Bellydance a Guide to Middle Eastern Dance, its Music, its Culture and Costume by Keti Sharif
Reviewed by Anala Rabari
The book is divided into 5 parts.
Part 1 is Dance of the East which covers history, sound quality of instruments and gives suggestions of movements. It also covers modes of music and how they are often interpreted by dancers and there is a Rhythm section that covers popular rhythms from different regions like, Egypt, turkey, Lebanon, Nubian, Morocco, and Arabian Gulf.
Part 2 is Art of bellydance - This examines the physical and emotional benefits such as body confidence, birth, menstrutation, and meditation. Then movements are broken down into warm-ups, upper middle and lower body isolations, hip accents, shimmies, walks & traveling. She gives suggestions for tempos & rhythms to use for different workout sections. She gives a suggested drill routinue for movements. She doesn't always explain moves fully which is disappointing. Like with hip undulations she says they are similar to torso undulation, but I don't think she explains indepth enough how they differ. The photos are too small to really give details & often not of the best angles.
Part 3 is Routines and techniques. The emphasis is on improvising rather than choreography. She devotes a few pages to Transitory steps explaining more indepth than most publications how to change feet or transition from one hip to the next. She breaks it down in cue words like "drop, step right, drop step lift," but also by counts 1 & 2 & 3 where the beat is a drop & the and count is a step. The book includes 6 routines of 16 counts each. Photo illustrations of the routines would have been nice. Videoes of these routines are suppose to be on her website, but I was unable to find them. Veil work photos of wrapping, and other veil technique are hard to get anything from because they are sepia tone so you don't see details well. Also the 6 photos need a label and that label included in the text as reminder. The Canework also needs better photos of the basic twirl. She gives Zill tips on best time to play and key points to remember, like less is more.
Part 4 is Cultures and dance which looks at how dance varies in different regions of the middle east, med., etc.
Part 5 is Costume and performance - Here she gives basic sewing instructions for a folkloric dress, dark photos make it hard to see details on costume diagrams. She also covers henna, kohl, headwear. She addresses the use of turbans, but doesn't give tips on how to pin the turban. A Basic cabaret costume is included with tips on how to make your own bra, belt, skirt, and accessories. Performance tips for the hobbyist circuit and for more professional venues are included. The author also includes a glossary.
My main complaint about the book is that a number of pages have dark photo backgrounds with light colored words on top making it hard to read the book at times. Short segments make it easy to fit reading into any busy schedule. There is a lot of good information included in this publication which is why it is disappointing that sometimes the beautiful artwork detraches from the ablity to read it.