Diamond Cut Bellydance: Precision Technique & Practice for Beginners with Irina Akulenko 2-DVD Set - belly dance

I'm very pleased with Irina's new practice DVD! To address the criticism of the intermediate bellydancer who claimed this DVD was lacking in detailed instruction and who recommended a number of other DVD's instead; I own & have used 2 of her recommendations: Jenna's "Basics & Beyond" & Auttumn's "Beautiful Bellydance Technique". I can say that, yes, these DVD's have excellent instruction and are very good DVD's to help new dancers get off to a tidy start in BD as well as being useful to help more experienced dancers fine tune & correct their technique. That said, these DVD's are not the types you want to work with daily for weeks or months on end...they're meant to teach you the skills you need but aren't really well suited to be used so repeatedly...more like for the occasional review & recorrection of technique. Irina's Diamond Cut Bellydance is wonderful to use to continue on forward from those other DVD's, once you have the basics addressed and understood, start using Irina's DVD to practice & bask in the pleasure of these movements. Let me also state that, while Diamond Cut Bellydance might not be the most detailed in discussing BD technique, it's also not lacking in helpful information either...I found LOTS of helpful guidence in it! Irina has a beautiful selection of music, often times hypnotic when drilling the movements in slo-mo. I am one of those dancers who carries so much tension in her body all day long that it's difficult to remember to relax my body & facial muscles when I get into my home dance practice...which isn't good for creating healthy flowing movement. With how Irina's first practice section is done I find it very easy to melt into the movements with plenty of mental "space" to dedicate to reminding myself to relax (faster moving DVD's make that difficult and the more you practice without relaxing the worse your bad dance habbits & tension-riddled movement get...DVD's like this one help you build good habbits to use later in the faster moving practices). I easily set my mind to the "calm" setting in this practice and it made a HUGE difference in my resulting dance isolations & flow. Often, she slows you down and has you hold the movements at the point of maximum engagement, building & strengthening those very necessary muscles. The warm up is very good, thorough without being so long that you feel like you've finished your "workout" before the actual practice has begun. I haven't attempted anything on the second DVD yet. I looked it over and it looks great. For now, however, I'm content to keep working with the material on the first disc, strengthening and refining my technique...& simply enjoying the luxuriousness of the movements in slow motion :). My dancing is feeling easier everyday since working with this DVD & I've awarded it a place of honor in my over-stocked DVD collection, right next to Sarah Skinners Shimmy Workout DVD, as a video I will use ALLOT in coming months :D. I will still review Autumn's & Jenna's DVD's from time to time, but Diamond Cut bellydance is my go-to for daily skill building. THANKS IRINA!!

I have taken intermittent tribal style belly dance classes but never advanced very far and have also tried a few belly dance DVDs. I no longer live where I can take classes and I wanted something to continue my training. This DVD is the best I've seen. Irina breaks down each move, then each section advances you into combinations until you can put everything together into simple yet beautiful dance routines. I like the way this is organized and just practicing makes for a good workout. I will say I might have found it a bit challenging if I was a complete beginner. Though using the first section until you get a good feel for things would work for a beginner, I'd just say take it slowly and don''t expect to be able to do all the moves right away. Learning to isolate areas of your body and getting your muscles used to certain moves takes time. She makes it look so easy, it might frustrate some people. Don't give up! Irina is amazing and so beautiful. You could buy this DVD just to watch her performance at the end and it would be worth every penny.

I like the video, but it was scratched I didn't notice that , but when it started playing it stopped at the certain point. I looked at the disk and saw scratches. I was disappointed because techniques and video were amazing

Im a novice. As in I dance at home to DVDs and don't consider myself a real dancer. I bellydance to enjoy myself as woman. That's being said I still want good instruction, variety and to have fun. I've bought several of Neons DVDs and I like them. I bought Asharah and Ariella DVDs also and they have great drills. To me this was a mix in between. I loved that she Irina has belly rolls and head slides somethings I had been missing on. I love the second DVD practice section. I've been dancing at home for a year and know that basic moves so after reviewing them once I went to disk two. I love her warmup it almost feels as though your dancing. Very enjoyable. My only beef is well I thought there would be more than one performance!! The promo shows her dancing I the outfit she wears on the cover and I haven't seen that. But maybe I'm wrong. All in all for me and the at home dancer this is fun, eyecandy,and good practice.

The instructions on isolations are excellent, and more comprehensive than other instruction I've tried, with the exception of Ariellah's Contemporary Belly Dance and Yoga, which is also excellent. Irina spends more time on the arms, hands, and wrists than one often finds; and she doesn't skimp on the rest of it, either. This DVD has a standing warmup, which I find quite useful when I don't have time to clear the floor and roll out my yoga mat. It's also a very comprehensive warmup, just right for getting me loosened up for my workday, which involves a fair amount of physical labor. Her isolations section is also now a part of my daily self-care regimen, because I have found that, if I am able to isolate my (shoulders, hips, abdomen, ribcage, head, arms, hands), I have far less trouble with what I fear is incipient arthritis.

So far the best belly dance instructional video we've tried. Friends and I are meeting at my house 2x a week to do yoga and dance together. We couldn't find a live class that we could all schedule or even travel to in any kind of reasonable time. Irina's teaching style is clear, personal, and accurate. Honestly, this is better than most of the in-person belly dance classes I've taken over the years. Only one teacher was as good as Irina and that one required me to drive an hour every Saturday morning. Also, just an fyi, I'm an 'advanced beginner' and my friends are all absolute beginners. They kept asking me - ha ha - to teach them. :)