Product Review

The Bellydance Rhythms Workout is a blend of dance fitness and dance instruction. It offers two non-stop 40-minute movement flows - the workouts - and two tutorial sections, beginner and intermediate. In the movement flows Neon provides a full body workout that s great for toning and weight loss, and for enhancing your natural grace and flexibility.

Each workout flow features a wide variety of classic belly dance moves assembled into 20 beginner and 20 intermediate belly dance drum solo combinations. Each combination is repeated as a drill: Beginner - slowly 12 times and at a real dance tempo 8 times; Intermediate - slowly 8 times and at a real dance tempo 12 times. You will review each rhythm section and the entire 20-combination sequence in a way that creates an experience very close to actually performing them in a dance show. Each beginner combination is built gradually, during the slow repetitions set.

The beginner tutorial section presents a detailed breakdown of basic belly dance techniques. Neon introduces each move step-by-step and places each one in the context of a dance combination, so that from the very beginning you learn how to combine dance steps and how combinations express rhythms.

The intermediate tutorial section explains the structure of each combination and offers tips on performance and styling.

The movement flows are accompanied by live drumming and are set to the most popular belly dance rhythms with 4 variations for each rhythm: ciftetelli, baladi, saidi, maksoum, and masmoudi. The live drumming includes a bass doumbek to make it easier for beginners to hear the structure of each dance rhythm. Drum rhythms underlie most types of belly dance music, so hearing them is key to developing your musicality as a dancer. In a special section Raquy teaches the structure of each belly dance rhythm and how to recognize it in belly dance music.

Each movement flow can be played with Neon's voice cues, or with music only.