I had to take this vid back to library, so this ain't in-depth.

I don't have any of Gabrielle Roth's CDs. If you are already familiar with her music and ideas, your experience would be different. This video is based on the "5 Rhythms": flowing, stacatto, chaos, are the ones I remember. It's totally unchoreographed; you just move with the music--which is great, tribal percussion with some vocals and wind instruments. It's filmed in black-and-white, very artsy lighting and angles. The setting is a dance class of thin neo-hippies. Gabrielle points out that none of them are professional dancers, which may be true, but they've been front and center at a few Phish concerts. You're not supposed to copy them, but to dance with them.

I enjoyed the warmup and the flowing sequence. There was this one couple who looked like they were going to take it to the floor, which was a little weird to watch. Then they got into stacatto, which didn't feel so natural to me. At this point I started looking at the screen more, and getting kind of depressed by all those beautiful lithe 20-somethings spinning around. I hung on through that section, but turned it off when "chaos" started.

There is an audio of this workout called Endless Wave V.1. Apparently the first side is the soundtrack of the video, and the second side is different music with the same sequence of rhythms. I think the audio format would work better for this style of workout.

June Vigor