Nefertiti Presents: Belly Dancing "The Basics"

Cover

Title Nefertiti Presents: Belly Dancing "The Basics"

Author Sherry Jeffries (Ankestamen)

ISBN 1-59196-118-1

Publisher Sherry Jeffries

Category Non-Fiction: How to Dance

Shira's Rating (on a scale of 1 to 5)

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

What It's About

Back in 1975, a dancer named Nefertiti (Doris Demarest-Nemeth) in Phoenix, Arizona began working on a "how to belly dance" book project. For unknown reasons, she did not complete the project. Decades later, her daughter decided to use the photos that had been taken for the book, add text, and finish the project. This book is the result.

The format of this book is that of a simple "how to" manual for beginning belly dance. There are about 20 basic moves taught, a page on posture, a page about finger cymbals, and a few veil ideas. Some of the moves include hip bounce, half moon, hip thrust, hip shimmy, sit-kick front, sit-kick side, sit-kick back, lean-kick, single-leg shimmy, backward figure 8, shoulder thrust, shoulder shimmy, shoulder roll, pelvic tilt, belly roll, head slides, and snake arms. The veil work section talks about how to wrap it, how to remove it, and how to do a few simple moves. The floor work section talks about how to do a Turkish drop (which seemed a bit odd for what is otherwise a beginning-level book), the sway, the half wedge, and the full wedge. For each item taught, there is a picture of Nefertiti accompanied by several bullets with explanation and a few tips. In some places, diagrams accompany the photo to offer further clarification.

Since the photos of Nefertiti were taken in 1975, the book definitely has a strong retro flavor to it.

Although I think it would be difficult for someone to learn how to belly dance solely by using a book, it can be helpful to use a book when the explanation offered by your teacher or video on how to do a certain move isn't entirely clear. A book like this can offer another way of describing the same move, and help someone who is struggling see it in a different way. For belly dance teachers, this sort of "how to dance" book can also offer alternate ways to describe a move when teaching it.

Its Good Points

This book is well suited to readers who want something simple and not too intimidating to assist with their belly dance study. The photos and simple large-font text would probably be particularly appealing for younger readers, or for people who want to ease in gently with the basics, without digesting too much at one time.

For the most part, I found that the descriptions of the moves worked well for me. The text was simple, and it was very easy to tie descriptions to the pictures. Many of the photos illustrating moves were augmented with arrows, lines, or diagrams to help show the direction of motion.

I was charmed by the fact that Sherry honored her mother by completing a project that her mother had begun in 1975. It's a lovely tribute, especially since her mother passed away in 1999.

The spiral binding conveniently lies open to the page of choice, which can be useful when studying a particular move.

On her web site (see "Where to Get It" below), Sherry offers sample pages from the book under "Online Lessons". This provides an opportunity to preview what the book looks like before buying it.

On The Negative Side....

With only 40 pages and a large typeface, the book is fairly short. It might have been nice to have either an index or a table of contents identifying page numbers for each move.

The plastic spiral binding is a bit of a nuisance when the book sits on the bookshelf, because it takes up more space than other kinds of bindings and it's impossible to tell by looking at the spine which book it is when it's sitting next to other spiral-bound books.

There were a number of typing and grammatical errors. For example, on page 8 is says, "This is knowing as Parallel Position", when it should have said, "This is known..." It would have been helpful if Ankestamen had asked someone to help proofread it.

In Conclusion

It's hard to learn how to dance from printed text. However, if you have access to either a teacher or a video that demonstrates what the move looks like in motion, the written text in a "how to dance" book like this can help clear up confusion. Sometimes, it's helpful for either a teacher or a student to have more than one explanation on how to do a move, and this type of how-to book can help with that.

Where To Get It

<== Buy from Amazon.com in the U.S. (Prices quoted in U.S. dollars, shipped from U.S. warehouse.) Or, contact Ankestamen as follows:

Web Site: http://groups.msn.com/Ankestamen/ (Includes a sample page from the book under "Online Lessons")
E-Mail Address: Ankestamen@groups.msn.com