
Running Time: 78 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-08
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Ark 21

DVD Reviews of Tribal Fusion - Yoga Isolations & Drills for Bellydance

DVD Review: A good toning workout
Summary: 5 Stars

The video has three time lengths to choose from: 15, 30, or 45 minute workouts. Instruction is clear and excersizes are effective. A good addition to your bellydance routine.

DVD Review: Bought for my Daughter
Summary: 5 Stars

I bought this for my daughter's birthday present. She asked for this one.
The artist is one she really likes--it was first on her "list".

DVD Review: Great DVD!
Summary: 5 Stars

Rachel Brice is very skilled and makes muscle isolations- the set of movements that mark her as one of North America's most important tribal dancers- accessible to students of any level.

DVD Review: Excellent but For Dancers Who Already Have Firm Foundation
Summary: 4 Stars

I am a beginning dancer & love Brice's interpretations and technical skill.

The video offers several nice features, one of which is the option to choose between 3 different practice lengths. They are all excellent workouts and will build conditioning, strength, flexibility, and stamina. Right now I hold steady at the 30 minute workout but hope to build up to the 45 minute one soon.

Although I am a beginning dancer, I have 5 years of yoga experience. Rachel is an advanced yoga practitioner and does not model modifications of poses for people with injuries or beginners. I know this is probably because she wanted to focus on dance & taking time to explain modifications would take time away from the dance practice.

She does suggest modifications in the introduction but this is still not effective for beginners to yoga. That said, since I am not a beginner it causes me no problems & I enjoy the yoga segments. The segments sometimes don't transition well between one another. For example, one yoga segment ends with a standing pose and the next begins with a floor position. This is no big deal though.

The dance approach parallels the yoga approach. Her instruction is clear but I think the viewer needs a solid foundation in basic ballydance vocabulary and movement before he or she can integrate Rachel's highly muscular interpretations.

For example she does an "inner hip circle" which is intitiated by highly controlled abdominal contractions. If you are a dancer coming to the video with no knowledge of a standard hip circle, you might have difficulty layering the general pelvic movement with contractions. Or, at least I did. I feel almost all of her moves are layered, and therefore relatively advanced. It seems like the movements of bone structures are intiated and layered with muscular contractions & this is very difficult! That said, the beginning bellydancer who has experience with yoga and is getting a foundation through another source like classes or another video should be just fine. Rachel's video easily compliments a foundational practice for the beginner and can stand on its own for the more experienced. I am using Waverly Fitzgerald's "Beautiful Technique" video to help me grasp a technical foundation of basic moves.

Rachel never fails to inspire me & her performance on the video is 100% awesome. If I may, though, I'd like to say that the video producers really screwed up her perfomance by using silly and jolting camera transitions. I suppose they thought this would heighten the drama of her performance.

Dear BellyDanceSuperstar video people: Rachel does just fine in communicating beauty, passion, and dark intensity through dance. She does not need weird camera techniques to do this for her. In fact, you kind of got in the way of her stunning performance. So, just let her do her thing next time.

If I were an intermediate dancer I would easily give this video 5 stars. But for a beginner, I rate it 4 for the reasons listed above.

I'm off to stretch my quadriceps so that maybe one day I can do superhuman floor work like Rachel. Happy dancing.

DVD Review: Questionable for Beginners...?
Summary: 3 Stars

I bought this DVD earlier today and was eager to try it out when I got home and got the privacy to work out.

This DVD was enthusiastically recommended to me by a good friend; in fairness, she did warn that it wouldn't be an easy workout and I was ready for that. However, after doing the 30 minute workout, I felt like there should be (or have been) a DVD out that precedes this one for people who are newbs to belly dancing and yoga, or at the very least a section of the DVD that discusses those need-to-know things for people unfamiliar with tribal belly dance and yoga. Brice's instructions on what to move where and how are concise and I appreciate that...but I still felt like there was something I was missing in the course of the drills. Now that I've done the workout and have had some time to reflect on it, I can't say that I would recommend this to someone as a buy-it-first DVD. Also, I felt that sometimes things moved a bit too fast and I was left scrambling, trying to simultaneously figure something out and catch up.

I really don't mind the drills. I know I suck at them now but I also know that they will be incredibly useful to me in the future. The camera angles and movements during the drills was quite lovely; between the shots of her whole body working and the close-up shots of the specific parts that were working for a move, you get a really good sense of what parts are to be doing what movement. The yoga cool-down was wonderful too after all of those drills.

Also, I agree with a few other reviewers; I wish she would smile or at least grin a few times! I felt like I was watching a stern school-marm. For me, I've noticed that if the person in the DVD looks relaxed and like they're having a good time, I'm more likely to be relaxed and enjoy what I'm doing. Rachel looks pretty cold and tense the whole time...so I was too :(

Description of Tribal Fusion - Yoga Isolations & Drills for Bellydance

Bellydance Superstar Rachel Brice teaches basic tools that can be incorporated into daily practice that will bring flexibility, strength and, if practiced regularly, effortlessness into whatever Belly Dance style you choose. Instruction includes a short Yoga practice to warm up and strengthen the body as well as a final chapter on Yoga for flexibility."

The connection and interdependence between yoga and belly dance are explored in Tribal Fusion, a reasonably comprehensive and intense program drawing on both disciplines and demonstrated by the remarkable Rachel Brice. Practices of three different lengths (15, 30, and about 40 minutes) are offered; elements in the shorter practices are repeated and expanded on in the longer ones. The yoga portions include some basic sun salutations, lunges, backbends (specifically the locust pose), and such; the more extensive belly dancing exercises and undulations focus on the hips, the chest, and shoulders. Brice's instructions are efficient, if sometimes a bit on the brisk side (it's one thing to exhort students to practice ujjayi pranayama, the deep, audible nostril breathing style used in yoga; it's quite another to do so without even saying what it is, let alone showing how it's done). Whether or not any of the female users for which this DVD is intended will be able to replicate Brice's belly dancing moves is open to question, as her technique and amazingly toned body make things look easy when, in fact, mere mortals may find them baffling, to say the least. Moreover, although Carolena Nericcio, one of Brice's mentors and the "hostess" of this program, stresses that "the main attraction (of belly dancing) is delight," Brice doesn't seem to be having much fun, never so much as cracking a smile. Little matter. When you're this good, there's no need to kid around. --Sam Graham

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