video reviews

As mentioned! I acquired some dance videos to work with this week. They got here Saturday, so I haven’t been through every hour of each of them (though shockingly close – my project not starting as planned this week means I have tons of time for practice). For dancers who might want practice videos, I’ll talk about what I picked, why & how they’re working out so far.

This is what I got! I ordered them from Amazon, even though Amazon wussed out at Joe Biden & disregarded due process over the Wikileaks thing (which is in turn kinda difficult to get all excited about when the conversation turns to Julian Assange who’s probably a complete skeeze at minimum). They were much cheaper from Amazon, is what I’m saying. I can be bought. On some issues.

• Asharah’s Modern Tribal. Admittedly I have no interest in dancing in Asharah’s style, but she is incredibly technically awesome. Her warm up & conditioning work (I’m guessing Suhaila-Method-infused?) clearly has a huge influence on that kickass thing Natalie Brown taught some of us locals a few weeks ago. She also uses the “keep your feet parallel” posture thing, so just practicing along with this thing is a helpful reminder of that.

  I have to confess here that I thought for some reason that it’d be a good idea to do a part of her conditioning segment after a day long workshop on Saturday. Ha! That was great! Let’s never do that again. But it’s not Asharah’s fault I underestimated how much work I’d already done that day, and a hot bath cures most dance ills. This video is an awesome practice companion just for the conditioning work. I’m pretty sure it’s guaranteed to make you more badass.

• Ariellah’s something something with yoga video is probably the easiest of the four I’ve gotten recently. The yoga segments are fine, though they’re totally eclipsed by the vinyasa segments in the next video I’ll talk about. The drill segments are very accessible, and it’s important to look at where you have or don’t have mobility and control. Her pace is slow enough to give you time for that. I went through all but the choreography piece yesterday. It was work for my muscles without taxing my poor brains.

  The main thing I got from Ariellah is a different posture for drilling. She’s a pelvis tucker, and a weight-in-heels kind of girl (also, apparently, she digs turning out her feet). Shifting my weight back helps me keep my low back in a better position in general, and I swear it makes my arms lighter. [Next: I'll learn why that might or might not be anatomically true, and tell you.]

• Rachel Brice’s Serpentine is the most attractively produced of these. Probably if you were the God Empress Rachel Brice, your video would also be beautiful & shot in a comfortable studio.

  You would also be a pretty great yoga instructor! I want to commit the finishing yoga on this one to memory & do it after every practice. It is seriously the best yoga cool down and closure that I’ve found in 10+ years of dancing.

  This is, overall, the most difficult of the videos [also the longest, at 4 hrs vs 2.5-3] her drills won’t crush your body, but they’re not easy feats of coordination.

I’ll likely end up using Asharah’s stuff to add some things to my day-to-day practice, Rachel’s to carry around with me when I travel (both for the yoga and for those “bah, I need something new to do” moments when your conventional practice is booooring), and Ariellah’s on the days when I Just. Can’t. Get. To the dance room – it’s enough work to be meaningful, but not hard on my brain. They’ll all be useful.

The fourth one I got, btw, is a replacement copy of Fat Chance Volume 1 – which I had on video. And oops, we don’t have a television anymore… so I needed this old reference on DVD.

Cross-posted from i'd like four tacos, please.