Bellydance : A Guide to Middle Eastern Dance, Its Music, Its Culture and Costume (Paperback)

Review:
I'm a belly dance teacher in metro Atlanta, and I really enjoyed this beautiful Australian book. The photos are absolutely lovely, and there are lots of them. There's good background info on the history of belly dance, plus basic info about warm-ups and descriptions of basic movements, but what I liked best was the cultural info about how belly dance varies from country to country. There is a good discussion of the many different styles of belly dance, which is info that I've not seen in other books.

Review: Greatest Bellydance Book
This the greatest bellydance book that ever I have. It have clearly explanation about all things that every bellydancer can be interested. It is wonderful, the best book for me.

Review: Who is that on the cover?
I was just told about the book, and it looks great. I just want to know---who owns that beautiful belly on the cover?

Review: Belly Dance
A Kid's Review
Keti Sharif is an Australian living on the Red Sea Egypt has been dancing since she was 17 has studies in Cairo with Egyptian Choreographers and leads cultural tours. If anyone would like to know about the celebration of dance cultural notes, outfits and some explanations of dance routines this book does it for me.

Review: Bellydance
Keti Sharif has put together a very informative and delightfully presented instructional book. The photography is excellent and the instructions are very clear and make sense.

Keti Sharif is australia born and lives on the Red Sea in Egypt. She performs and teaches bellydance and hosts cultural tours of Egypt. Well done Keti. I teach bellydance and will be only too pleased to promote this book at my classes. My students will most likely buy a copy of this book.

Anyone interested in Bellydance and Egyptian Culture or Middle Eastern Culture would be very pleased with the contents of this book, women love to express themselves and this type of dance does so refreshingly and culturally diverse techniques are explained. To celebrate our bodies is our divine right and we can enhance our health by bellydance. I invite women to take up this ancient art of expression, celebration, and good workout with pleasant music and rythms.

Review: Lots of cultural info!
This book is not just a bellydance for fitness book - anyone knows you cannot learn to dance from a book. It discusses benefits of the dance and will enhance your learning experience. It's also a handy reference for teachers and students alike with its information about the rhythms, instrumentation and cultural context of various forms of Middle Eastern Dance.

Belly Dancing : The Sensual Art of Energy and Spirit (Paperback)

Review
"This introduction to belly dancing places a welcome emphasis on the spiritual roots of the form."

Book Description
Belly dancing is pure sensuousness and has enchanted people since ancient times. Yet beyond its erotic aspects, belly dancing offers many physical and emotional benefits. Belly Dancing covers all aspects of this ancient art, beginning with its origins and mythical connections to the moon goddess. Practical instructions with photographs and guidance in costuming are included.

Review: A brilliant taster of oriental dance!

Belly Dancing: The Sensual Art of Energy and Spirit by P. Coluccia, A. Paffrath and J. Putz: While still wondering, should I try oriental dance perhaps? ... I came across this book, and I found it a very encouraging and easy-to-understand introduction for beginners or those who consider taking up belly dance. It gives you a lot of background and history and has great photos. There are very interesting chapters on oriental dance for children, and how it can be helpful for women with painful periods. Next, the movements are explained and illustrated with photos so that even a complete beginner can try them with some success! But the book doesn't stop there, it also has interesting chapters on Eastern music, scents and, yummy!, some great recipes. The book certainly won't replace a good class, but if you want a taster of oriental dance, why not start here! It certainly got me started.

Review: A clear examination of belly dance routines and meaning

How can a book possibly describe belly dancing? If you think it just can't be done, turn to Belly Dancing: The Sensual Art Of Energy And Spirit by Pina Coluccia, Anette Paffrath and Jean Putz to see just how the dance can be embodied into a book form. A history of belly dance moves from artistic and spiritual insights to physical movement, with chapters focusing on both health benefits and routines. Chapters covering the basic stances and their meanings are also included. Beginners will welcome this clear examination of belly dance routines and meaning.

