Belly Dancing For Health And Relaxation

Cover

Title Belly Dancing For Health And Relaxation

Author Tina Hobin

ISBN 0-7156-1605-6

Publisher Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. (both U.S. and U.K.)

Category Nonfiction: How-To

Shira's Rating

<== Buy from Amazon.com in the U.S. (Prices quoted in U.S. dollars, shipped from U.S. warehouse.)

<==Buy from Amazon.co.uk in the U.K. (Prices quoted in British pounds, shipped from U.K. warehouse.)

What It's About

Published in 1982, this book comes from the era before belly dance instructional videos were widely available. Although it gives a little bit of "history" about the dance and a little bit of information about costuming, its primary focus is to use photographs and text to teach belly dancing moves.

Its Good Points

For the most part, the language was clear and easy to read. Although I've never personally liked learning dance moves from written text and still photographs, Hobin's explanations are reasonably clear and in nearly all cases I was able to figure out what kind of move she was trying to teach.

The photographs are reasonably good quality, in focus with uncluttered backgrounds.

The costuming instructions were reasonably well written, although I had some difficulty with unfamiliar words. I'm assuming that's due to regional differences--Hobin is in the United Kingdom and I'm in the United States. For example, although I'm accomplished at sewing, I had no idea what "petersham" was. I inferred that it's the same thing we call grosgrain ribbon in the U.S., but I'm not sure. In any event, Hobin chose appropriate items to suggest for beginner costuming, and generally offered good explanations of how to make them.

There is a brief chapter on music and instruments. The description of what the music is like wasn't very good, but I did like the section on the instruments. The textual descriptions of the instruments were good, and the drawings were excellent.

On The Negative Side....

I personally am someone who has a great deal of difficulty learning how to do a dance move from a book. I've tried it in the past from other books, and it's just does not work for me. Although Hobin makes a valid attempt to use photographs and text to explain how certain movements work, I just can't see this book taking the place of a live teacher or a good instructional video. It's best to learn from a live teacher because she can give you feedback. If a teacher is not available, then a video is better than a book because it shows how the dance looks in motion.

Hobin places far too much emphasis for my taste on the harem fantasy notions of this being a dance of seduction. The blurb on the back cover sets the tone for the book: "Belly dancing was once a thing of burning sands and the burning passions of the harem." Back in 1982 when this book was originally published, the whole "harem seduction" fantasy was used by many belly dancing teachers to sell interest in their classes, and Hobin's book is indeed consistent with others that were published within 5 years of it.

However, that seduction emphasis doesn't work so well in our new millennium. While I acknowledge that the belly dance could be used to please one's partner in the boudoir, many professional dancers have been working hard for decades to persuade the general public to accept Oriental dance in settings suitable for the whole family, such as outdoor community festivals. While I can't speak on behalf of the United Kingdom (where Hobin lives), I know that in the U.S. communities I've visited, a belly dancer today whose style focused on seduction would find it difficult to get jobs dancing at such events. Therefore, by encouraging her readers to think in sexual terms as they learn the dance, Hobin is preparing them to alienate audiences in their communities or limiting their future performance options.

Along those same lines, Hobin teaches a move she calls the pelvic tilt that would certainly be very unwelcome in U.S. settings where the show is positioned as being suitable for the whole family. This move is the pelvic thrusting that is used in lovemaking. Although there are occasions in the U.S. where use of this move would be appropriate, in most settings it would alienate both fellow belly dancers and the "general public" in the audience. Her decision to include this move in her book and recommend combining it with other moves made me doubt her grasp of which movements might be suitable for beginners. It conjured up images in my mind of a well-meaning beginner who learns the move from her book and incorporates it into a performance, then gets ostracized by fellow dancers and event organizers for doing a sexually explicit show in an inappropriate setting. But I acknowledge this could be a regional thing--perhaps in the U.K. where she lives, audiences would be more accepting of this move than they would be in the U.S. where I am.

In the floor work section, all of Hobin's photographs emphasized a great deal of bare leg, all the way up to the crotch. This would probably be okay for a nightclub audience, but once again not appropriate for an event attended by the entire family. At least, not in most U.S. communities. I found myself wishing Hobin would have included some comments talking about how when it's okay to expose so much flesh versus when it's better to be more modest.

In the part of the book where she teaches warm-up exercises, Hobin demonstrates the moves wearing a leotard and hose. But when she teaches actual dance moves, she does so in a costume which includes a full skirt. Because of that, I often found it difficult to make out the positioning of the feet, legs, and hips with respect to each other. I would have preferred to see her wearing something else (such as pantaloons or just a leotard) that would have made it easier to see her leg and foot positioning.

Not every move is accompanied by photographs. While this is generally reasonable, there were a couple of moves where I found myself wishing there was a photograph I could study, because it wasn't clear to me from the text what to do.

In Conclusion

I don't recommend this book, mostly because I don't think books are a good way to learn how to execute belly dance moves. It was a valid attempt at teaching belly dance in the era before videos were common, but today I would advise dancers to use videos instead of books.

That said, there are some situations where this book might be helpful. In particular, if you already know (perhaps from seeing a video) what a move should look like, then seeing Hobin's description of how to execute that move might be helpful. Sometimes, the instructor on a video demonstrates a move very well, but the words she uses to describe how to do it might not be sufficient to figure it out. In such a case, maybe Hobin's words will help in situations where the instructor on the video didn't explain it well enough.

As a teacher, I try to have 2 or 3 ways of explaining every move I teach, so that if one set of words doesn't work for one of my students, perhaps an alternate description will be more helpful. So I occasionally refer back to this book when looking for new ways to explain moves that I teach.

The sections on history, music, and costuming aren't bad, but I don't think they're strong enough to justify purchasing the book on their own merits.