REVIEWS ON THIS PAGE: Visual Melodies; Complete A-Z Bellydance;

Important note: The instructional products on this page are by dancers/teachers who dance in the Egyptian style, but who are not necessarily native Egyptian or Middle Eastern.

Total playing time : Approx mins. PAL/NTSC FORMAT DVD

Visual Melodies Serena Ramzy has been married to world renowned percussionist Hossam Ramzy since 1997. Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil into a community fully integrated with Middle Eastern culture, Serena became one of the youngest professional dancers in the whole of Brazil at the age of fifteen. Serena and Hossam now travel the world regularly, specializing in teaching the often neglected art of oriental music interpretation. This is Serena Ramzy's first DVD release, filmed at the Guyer Anderson Museum in Cairo. It has superior picture, sound, editing and overall production quality. The DVD box contains liner notes featuring both Serena's and Hossam's biography. The notes also contain a helpful breakdown of how the material is organized on the DVD. The DVD contains three choreographies by Serena, performed to music from a selection of Hossam's cd's: Sanatein Wana Hayel Feek" from El Amar (EUCD1589); "We Maly Bass" from Qanun El Tarab (EUCD1697) and "Bey-Olouly Tooby" also from El Amar (EUCD1589). All these songs are well known, popular Arabic classics, originally sung by Layla Murad, Warda Al Jazaireya, and the great Lebanese diva Sabah, beautifully orchestrated by Hossam and his orchestra. Serena’s choreographies here are in the Egyptian style. The main menu has five buttons - introduction, entertainment, educational, adverts and credits. I found the DVD menu system to navigate. The material on this DVD has been designed to work for dancers on several different levels. In the "entertainment" section, it is possible to view all of the dances in sequence, or separately in turn. I really appreciated the clever editing on this section; at the start of the performance, we see several very artistic shots of the exterior of the museum, and then a full body view of Serena as she begins to dance the choreography. Serena wears a different costume while performing the choreographies. The costumes she wears are beautifully designed and professionally constructed, adding to the whole classy feel of this DVD. For “Sanatein Wana Hayel Feek” and “Bey-Olouly Tooby”, Serena wears two beautiful, elegant one piece dresses; for her performance in “We Maly Bass”, she wears a beautiful black and silver bedlah set with black chiffon circle skirt. The whole look is very elegant - simple while still being highly glamorous and effective, and provides excellent contrast against the background of the room in the museum where she is performing (incidentally, it is filled with the most gorgeous antiques and artifacts; check out the gorgeous woodwork and doors!). Everything combines together very well and really enhances the classiness of Serena’s performance. The way the editing has been designed and done in this entertainment section is superb; as Serena does more internal torso and hip movements (figure 8's etc), the camera shot changes to a closer view so that you can clearly see what movements she is performing; as Serena performs traveling steps, the camera shot changes to the full width shot so that you can see what her feet are doing. Also, the camera angle changes for each musical transition, making it obvious where the changes in the patterns of music are. I found this feature to be very helpful to help pick out the different sections of the music and to identify where the music changes. Serena is very highly skilled in the art of musical interpretation; she obviously pays high attention both to detail and to the ebb and flow, high and lows of the sounds of the instruments as well as to the rhythmic structure and style of each piece of music. From the educational section menu, you can select any one of the three songs. Clicking on any of the song buttons will take you to another menu, where all the educational content for the song can be easily accessed. There are detailed choreography notes for each song under “Breakdown Info”. I found these notes very easy to follow, as for each sub-section of the choreography is clearly defined with both the rhythms and exact number of bars, the movements that will be performed and details of the instrument is playing at the time. There are also some helpful notes on musical interpretation. Clicking on each section title (e.g. “introduction”, “first verse accordion”) will play the relevant section of the choreography for you, ensuring that understanding of the choreography is crystal clear for the dancer. I found this feature invaluable, as it enabled me to learn each part of the choreography at my own pace, and once mastering the dance, I found it extremely easy to remember because of the way the music had been so skillfully interpreted and the logical way the choreographies had been put together. If anyone really wants the notes in paper format, then I've got a few suggestions and ideas on how to go about it: 1) Put the DVD in your computer (assuming you've got a DVD drive) and access the choregraphy notes....I think if you press either the shift button and the print screen button together, it should print the notes out for you from your printer....if this doesn't work, try pressing control and print screen together instead. Do it for each page, and you'll have a complete print out of the choreographic notes. 2) Write to Hossam ...the e-mail address is drumzy@btclick.com and ask him about it! 3) Just make yourself a handwritten copy of the notes! The way Serena matched every step and move to the music made all the difference, and being able to remember the choreographies so well enabled me to feel more confident in performing them. I found that Serena’s choreographies made a lot of sense; for the larger orchestral sections, Serena chose traveling steps; for soloing instruments such as accordion, she used a lot of flowing hip and torso movements, moving for as long as the music played; for nay Serena danced a lot of floaty arm movements; the violin she interpreted with flowing hips and arms. It really is worthwhile watching closely the way Serena follows the music so closely with her body and the way she controls her movements, you’ll learn a hell of a lot. The structure of her choreographies make excellent use of all the musical accents and orchestral parts, as Serena’s dancing can be a useful learning tool for those who want to create their own choreographies that really flow with the music. Each dance in its entirety is also available in the education sections, and it’s possible to play each one filmed from different angles; front, left, and right. The front angle footage also has useful and unobtrusive subtitles in the top right hand corner of the screen that tell you what section of the choreography is currently being performed, making it really easy to follow and identify each section of the dance. The subtitles also identify which instrument is currently playing or soloing, so that anyone can quickly become familiar with the instruments. The left and right angle choices ensure that you get a complete view of the moves Serena performs from each side. As this is purely a choreographic video, it doesn’t contain any instruction on technique. However, it would still be useful to a wide range of dancers. The dances do vary in technical difficulty, with “Sanatein” being the simplest, “We Maly Bass” slightly more complex, and “Bey Olouly Tooby” the most advanced on this video, as the choreography really interprets the music on a deeper level, reaching the more complex layers and accents overlaying the main instrument. This DVD is ideal to practice to, as you practice *dancing* along with Serena, not just practicing moves in isolation. Even an experienced beginner could work with the “Sanatein” choreography and progress to the others as they became more experienced. Some people may think this DVD is a bit pricey, but remember you’re getting three *complete* choreographies created by an experienced, professional for your money, together with notes on each choreography, and the DVD is produced to a high professional standard, and you can learn at your leisure and your own pace and review as many times as you need to. They also work on several different levels - practice, performance, studying choreographic concepts and are also a beautiful study in the art of musical interpretation. Finally, there are two other sections; adverts, and credits. Clicking on adverts takes you to a sub-menu with “videos” and “music” buttons. “Videos” is a teaser-trailer of mini-clips from the “Stars of Egypt” series which features of legendary dancers from the Golden Era of Egyptian dance. “Music” will give you details of all Hossam’s albums to date. Highly recommended!