Belly Dancing for Fitness: The Ultimate Dance Workout That Unleashes Your Creative Spirit (Paperback)

Book Description

GET IN SHAPE * HAVE FUN * TAP YOUR INNER BEAUTY
Packed with over 250 step-by-step photos and easy-to-follow instructions, Belly Dancing for Fitness offers you a quick and enjoyable way to learn all the basic belly dance movements, including:

slide * circles * twists * shimmies * undulations

figure eights * traveling steps * snake arms

World-renowned belly dancer Tamalyn Dallal shows you how to combine movements into spontaneous, creative dance routines that transform your physical, mental and spiritual well-being. The eight-week program in this book helps:

* Burn fat
* Tone abs, hips, thighs and arms
* Release stress
* Improve flexibility and posture
* Enhance your creativy and femininity

Belly Dancing for Fitness also offers fun tips on veils, hip scarves, costumes and finger cymbals; touches on the history of belly dance and Middle Eastern music; and provides recommendations (and ordering information) on the best workout CDs.

About the Author
Tamalyn Dallal has worked as an inscructor, performer and choreographer for more than 20 years. A former Ms. America of Belly Dance, she has danced and taught in over 25 countries, choreographed and performed in the Super Bowl halftime show and produced the series "Belly Dance" for PBS television.

Review: Perfect Basics

I've just started lessons and am very happy to be taking the course with Tamalyn Dallal. Her book tells the beginner everything they need or might want to know from the differences in style from country to country to the basic moves so clearly depicted and described. It is in a friendly conversational style that she shares her twenty-five years of experience. It is packed with helpful hints from dress to music which is great for someone just starting out. Tamalyn really earned her spot as one of the country's most respected dancers and it didn't come easy to her. They told her she couldn't do it but she remained determined and now is not only a great dancer but an inspiration to others, having turned out quite a few top bellydancers. You can feel her passion with such quotes as "If I feel like I can't shimmy any longer, I look up at the stars, take a deep breath, and my shimmy gets stronger." There are interesting insights for example when she speaks of softness as being one of the most beautiful qualities of belly dancing But the best thing about this book is its simplicity and clarity. The movements are broken down into easy-to-follow steps with totally unconfusing photo's and descriptions under each stage of the move. She also mentions variaitons and has concise descriptions on bringing it all together. A beginner can easily follow and understand what they are doing. It would also be an excellent guide for teachers. I have Dolphina's book and although the pictures are in color (in this book they're black and white) and they have arrows pointing in different directions the photo's don't meld as well with the text and it's more difficult to do. This is a perfect book for newcomers to the dance. There's a helpful guide on how to build up your skills. Mostly it's a very approachable book to read and refer back to. Tamalyn is not only talented as a dancer she is a talented writer too. She's also a very nice person and a great teacher, which comes through in in her writing.

Review: More Than Skin Deep

This book is very interesting because it tells about the culture, the music, each instrument, the rhythms, their counts, and how to break them down. It gives a resource guide, list of favorite CD's, how to mix your own practice CD, plus lots of history and explaination about each style of bellydance.
Bellydancing is more than just a series of movements. It has thousands of years of culture behind it and if you dance without paying attention to that, you lose the meaning.

Tamalyn Dallal travels aound the world to teach bellydancing, but she also learns the local dances from the countries she visits. There is tremendous depth in her knowledge, and this book expresses that.

