Rachel Brice is a contemporary innovator in Tribal Fusion Style Belly Dance based in San Francisco. She is the artistic director and choreographer for The Indigo Belly Dance Company and frequent performer with the Bellydance Superstars. The DVD (Bellydance Arms and Posture with Rachel Brice) goes into the real meat of the lesson - the "shoulder sequence". It is an approximately 10 minute progression of shoulder and arm strengthening exercises. This is the most valuable part of the DVD. Like I said above, my teacher does most of these exercises or ones that work the same muscles in class, but she works arms and shoulders a lot. I know there are a lot of teachers out there who do not focus on arms as much. This is followed by explanations of 5 "arm undulations and pathways" - these were definitely very tribal in style, but an intermediate or above cabaret dancer would have little trouble adapting aspects of these movements to her own style. One thing that struck me, though, is that the back cover of the DVD states that this DVD would help you create the "illusion of bonelessness" in your arm movements. And while Rachel gives a great mechanical breakdown of how to do these movements, she never talks about how to create that bonelessness, or gives any other insight beyond the mechanics of the movement. Nor does she seem to cover "carriage" or "coiling" like the title promises. (Who wrote the materials on the front and back covers?) She assembles the movements presented above into a combination, which is intended to illustrate including arm work into your dancing. This combination, however, included no hip work at all, so I felt it really does not show you how to incorporate the arm movements into a well-rounded dance. Finally, she ends the instructional portion with about 10 minutes of stretching and relaxation. The DVD ends with a performance, in which she *does* do some hip work, so I think the performance is a bit more illustrative of incorporating arm movement into dance than the combination was. Unfortunately, the performance segment was filmed and edited in such a way that the camera is constantly moving, and is seemingly constantly switching from camera angle to camera angle. There was this weird little lame effect where she goes into a back bend, then the camera slides to the side, so it looks like she's laying down and being pulled off-screen. So unnecessary. She is a beautiful dancer - her dancing is more than interesting enough to keep people's attention without all the MTV-esque video editing. Overall, this DVD is really constructed at a pretty basic level. It is mostly appropriate for beginning level tribal dancers or intermediate dancers of all styles who do not get much in the way of arm instruction from their regular teacher. It's not an in-depth treatment of the subject, but it's priced attractively for beginners. You can purchase her DVD or VHS at http://www.bellyshop.co.uk

• published: 13 Sep 2008
• views: 206124