Amira’s Bellydance 101 (2008)

From the blurb:

Radiate your feminine beauty and discover fitness and fun through bellydance!
Discover the joy, energy, and passion of a dance that’s uniquely yours with this beginner’s DVD. Whatever your age, size, shape or experience! Amira’s Bellydance 101 unveils the mesmerizing beauty and art of Middle Eastern dance and empowers you to Celebrate Your Womanhood!…
Learn to love and move your body with grace and confidence. Nurture yourself with safe & gentle warm-ups and stretches. Practice 60 minutes of step-by-step instructions with Amira.

Review: I saw this DVD on a display at the library, and borrowed it on a whim more than anything else. I didn’t read the back blurb at the time, and probably would have been put off by the emphasis on female sensuality that is evident from the cited copy, and which continues on the disc – the first couple of minutes consist of a sequence of still photos of various women in belly dancing outfits, with a voice over by Amira extolling the history, culture and female energy of the dance form. This style continues throughout the DVD – a voiceover describing the routines, over a woman (possibly Amira) demonstrating them in an Arabian styled space.
The key to belly dancing is isolated movement, so that an accomplished dancer can both move one part of her body while the rest of her body is motionless, or move different parts in unrelated patterns. This is exemplified in the image that immediately springs to my mind when I think of belly dancing – hips undulating in a figure eight contrasting with still torso and shoulders.
The DVD opens with stretches, and from then on is therefore divided into anatomical categories – torso, arms, hips. Each section begins with a reminder about neutral body posture (shoulders back and down, pelvis tilted under and forward, knees soft) and breaks down a movement into component parts. The first movement Amira discusses and demonstrates, for example, is to undulate your head from side to side along a single plane, without moving your shoulders or neck; she makes it look effortless and mesmerising, After attempting it several times, I was relieved when she then offered another element to assist practicing; I suspect, however, that I won’t be mastering the technique soon.
After breaking down the move it’s sped up and repeated, before another segment is broken down. Throughout the narration is reassuring about viewers going at their pace, reiterating that many of the moves appear simple but take practice and discipline to master. I particularly liked the instruction to respect and honour the limitations of our bodies, an affirming contrast to most exercise instructors’ exhortations to dominate our bodies. At one point, when I felt my upper arms and shoulders fatiguing, she remarked that sore shoulders at this point indicated that the posture was being performed correctly, which was reassuring.<
After entirely too long without doing any real exercise, and spending far too much time watching TV online in bed, my back and hips have become very stiff and quite painful. The less I do the worse it is, but despite knowing that, I’ve been finding it difficult to get up and moving unless I have to be somewhere (like work).
Within a couple of minutes of starting the warm up stretches I could feel the tension easing and the pain dissipating, and though very much a novice I was pleased and surprised by how many motions I feel comfortable with already. Others, particularly the coordination of simultaneous snake arms and reverse body rolls, are going to take a lot more practice before I feel any degree of confidence.
Unlike every other dance DVD I’ve tried, Amira’s Bellydance 101 felt natural and achievable, as though I was working with my body instead of against it. Though there were moves I could only attempt, and though I know I have a very long way to go, I felt inspired and invigorated, rather than frustrated and disheartened. I have no doubt that advanced practitioners work up a sweat and exert themselves; this wasn’t anything like a workout, but that isn’t the aim. Instead it’s about reconnecting with your body, feeling better after you’re finished than you did when you began, and mastering the building blocks of an ancient art form. I thoroughly enjoyed the DVD, and intend doing it again several times in the next week or so, with an eye to buying it or something similar. - Alex