Review: From a Middle Eastern Womans Point of View

I loved "Belly Dancing For Fitness".
I have seen Tamalyn Dallal dancing in person in Egypt, where she will be teaching at the worlds largest bellydance festival this year...and plan to take her Teachers Training courses both in New York and Cyprus this summer.
She has the most simple and consise way to teach the art of bellydance, and has turned out several of the top belly dancers in the US and abroad. I was so happy to see her explanations made so clear in this book.
What some readers may miss is that in bellydance, it is not how many fancy things you can accomplish, but how you do each move and the feeling behind it. If you see Tamalyns performance on the Bellydance Superstars DVD, you will understand where she is coming from and why she is one of the most popular bellydance teachers travelling internatinally today.
Ms. Dallal shares her extensive historical knowledge in a way that is clear and easy to understand. She teaches the basic movements in the order that they are easiest to learn, so the reader can do them well, and not get frustrated. Of course,she knows much more, but this book is for beginners, and also for teachers, because it is a great teaching guide on how to break down movements, plus which movements to start with. She has a very specific and clear teaching method and that is why she has a record number of professional dancers who learned with her.

This book is not superficial or meant to impress. This is for people who want to learn and to know what is important.

Tamalyn Dallal is a true artist as a dancer and she writes well too. I loved the photographs. They were not slick and produced looking, but very natural and artistic. This is not a pretentious book. It is real and I hope they translate it into Arabic soon.

Review: I LOVE this book!
I saw this book, Rania's book, and the one by Laura Cooper at the local library and checked them all out. Rania's is the prettiest, Cooper's is very informative but the color in the pictures seems a bit off, but this one I love. The pictures are easier to follow than in the other two books, and Tamalyn writes in an easy, engaging style that reads more like a friendly conversation than an informative book. I especially liked the chapters about what to wear, and what CDs are particularly good for starting a bellydance collection. I highly recommend this to anyone starting out as a bellydancer.

Review: Too little too late
Going by the "Look inside" that Amazon offers, this book looked very promising; It's table of contents promised a nice taste of basics, including the use of zills (finger cymbals), veils, and floor techniques.

But alas, it showed no excerpts of actual moves to get a better feel for the book. After seeing another newly published bellydance book by Rania in a local store, I ordered it from Amazon, and was very pleased. A few weeks later, I saw Dolphina's new book, and I was also very impressed. Today, I finally got to see Tamalyn's book! It looked nice... but sorry to say that it paled in comparison to the other's I had just purchased.

For starters, I feel you get more for your money with the other books: More pages, more photos, more techniques, more detail. The photos in this book are black and white (not color like Dolphina's or Rania's book). Yeah, it may look all artsy and stylish this way, but the abundance of crisp color photos in the other books made the steps a lot easier for me to follow.

As for the specialized techniques (zills, veils and floorwork), I was disappointed. Kudos for the attempt to teach zills (since the other books had no section), but a more extensive (and free) zill technique workshop exists online. When it comes to floorwork, Rania's book went into more detail on various floorwork moves. This book had nothing additional to offer to justify the additional purchase.

Although numerically, more pages were devoted to veil dancing than other books (which was the original selling point for me), less ended up being more: Rania had multiple special veil moves briefly described with pictures. Dolphina had an entire routine that incorporated a veil. Tamylyn, for the most part, glorified the art of "purchasing" the right veil (if I was a true connoisseur of fine bellydance attire, in all fairness, that part would be a plus); The techniques seemed to show the veil more as an "accessory" to basic arm movements, rather than as an art in itself (moves that clearly require a veil).

By its own right, Belly Dancing for Fitness is a good book on basic bellydancing - clearly written by someone who has a lot of experience. If I had seen it first, I would have happily bought it (although I would have tossed it after buying the newly released bellydance books by Rania and Dolphina, since they virtually blow it out of he water).

Review: Meditation in Motion, The Perfect Belly Dance Book!

If you are looking for that one belly dance book, this is it! "Belly dancing for Fitness" is a well thought out book that covers everything Belly dance. With over 250 step-by-step beautiful photographs that shows you exactly what you need to know to start belly dancing!

"Belly dancing relaxes the mind as well as the body since it calls for relaxation and focus, like meditation in motion." -Tamalyn Dallal, world-renowned belly dancer and author of Belly dancing for Fitness.

I also like the fact that the author of this book has more than 20 years under her hip scarf and has danced and taught in over 25 countries. Imagine the experiences she has discovered and can share through this book.

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