Tag Archives: Shamira

Review: Shamira’s Bellydancing: The Sensuous Workout

Bellydancing: The Sensuous Workout is wonderful, if you know what to expect from it. It’s not super long (46 min), and it won’t fulfill every desire, but it does what it does very well.

This is one fierce costume, if I do say so

Let me start with the negatives, and save people some money. Do not get this video if you want:

– A high intensity workout. It’s not, it’s just not. I do break a sweat sometimes, especially if I try to follow along with her arms, but you won’t feel challenged if you dance regularly.
– Thorough bellydance instruction. It really helps knowing the moves before, though she does introduce them in the “Basic Movements” section. I advise using this after another video, even after her Sensuous Workout 2.
– Lots of bellydance moves, complex technique.
– Shimmy work. Her shimmy section is very short. The video is much better on circles, hipwork, traveling steps and turns.
– Finally, and this is the reason I took off a point, while there is a warmup, it’s short (no neck stretches, for example), and there’s no cooldown. So you have to add to that on your own. Also, I really think every bellydance video should go over posture, just as a matter of course.

However, this video is fantastic if you want:

– A light, not too strenuous way to get moving and have fun. It might be a good way to start an exercise program, or to get moving if you’ve been sick or not dancing for a while. I have much fancier bellydance videos in my collection, but since dancing is my hobby, not my life, I wind up playing this one much more than I ever expected to. It’s just great when you’re not that energetic, you don’t want to strain your back or knees, but you want to get moving and feel the spirit of the dance.
– A sense of the grace and beauty of bellydance. Shamira’s style is not to string together a hundred movements in ten seconds, so if that’s what impresses you, get something else. She uses a few movements (especially in this video), but she puts them together in a lovely way, and gives you a sense of how you might make combinations out of them.
– Easy traveling and stationary combinations. It’s nice practice.
– Incredible hands and arms. It’s funny: to me, the loveliest part about Shamira’s dancing are her hands and arms, but she doesn’t really talk about them on the two Sensuous Workout videos too much. If you’ve got the steps of the video down, try following along with the arms — it makes it much more challenging, and gives the video the potential to be used for a longer time.

To conclude, Shamira’s dancing, even in this “workout” DVD, represents to me much of the reason I first got into bellydancing. She’s graceful, expressive, and playful. I think even dancers who know many more moves than are represented on this DVD can stand to learn a lot from her, if they pay attention.

Review: Shamira’s Bellydancing: The Sensuous Workout 2 "Pure Technique"

I have a number of bellydance videos, but I find myself coming back to Shamira’s Sensuous Workout 2 over and over again. Why? Because I can use it in different ways at different times.

Shamira demonstrating basic bellydance moves

Shamira presents 22 basic moves. What’s great about it is that she then teaches a few basic combinations for each move. You might be taught a hip jerk (as she calls it), and then you’re taught how to do it at full and double time with both hips, how to walk forward with it, and how walk sideways on your toes with it. For each combination she’ll teach different arm movements. Lovely.

While the moves Shamira teaches on this video are by no means all the moves there are to bellydance with, it’s a nice combination of basic moves and ways to walk with them, so you can get a feel for the dance. Also, for dancers who have learned some of the basics but have no idea how to put it all together, the Sensuous Workout 2 is a great resource. I recently put together a short choreography, and this was the video I went to for movement combinations I liked.

Shamira in pink costume practicing bellydance moves

When you’ve practiced the moves, you can go on to the choreographies/dances. They’re done in one go, really more like an exercise video than a step-by-step choreography instruction. I haven’t tried all of them, but even the easiest one will leave you with a nice feeling in your obliques. The DVD is set up so that you can click on a choreography and it will show you the moves you should have studied before dancing it. If you click on one of those chapters and do it, it returns you to the screen of that particular choreography.

Shamira is not the most athletic dancer. (She’s clearly toned, but doesn’t move in a super-muscular way.) But she’s definitely one of the most graceful you’ll see. In a way, the real value of this video is in her hand and arm work. It isn’t always spelled out, but once you get the basic moves, try and pay attention to what she does with her arms. My personal opinion is that much of the soul of the dance is in the graceful hands and arms, and Shamira is a wonderful model for this. Even if you know many of the basic moves, putting them together into graceful combinations is where the magic is.