The Tribal Fusion Bellydance Workout, with Irina (now shipping)
| Suggested Retail Price | $18.99 |
| Run Time | 105 |
| Number of Disks | 1 |
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| Press "BUY NOW" to purchase this DVD for delivery inside the US. For delivery outside the US, click here | |
| Press "BUY NOW" to purchase this DVD for delivery outside the US. For delivery inside the US, click here | |
Artists
Description
Created by Irina, New York City-based star of Tribal Fusion Bellydance, The Tribal Fusion Bellydance Workout features a series of drills and combinations designed to condition and tone the muscles of your lower and upper body, and enhance your dance technique through continuous practice of a wide range of Tribal Fusion Style moves, accents, and transitions.
Tribal Fusion Style bellydance is known for its strong isolations, muscular movements, and sharp locks, as well as graceful and expressive arm patterns. Irina introduces these elements gradually, in layers, making it easy to grasp and practice even challenging and sophisticated movement.
The workout consists of three sets of drills focusing on upper body, lower body, and, lastly, movement sequences engaging the total body and working on upper and lower body coordination. Each set is broken down into several topics and is drilled at an energetic pace. Layers, such as continuous arm patterns, level changes and traveling steps are added onto the basic movements, for an additional challenge.
The Tribal Fusion Bellydance Workout is for dancers of all skill levels. Dancers newest to Tribal Fusion Style can focus on the basic forms of Tribal Fusion movement, while the more experienced dancer can enjoy playing with the medley of layers Irina introduces in the final version of each topic.
You can do all three sequences one after the other for a thorough and challenging dance practice, or pick just one or two sets of drills for a targeted muscle conditioning and technique refresher.
The program also includes a yoga warmup and a Technique Breakdown where Irina introduces Tribal Fusion bellydance moves used in the workout, step-by-step.
The Tribal Fusion Bellydance Workout has two soundtrack options:
with voice cues
and
with music only.
Recommended
 Enjoyable Workout,
The Bellydance Tribal Fusion Workout (DVD) What an enjoyable dvd from start to finish. Even if you are a bellydance novice, like me, you will be dancing in no time. You may not get all of isolations but you'll work up a good sweat trying. The class starts with an energetic yoga warm-up that consists of sun salutations, seated twists, pigeon and mermaid side stretches. A note: Irina's feet are in first position during the salutes. She is a dancer after all. Be sure to put your feet in parallel first instead. The rest of the class introduces islolations and then puts the moves together in a mini routine. She does this for each upper body part. At the end of the upper body section, she strings all of the moves together into a complete routine. The same pattern continues for the lower body and the total body. You are constantly moving in this dvd, from arms to chest pops, undulations, mayas, shimmies to turns and foot patterns. The last routine is very layered. I got most of it although I got lost on some of the chest isolations. Irina is very good at cuing. She uses repetition to teach and then is silent so that you can feel the movement with the music. Who is this dvd for? Everyone. Even absolute bellydance beginners will enjoy this dvd. Very nice and a welcomed addition to my growing bellydance library. |
Graceful combinaitons from the softer side of Tribal Fusion,
The Bellydance Tribal Fusion Workout (DVD) Irina Akulenko is one of the softest and most graceful tribal fusion dancers I've seen on video. Soft, because her moves are feminine and pretty rather than the hard and sometimes robotic moves that are used in tribal fusion. Graceful because she's beautiful to begin with and her ballet training gives her fantastic form. She has a very wide range of movement. She uses a lot of arm work - again, the pretty kind rather than the serpentine -- and she's expressive. Irina's dancing is also simpler rather than being gimmicky - and that's a total breath of fresh air. When I saw the preview for the Bellydance Tribal Fusion Workout DVD, I couldn't wait for it be available. Somehow the moves she was using looked more accessible to a tribal fusion beginner. And while I may have done a bit of tribal fusion drilling, I haven't done so well with combinations or gone through an entire TF choreography. Well, except Arabian Spices. Irina's performance on her new DVD particularly won me over. Mossy, young composer of the song used for Irina's choreography, was quite blown away when he saw her performance. Not only was he amazed at her dancing, he thought she really danced his song, Retrying, as he felt it. That's a great compliment to a dancer, wouldn't you say? Well, finally I do have my copy of Tribal Fusion Workout. I've only worked with it a little yet, so this is a "first look". A different format Although many of the essentials such as tutorial of basics, warm up, cooldown, practice with and without music and cues, performance etc