Rania
I despise this tape. I'm so glad I finally found someone who wanted to trade for it. Outwardly, it is a nice tape, so I tried to like it. The set is very nice: a large room with wooden floors and lots of plants. The production quality is excellent. The intructor and a bunch of light-blue-clothes-wearing girls behind her are all fit and look like they know bellydancing well. But the workout! Aaah! First of all, it's all a voice-over. The cueing is awful. And at the end, it just completely stops. "You've got it by now," she reassures us. I can't stand the expression on the lead girl's face. The "workout" consists of walking front and back, then shuffling side to side, and shifting your hips around. I am not that aerobically fit, and I didn't even break a sweat. I might as well have just been standing there for all the exercise I got. Plus, I didn't even learn bellydancing, unless you count moving forward with your hips jutting out as bellydancing. Then at the end there's a performance by the instructor. Gee, thanks for teaching us how to do this! [eye-roll] Don't waste your money.
Natalie
December 12, 2003
I think I was expecting more from this video, since I bought it from looking at the box. It has a picture of Rania on the back in full belly-dance gear, so I thought it was a bellydance video. It isn't. It shows some midly salsa-inspired moves, but nothing here says bellydance other than the waist wraps of the background dancers. The music is poorly recorded synthesizer that isn't really Latin sounding at all (the box promises a mix of salsa and bellydance moves). I consider myself an advanced beginner level and I didn't find this workout taxing in the least bit. Anyone fitter than myself will be quickly bored, since there are few interesting or unusual dancing moves. The one thing I did appreciate is that the music and the dancers are coordinated. Many videos I get don't seem to put much care into getting this right.
Instructor comments:
Rania's cueing is passably good, but I find the choreography of this video very repetitive. She has a way of looking directly into the camera with a frozen smile on her face that I find somewhat off-putting.
Miisty
deodand@hotmail.com
February 24 2004