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Total playing time : Approx 60 mins. PAL/NTSC FORMAT VIDEO/DVD

Complete A-Z Bellydance Originally from Australia, Keti Sharif is a performer and teacher who now hosts Middle Eastern dance study tours several times a year near the Red Sea in Egypt. Her personal website can be found at www.ketisharif.com - on her website are lots of useful articles on the dance, cultural styles, and interesting tips on performance which are really excellent and worth reading. The video has twenty-six combinations/mini-routines (the "A-Z"; "Aswan", "Bint El Balad", "Cairo Cabaret etc) which are built around the basic core steps of Middle Eastern dance. Each combination is designed to fit easily and simply into 4/4 patterns of Arabian music. The 26 routines are set out in five sections: A-E (basic); F-J (folkloric); K-0 (taqsim, slow and emotive); P-T (intermediate); and U-Z (advanced). This video has excellent sound, lighting, and general production quality. It is also beautifully and very professionally presented. The whole video is shot in a good size room lined with mirrors, and has a very pleasant backdrop. Keti's teaching style is professional, friendly, clear and articulate. Her dancing style is fluid and graceful, and she demonstrates excellent posture and isolation. The video is very well structured, and the video starts with Keti immediately beginning to teach the first set of combinations. The overall teaching content of the video has a good feeling of continuity and is extremely well structured and easy to follow; the routines gradually build up throughout the video in terms on complexity, and levels of layering movements. At the beginning of each section, Keti introduces the basic footwork for the combination, followed by hip work, and finally the arms. Where necessary, Keti also demonstrates the routines look from behind. After the routine breakdown, Keti dances the routine for us with music. She uses a good selection different music pieces in various styles (Saiidi, pop, classical) throughout the video which each has a different 4/4 rhythms, to demonstrate how the combinations can be used with various types of music. As this is a combination video, it doesn't teach you actually how to do the movements, so you'll need some basic knowledge of the standard core movements used in Egyptian dance, for example, hip drops and twist, undulations, travelling step/hip lift, Egyptian walk, the various figure of 8 movements, shoulder shimmies, snake arms etc. The basic routines are simple enough for newbies to follow, and this video has plenty of content to keep dancers going over a period of time, with combinations ranging from simple and effective to multi-layered, dynamic and sensual. If you want to go further than just learning movements, and want to start learning how to create your own dynamic choreographies, you'll find this video a very useful toolkit. Each routine section lasts for a few minutes, and this video is greatly enhanced by the very useful addition of accompanying booklet, with all the routines neatly and very clearly laid out - underneath each section of movements, the arm work for that section is set out in italics. The booklet is very easy to follow along with the video, and will help you easily and quickly both learn and remember the combinations. At the back of the booklet, Keti also includes some very useful and helpful tips for creating your own choreographies, which I found very inspiring. At the end of the video, there is a list of styles of music Keti recommends that will nicely fit the A-Z routines, rather than the actual music used in the video. This is designed to encourage you to dance and try the routines out to other music of your own choice, rather than just Keti's, effectively helping you avoid getting into a rut musically. Personally, I would have still liked to have seen a list of full music credits at the end of the tape though, but this is my only criticism of this video. The routines on this video are a really lot of fun to learn, and are very feminine and elegant. There are an excellent variety of routines to keep you inspired for a long time!

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