Belly Dance Your Way to Energy

Overall Rating: (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars) On this sequel to Belly Dance Your Way to Fitness, Amira Mor teaches attractive choreography to the popular Arabic song Habibi Ya Eini. It has enough repetition to be suitable for experienced beginner or early intermediate dancers, but enough variety to be used in performance. Amira's style comes across as a sexy blend of belly dancing with jazz dance.

To purchase this video from Amazon:

Item	Amazon.com in U.S.	Amazon.ca in Canada	Amazon.co.uk in United Kingdom
DVD Edition	NTSC All regions	NTSC All regions	Not offered
VHS Tape Edition	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered

(Amazon's claim that the DVD version is Region 1 is wrong. Amazon doesn't offer a way for sellers to indicate that their DVD's support multiple regions, so they're forced to pick just one. I have personally tested this DVD and found it to enable all regions.)

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This is the sequel to Belly Dance Your Way to Fitness.

On this instructional video, Amira Mor teaches a 4-minute choreographed dance to the popular Arabic song Habibi Ya Eini. It uses moves simple enough for experienced beginner and early intermediate dancers. Normally, a 4-minute dance would be difficult for a beginner to learn, but Amira builds in enough repetition to overcome that issue. Amira's high-energy style is jazzy, with hair tosses, strong arm movements, and poses with feet set wide apart.

Four assistants help Amira demonstrate the dance. All of them have body types very similar to hers. The video opens with a performance of everyone in full professional nightclub style costume, with skirts arranged to show bare leg all the way up to the belt. In the instructional section, the assistants wear matching practice outfits, and Amira wears a practice outfit that coordinates with theirs. Although they are wearing skirts, the slits are arranged to make it easy to see what the legs and feet are doing.

The instructional section is divided into six segments. The first four segments each teach the next group of moves that come in the sequence. The choreography utilizes most of the moves taught on Amira Mor's beginner moves instructional video Belly Dance Your Way to Fitness, plus introduces additional new moves. In the fifth and sixth segments, Amira and her assistants lead a practice session in which Amira calls out which move to do next. When learning this choreography, it would probably make sense to focus on mastering one segment each session, then rehearse the dance up to that point.

If you have a DVD player, I would strongly recommend buying the DVD edition instead of the VHS tape, because the DVD chaptering allows you to begin with the instructional segment you want to work on, then jump to the fifth segment to practice what you have learned so far.

Generally speaking, I like the way Amira presents the choreography. The introductory screen for each segment displays a text list of the moves that will be taught in that segment, in the order in which they will appear in the choreography. This can be paused, and copied down to assist with memorization. Amira teaches each move in turn, then leads a couple of run-throughs of the moves taught so far. During the section, the song Habibi Ya Eini plays softly in the background to set the mood, but it's soft enough that it never overpowers the explanations. Throughout the instruction and demonstrations, Amira maintains a pleasant, smiling attitude. She breaks each move down into its component parts.

Following the four instructional segments, Amira then leads a practice session in the choreography, calling out what to do next for each move. She runs through it twice, and then the entire group performance in full professional costume from the beginning is shown again. It's convenient to have these three repetitions of it in a row, because it minimizes the amount of rewinding needed.

The production quality is excellent. The set is the deck beside a swimming pool in an attractive yard. Several cameras are used to provide varying angles, and the zoom level always shows what it needs to show. There are no annoying tight close-ups. I would have preferred that the editor linger a bit longer on each camera angle before bouncing to the next - it is somewhat distracting when trying to study the move taught to suddenly see a change of angle, but it isn't too annoying.

In Conclusion

If you're interested in using choreography to learn how to assemble basic moves into a finished dance that you can perform, this video is worth considering. The jazzy, playful style will probably appeal to most Western audiences, although people who prefer Egyptian Oriental or more folkloric forms probably won't care for it.