are in the familiar format seen on other World Dance videos, the main workout on this video follows a different arrangement. Everything fits into three big chunks - upper body, lower body, total body. These three sections each comprise one meaty combination of four smaller mini combinations. Irina begins by teaching one mini combination. For example, that could be a maya layered on some footwork and paired with a level change and takseem figure eight. This is explained and drilled a few times. She then moves on and adds another mini combination and drills that. And then she is joined by two other dancers and all three of them take it from the top. After this, we switch back to Irina on her own for the next two mini combinations, and again the three of them take it from the top. After four mini combos, the full or mega combination is over. So that's the instruction pattern followed for each of the three segments: Learn mini 1, add mini 2, dance both. Add mini 3, add mini 4, dance whole combo. This is different from most other formats where you learn the moves in detail with no music and then practice a couple of times with music. I have to admit I found myself getting a little confused at first. For anyone buying this video, I'd suggesting watching first to get familiar with the format. Combinations I really like the combinations Irina uses. As I said before, there are no gimmicks. And yet, these are challenging combinations because there's some layering right from the start. I've always been thoroughly challenged with multi tasking in belly dance and so I didn't find I could just barge in and "do" the workout. To give you an example of one bit of simple layering: you set up sharp side to side hips in a right left right right, left right left left pattern. And then you layer a set of arm movements over this pattern. Wrists in, wrists out, sweep up, sweep down, palms down...etc. Total beginners, have fun, because I know for sure I couldn't have done this a few years ago. However, if you're dancerly or have been dancing anyway and are just starting out with tribal fusion in particular, it should be just fine. The combinations use a rich variety of movements, from mayas and undulations to piston hips to shimmies. There's plenty of footwork, level change (which you can modify) and arm work. Beautiful arm work In this program, you don't get to keep your arms still in table top or relaxed at your sides. Arm moves are very much a part of the combinations throughout. While I wouldn't call these overly busy arms, I would say there's constant arm movement - and that's a good thing, even if it is challenging. The style is not Rachelesque. You don't resort to snake arms all through. Instead, you'll find you have to move the arms in large sweeps and presses and include a lot of wrist work. This is what makes the plainest most basic move very expressive. I would liken it to Sera's East Coast DVDs, perhaps, which also involves something beyond extreme snake arms. Drills, workout or dance? Now, here's where my opinion may differ from ohers. I don't find this a sweaty workout. Perhaps if you don't budge at all, but I'm comparing with actual fitness workouts, and I would not say that someone should buy this video to lose weight or sweat off the inches. Certainly, you get some toning, but that's true of all dance programs. It's only a workout if you use the term loosely. Is it a set of drills? Not in the very repetitive sense. If you think of drills as something you'd find on Asharah, Ariellah, Sadie, or Michelle's videos, then this is not the same format. You have some repetitions, but not as much as you might want for drills. That said, from what I know of World Dance's approach to drills, they like to redefine them to have more variety and changes so that they're more fun to do. Speaking for myself, I like long repetitive drills, for some reason. When they are a few repetitions only, I think of them as combinations being practiced. Oh well, a matter of semantic preferences, perhaps. Is it a dance? Definitely. And it cannot be otherwise. These are combos that can be considered standard to tribal fusion and you can very easily use them in your own improvisation and combinations. Who is it for? While it's easy enough to say it's for everyone, I'd say total beginners should not make this one of their first few purchases unless they're particularly keen on tribal fusion. For workouts, drills and basics, there are other options, including from WDNY. But if there's a particular attraction towards tribal fusion - as was the case with me - don't miss out on this. For advanced beginners who haven't done any tribal fusion dancing but would like a touch of it, this is a good option as it doesn't get into hardcore tribal. For advanced beginners who want to expand their tribal fusion repertoire, this is a good one. For more advanced dancers, I wouldn't presume to speak, but I'd say they could use it for a refresher and teaching ideas. Or just to plain enjoy nice combinations with a graceful dancer. Overall, this is a pretty and enjoyable package. Not spectacular, but very nice and more to play with for tribal fusion enthusiasts. |
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