Drills! Drills! Drills! A complete workout with finger cymbals for belly dancers of all levels

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Starring: Michelle Joyce
Type: DVD
Directed By: Michelle Joyce
Studio: Cheeky Girls Productions
Release Date: 2008-03-14
Running Time: 115 minutes
This DVD is designed to help you learn to make the most of your practice time. This is not simply a workout DVD, but also a lesson in how to practice. The elements of an effective practice routine are broken down and explained as you are guided through a complete, fully body dance workout.

There are several drills at varying levels of difficulty that are designed to increase your physical strength, muscle memory, and coordination. The beginner dancer can benefit from the breakdown of the moves and the slow isolation drills, while the more advanced dancer can go straight to the chapters that incorporate finger cymbals and layering techniques.

Over time you will notice the moves becoming firmly ingrained in your muscle memory. With regular practice, you will develop a strong, trained body that can effortlessly layer shimmies with isolations and finger cymbals.

The workout includes:

-Strengthening Drills

-Isolation Drills

-Shimmy Drills

-Layering Drills

-Finger Cymbal Drills

This DVD is 2 hours in length!

Great drills dvd....
This is a great dvd for serious belly dancers! You may not want to actually perform some of the drills, but the point is to work on muscle memory and so on. All Michelle's dvd's have been very good so far!

A great DVD.... but not for beginners
First things first. This is not a DVD for people who have not learned the basic posture, movements and isolations of bellydance. If this describes you, go directly to a beginner's video, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

The drills Michelle offers here are, for the most part, not strenuous, but you do need to have ingrained at least some basic bellydance movements to the point where you can do them without thinking: shimmies and hip bumps should be second nature.

The second key point is that the movements are, in general, geared towards helping you define your isolations, layer movements, and even use different parts of your body at different rhythms. Michelle points out several times that you may not like the moves you're drilling, and you may not want to use them in a choreography, but that they're helping you build dance skills.

That said, if you *do* have bellydance experience, and you're looking for a video which will help you train for bellydance (or get some light exercise) in a "dancey" way, this is it. The video begins with a few strengthening exercises for the quads and abs, and then moves on to a seemingly endless series of varied drills. There are drills which will have you practicing your isolations with different foot and arm positions, drills done while dancing a grapevine, drills where you do a zig zag shape with your hips, pelvis and chest.

I loved the variety. The drills are well-thought out and clearly organized, but they don't follow the same pattern. This required me to use both my body and my mind in different ways, and kept the movements from being dull. I loved the fact that Michelle puts in little reminders about proper form as you're doing it. There isn't a lot of arm work, but there's definitely greater use of the lower abdominals than I've seen in other videos.

If you're like me, you will find that some things come easily to you, some take a while to click, and some things seem impossibly hard at the first go. This is absolutely a DVD to grow into. At nearly two hours of running time, there's a wealth of material, and you can always do only one part of a layering drill if you're not at Michelle's level yet. After the section on finger cymbals, the drills are also done with zill accompaniment -- this was impossible for me, but it was a great chance to repeat the drill I had just done.

Most importantly, the program was fun, despite its slightly military name! The section on 3/4 shimmies is a lot looser than the early drill sections, and I found myself improvising to the beat. In other words, the drills started to become dance. My advice to dancers using this program is add your own warm-up and cool-down, but also to put on a song or two of music you really like after you're done drilling and just let go. You may just find your body reacting to the music much more readily than before, and with a greater variety of movements.

Great!
Although I liked Michelle's pop, lock and shimmy a little more than this one. Drills! Drills! Drills! is great practice. I would not recommend this for very beginners. She starts with some strengthing exercises (not belly dance based, but tough), goes over lots of layering and the 3/4 shimmy.

know what you're getting
I was totally surprised by this video---it looks like something a high school kid could have done in his basement. It starts with a young woman in grey yoga pants and a red sports bra standing in front of a camera in what looks like someone's basement.

The first four sections are nothing about dance per se---the first section you just squeeze your butt cheeks fast and slow, not kidding. Then she does yoga---a section with the plank and one with the cobra and child's pose. This is not a section on warming up, it is four totally different sections.

I thought this would be drills, drills, drills of dance moves.

The cover makes it look very professional---but it's not at all. It's hard to watch and it's hard to listen to. The woman is awkward at giving the instructions.

I always read reviews before I buy something and I was totally surprised given all the good reviews. (I am going to go back and see if all those reviews were from the same place, i.e. all her friends.) So you are warned.

I also ordered a bellydance video called Luscious when I bought this one and it's great. I have tons of bellydance videos, and this one is by far the worst. I wish I could send it back.

Here is where you start
For any new student of belly dance, you have heard the term drills. Michelle's DVD will become an essential part of your dance development.

Starting with warm -up exercises designed to increase core stability, Michelle guides you through building a repertoire of movements designed to improve your dance. When you get comfortable with building your drill work, she raises the bar with the addition of zills and layering to further enhance your dance.

One of her first explanations improved my dance almost a hundred percent, and that was in the first few minutes of the DVD!

For anyone joining the dance community, you already have felt the camaraderie. Michelle's DVD is no exception--she is friendly, instructive and influences you to better your performance. This is a quality DVD that was reasonably priced for the hours of work you will enjoy from it.