You Will Probably Like This Video If

• You enjoy the jazz-influenced styles of Suhaila Salimpour and Kathryn Ferguson, with strong limb movements, hair tosses, and leg poses with feet far apart.
• You're looking for beginner-level choreography to perform, either as a soloist or in a troupe.
• You enjoyed Amira Mor's Belly Dance Your Way to Fitness instructional video or Behind the Veil performance video, and now you'd like to learn choreography in her style.

You Probably Won't Care for This Video If

• You prefer folkloric dance or Egyptian Oriental, and you'd prefer to avoid a jazzier style.
• You're looking for choreography with less repetition, aimed at a more experienced level of dancer.

This review is based on the DVD edition of this video.

Summary

Feature	Available on This DVD?
Regions Available	1
Fast-Forward Through Introductory Screens	Yes
Pause	Yes
Chaptering	Yes
Menu, Sub-Menus	Only one top menu, with seven choices
Fast Forward	Yes
Skip to the Next Break	Yes
Rewind/Reverse	Yes
Slow Forward	Yes
Zoom	Yes
Alternate Sound Tracks	No
Other Extras	No

Chaptering & Sub-Menus

There is only one menu, with seven choices, one to "Play All", and six to play each of the six segments. The segments of instruction are well chaptered, so it is possible to find the desired chapter with a few taps of the "skip forward" button on the remote. The chapter divisions include:

• Chapter 1 - Performance.
• Chapter 2 - Segment 1, First Set of Combination
• Chapter 3 - Segment 2, Second Set of Combinations
• Chapter 4 - Segment 3, Third Set of Combinations
• Chapter 5 - Segment 4, Final Set of Combinations
• Chapter 6 - Segment 5, Run-Through With Amira Calling Out What to Do Next
• Chapter 7 - Segment 6, Second Run-Through, Repeat of Opening Performance, Closing Credits

There was some room for improvement in the menu design - it would have been helpful to have a choice on the opening menu for the performance in full costume. The only way to see the performance is to "Play All". But this is minor.

What I Liked

• I enjoy the choreography. It's jazzier than what I prefer to do myself, but it's well designed for its purpose, to assemble beginning moves into a finished dance.
• The moves in the choreography match well with what the music is doing.
• The choreography contains enough repetition to be manageable for experienced beginners, but is not too monotonous.
• Amira has an enjoyable on-screen personality.

What I Didn't Like

• Camera angles shift from one to another just a little too often, which is a little distracting when trying to study how Amira is demonstrating a certain move.
• There are a couple of moves I don't care for in the choreography, though it would be easy enough to substitute something else in their place.

• Hip Articulations: 3 moves (hip drop, shimmy pelvic, shimmy jazz)
• Traveling Steps: 4 moves (walk backward, shimmy forward, snake arms right/left, yalla hip)
• Rib Cage & Shoulder Articulations: 3 moves (accent, chest drop, chest lift)
• Rib Cage Undulations: 3 moves (pull, push, shoulder back)
• Head Moves: 2 moves (hair toss, sphinx)
• Arms: 1 moves (champagne)

If you'd like to read my reviews of other videos by Amira Mor, choose from the list below:

• Behind the Veil
• Belly Dance Your Way to Fitness

To purchase video from Amazon:

Item	Amazon.com in U.S.	Amazon.ca in Canada	Amazon.co.uk in United Kingdom
DVD Edition	NTSC All regions	NTSC All regions	Not offered
VHS Tape Edition	Not offered	Not offered	Not offered

(Amazon's claim that the DVD version is Region 1 is wrong. Amazon doesn't offer a way for sellers to indicate that their DVD's support multiple regions, so they're forced to pick just one. I have personally tested this DVD and found it to enable all regions.)

Or, contact Amira Mor as follows:

Amira Mor International Entertainment Co.
P.O. Box 101
Closter, NJ 07624
U.S.A.

Phone: (+1) (201) 348-2126
E-Mail: contact@AmiraMor.com

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