Bellydance: First Steps for Total Beginners, with Neon (now shipping)

Learning bellydance is an amazing personal makeover experience welcoming women of any age, size or shape. It infuses your everyday movement with sensual flair and confidence, helps you rediscover and enjoy the power of femininity and the seductive grace woven by nature into the curves of your body.

Bellydance: First Steps for Total Beginners is a step-by-step bellydance instruction program presented in a continuous movement format. Created by Neon, trend-setting instructor acclaimed for her innovative fast-track methods of teaching beginners and supportive, nurturing style, First Steps takes you from basic moves to graceful and sensual bellydance combinations through non-stop practice with beautiful uplifting music. Move and dance from the very first step!

The program consists of 48 2-3 min. segments systematically teaching all major types of bellydance steps.  Each segment breaks down, explains and drills a basic bellydance move and an easy-to-grasp  combination that shows how to use it. The movement starts slowly, then progresses to full speed. Neon offers detailed tips and visualisations promoting correct, solid and safe technique from the very start, and carefully cues each move and combination for easy following.

In Bellydance First Steps for Total Beginners a consistent system of animated onscreen graphics is superimposed on Neon's moving image to present dance moves as trajectories following geometric shapes, and effectively interpret movement angles and directions, promoting accelerated learning.

The 48 segments of the program are assembled into 12 sessions - each session is capped with a movement review (a Dance Party section) practicing all the steps and combinations covered in the preceding session. 

The 12 sessions cover

* rhythmic hips and steps (releasing the hips, getting attuned to rhythm)

* bellydance percussive hipwork 1 & 2

* combining bellydance footwork with hipwork

* fluid bellydance hipwork

* combining fluid and percussive hipwork

* upper body moves and accents

* combining fluid hipwork and upper body accents

* easy hipwork combinations

* challenging hipwork combinations

* challenging fluid movements

* shimmy

The DVD edition of First Steps for Total Beginners also offers a 25 minute flow featuring only the Dance Party segments for advanced beginner practice, and two versions of the entire program - with music and voice cues, and with music only for every day practice.