Aziyade

I know -- a lot of people don't like them because you can't hear what the instructor is saying, but I can easily follow the bouncing butt, and I've learned a lot from them.

I love the LE performance vids too -- I just got 3 more, and I'm addicted! I just wish sometimes you could get performance vids where the dancer just wears a leotard and tights so you can really see what's going on.

teela

Just when I thought I could slow down on purchasing DVD/videos, I found the Stars of Egypt set, all 7 volumes, on ebay for about $100 so I blew my budget and bought them. Then ended up buying a few more from Sausan Academy. I realize all are performance but I still see them as instructional because we tend to wach and learn and imitate what we see.
Was watching Raqia's latest (volume 9) and I noticed she spoke about who she got what from and such. Also after doing some of the instructional parts in this video, I realized that you can do the figure 8 with hip twist move in a variety of ways. I've seen it one way on this video while I've seen it other ways on other videos. The big difference is in where the weight is and where you put the hip twist and which hip gets twisted. I realized that as I slept.

PriscillaAdum

I LOVE Tamra Henna's (L.A) new Egyptian style instructional DVD from IAMED.
And Zahra Suhair's Egyptian style DVD is just as good IMO.
I have Shareen El Safy's Alf Leila Wa Leila choreography video, and while I do enjoy listening to all her excellent explanations and the details and tidbits she provides...she's just not my favorite dancer, performance-wise.

Regards
Priscilla

Tammy

Hi Aziyade,
Thanks for the info. on Faten Munger!!!

Randa & Freiz:
I have all the Randa Kamel videos, I would say I like the Miami Friday workshop the best.
I have Freiz's Oriental Workshop DVD & Ghawazee / Zill DVD. I like both, but in the Ghawazee video (the sound goes out for about 20 minutes, which is kind of fustrating).

Keti Sharif:
I'm not an expert, but I would have to say, to me she is definately is Egyptian style. It might not reflect that in her A-Z DVD? I have almost all the DVDs or viewed her videos in the past (before selling a couple, the beginner's & a choreo. video), I don't have Ket's astrology dvd (no thanks!) & fitness dvds. If you get her five volume set, you see a lot of performances by her. She covers a lot on about Egyptain styling/ music, etc...,.on the 5 volume set, that you don't see on the A-Z videos. After all she lives in Egypt (use to be part time, but I think it might be almost full time now???) and performed in Egypt for some years now.
Just my 2 cents.

Aziyade

Thanks for the suggestions!

ON Keti being not Egyptian enough -- I mean, I adore her, but we have people here who don't think many of the people I adore are REAL Egyptian style, so I tend to preface my opinions as such.

FWIW, I'm thinking about doing her fitness training program. I think it might be an interesting thing to approach my gym with. They keep bugging me to teach some kind of bellyrobics, and I think this would be better, or at least easier to do in a group fitness class.

BTW -- I forgot you were a Hoosier too! That makes 3 active Hoosier posters, and a couple of lurkers. Taking over the boards, one cornfield at a time! LOL

Tammy

Thanks for the reply Aziyade. Didn't want to spark any contaversy (spelling?) on Keti's style. I'm also a fan of Keti (especially her teaching style), too bad her Texas workshop was cancelled, I would like to take a workshop or 2 by her.

I'm orginally from Ohio (left 16 years ago), I thought Ohio had a lot of cornfields, but not after moving here this past summer. Fields and fields of corn and soybeans. So ready to move back to the South .

Tammy

Those are excellent choices as well. Watched the Tamra Henna's DVD the other night. Very good video!

Tammy

PS: My favorite "Faten Salama" video is the Faten Salama~ Melaya Leff video. I also like 2 of her latests videos 2006 & 2007.

Tammy

Who's Nashwa?

samsied

I have "Visual Melodies" and have mixed feelings about it. I bought it after attending a weekend of workshops with Hossam and Serena Ramzy where one workshop involved teaching a choreography from this dvd. I loved learning this choreography as it did teach me a lot about musical interpretation even though I would never perform someone else's choreography unless it was a planned group performance. When I wantched this dvd for the first time, I enjoyed the 3 performances but felt disapointed. I think it was a great idea--3 performances with a detailed breakdown of the choreography and how it follows the music. I like the 3 camera angles as well. It just isn't enough--something was missing for me.

I think this dvd may have been better received if it contained a spoken introduction or some commentary on the approach to musical interpretation. A proactive user of the dvd can get that by reading Hossam Ramzy's articles on musical interpretation and using the dvd performances as examples.

Saying that, I had to put this dvd away for a couple years as I bought it while living abroad and did not have an all-region dvd player. I recently got all all-region player and took it off the shelf and re-watched it. For whatever reason, I appreciate it much more now than I did previously. I was actually thinking of studying the breakdowns for each song and trying to adapt the musical guidelines to myself just as an exercise to hopefully develop better musical interpretation.

From reading others reviews of this dvd, it seems to have inspired a lot of mixed responses. My guess is people are not really sure how to use the dvd as 3 performances is short for a performance dvd and there isn't any obvious teaching in it to make an instructional dvd.