Review of “Belly Dance Basics and Beyond” with Jenna
As reviewed by Nizana
On this two hour and 20 minute DVD, Jenna leads the viewer through Egyptian flavored warm up and workouts, and there is a short bonus choreography performance by Jenna and some of her NYC students to the popular song Layla. The subtitle is “Technique for a Solid Foundation.” Jenna is now based in Los Angeles, previously NYC, and her dance career is impressive.
In a large open studio with wall length mirror, Jenna starts with posture and basic arms stretches and dance moves for the warm up. Then she goes into footwork patterns that can be used for traveling including the basic walk, scissor step and triple step. As someone with neck issues, I’d rather she use different terminology than “snapping” the head following turns, but I agree with the concept.
Jenna moves into isolations of shoulders, ribcage and hips. Her demonstration and explanations are clear, and posture reminders such as keeping the knees soft are appreciated. I learned a couple of tricks on how to explain a couple difficult movements, and learned some new moves, too! She really packs a lot of info in, yet takes the time to break it down.
“Compound moves” are covered including figure 8’s, undulations and circles. She breaks these down in smaller foundational elements and builds on them. Instruction on arm and hand movements compliment the other well balanced foundational moves. Jenna then provides the opportunity to practice combinations, and then provides a short stretching cool down session options are included to practice to voice and music, or music only, a feature I’ve not seen before and thought was pretty cool.
Overall I found this to be a very worthy presentation, and one I would recommend to beginning and intermediate dancers. It’s worth its price in content, length and things like music selections, lighting, sound, background, etc. It reminded me of some foundational technique I haven’t used in awhile and reinforced my teaching toolbox. This is one DVD I can see working with again!
