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I am keeping up with my intention to practice more and bought the 7 class package on Cairobellydance.com: a course in improvisation by Aleya.
Basically the first 10 minutes are warm up, which is nice. I don't believe in cold stretching and I suspect that it is decidedly colder where I am compared to her house in Cairo but I'll follow along. Her etaching style is a mix of Egytpian 'follow the dancing butt' and the more American 'I am going to tell you what we are doing and then repeat'. It takes a bit of getting used to, and at times I have a hard time following her line of thought. Probably because she is changing her class while she records and she is not very specific about how to create a movement. I enjoy the Egyptian flavor and styling of her moves, very fascinating compared to the American instructional dvds I usually work with. After about 45 minutes of moves, she dances one or two songs incorporating most of the moves. The class ends with a 10 minute stretching session and a short meditation. Each class is 75 minutes.
Short thoughts on class #1:
This is a class dedicated to trying out moves with head, shoulders, arms, hands, hips and a couple of ways to move around, playing around with intention, sharp versus soft and slow versus fast. There are lovely leaning moves in htere and stuff with headrolls and accents.
short thoughts on class #2:
This class is dedicating to layering shimmies the Egyptian style. I'm not sure whether there is such a thing, but she does a good job. It includes layering camels (egyptian camels) with shimmies, figure eights, circles, and a juicy hip drop with shimmy move that I totally adore.
I am however, getting bored by her way of teaching. I can do 40 minutes tops so I am doing one class spread over two days. Unfortunately, the JW player that streams the classes is not happy with me starting halfway, causing a lot of start-stop moments. Sigh. It is good value for money though, I remember spending just as much on two DIna workshops where she taught far less and spend half an hour on smoke breaks.
Basically the first 10 minutes are warm up, which is nice. I don't believe in cold stretching and I suspect that it is decidedly colder where I am compared to her house in Cairo but I'll follow along. Her etaching style is a mix of Egytpian 'follow the dancing butt' and the more American 'I am going to tell you what we are doing and then repeat'. It takes a bit of getting used to, and at times I have a hard time following her line of thought. Probably because she is changing her class while she records and she is not very specific about how to create a movement. I enjoy the Egyptian flavor and styling of her moves, very fascinating compared to the American instructional dvds I usually work with. After about 45 minutes of moves, she dances one or two songs incorporating most of the moves. The class ends with a 10 minute stretching session and a short meditation. Each class is 75 minutes.
Short thoughts on class #1:
This is a class dedicated to trying out moves with head, shoulders, arms, hands, hips and a couple of ways to move around, playing around with intention, sharp versus soft and slow versus fast. There are lovely leaning moves in htere and stuff with headrolls and accents.
short thoughts on class #2:
This class is dedicating to layering shimmies the Egyptian style. I'm not sure whether there is such a thing, but she does a good job. It includes layering camels (egyptian camels) with shimmies, figure eights, circles, and a juicy hip drop with shimmy move that I totally adore.
I am however, getting bored by her way of teaching. I can do 40 minutes tops so I am doing one class spread over two days. Unfortunately, the JW player that streams the classes is not happy with me starting halfway, causing a lot of start-stop moments. Sigh. It is good value for money though, I remember spending just as much on two DIna workshops where she taught far less and spend half an hour on smoke breaks.
