This is great if what you want is an introduction to tribal-style isolations, with some yoga thrown in. The performance is excellent. The yoga isn't too easy.

I hurt my knees once doing this DVD, so I would advise, if you have any knee problems, ignore Rachel's instruction to push down whilst doing the dance isolations.

As I am not a tribal dancer, and I'm pretty good at yoga, it's worth having this DVD and doing it occasionally. If I did it more often, I am sure it would help to build strength.

I have a lot of bellydance dvds and this one is my most used workout dvd. It has the option of a 15, 30, and 45 minute workout. It's great for drilling and the interspersed yoga poses help you stay warmed up. (If you like the sun salutations, I would recommend Yoga for Dummies, as it really breaks down poses in a clear manner). I love to dance around but sometimes I need to stay in one spot and drill a move for a good minute or two and this dvd provides that. I generally do the 45 minutes one and it goes by pretty quickly. I always finish feeling really peaceful afterwards.

I am going to put it straight and simple the 10 that you spend on that dvd will be a waste get sharon kihara's dvd and the same moves will be covered an you will get a whole lot more. Bdss is not on my top list of production companies to buy from they have left me disappointed time and time again. I actually have a full review on amazon about this dvd.

My feelings are mixed. I haven't used this DVD in a long time and doubt I will ever use it again. I feel like it's a combination of out growing and finding other beginner DVDs that I prefer and feel will benefit my personal dancing more than this one.

She does go over some good basic drills like locks on the up and down and interior hip circles ( though if you read the back cover, it says she's going to cover things that she doesn't, like Maya, for example).

I find the transitions between floor-based yoga drills and standing drills are abrupt. And I do not like the performance at the end, it's way over edited.

Since then I've found other DVDs that I think are similar and/or more comprehensive. My latest favorite beginner DVD is Belly by Sandra. I also like Aubre's Pilates fusion DVD.

All that said, this won't be a waste of money by any means, but absolutely feel like there are better DVDs out there.

I think Rachel's instruction is fine. It is what it claims to be: a video with yoga warmup and cooldown, with belly dance drills in between. It would be good for muscle conditioning, which is its intended purpose.

However...

It's not good for newcomers to yoga. Although Rachel does a good just of demonstrating ways to vary a pose with the use of blocks and such, the voiceover doesn't describe the modifications or tell you the circumstances in which you should use them. There's not enough information in the voiceover to provide decent guidance to a yoga newcomer. Another problem with the yoga is that it doesn't flow smoothly from pose to pose the way a yoga class would. One minute, you're doing a standing pose, and the next she's on her belly in a locust pose leaving you wondering "WTF? How did she get down there????"

The production quality is really, really awful, and for that reason I don't like it. There are many places where the sound (drumming and voiceover instruction) is out of sync with the on-screen action. The camera angles shift too often - I find this to be a problem in the yoga section, because yoga novices need to be able to study her posture/form to make sure they're doing the pose correctly, but just as you start to study the lines of her body, the damned camera shifts to a new angle. Rachel herself looks bored from beginning to end, staring off blankly into space. Although I have always enjoyed watching Rachel dance, I HATE the performance segment on this video because of the changing camera angles issue - the performance looks as though it was edited by someone with the attention span of a hamster on speed. Rachel's performance is of the sinuous, mysterious style that she does so well, and the idiot who edited it completely destroys both the mystery and the sinuous character of her movement with all those rapid-fire cuts from angle to angle. The scene cuts have absolutely nothing to do with what the music is doing or what the dance expression is doing. They're just random jumping around, and they hack her performance to bits.