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The Goddess Workout with Dolphina - Bellydance FItness 4 DVD Box Set

The Goddess Workout with Dolphina - Bellydance FItness 4 DVD Box Set

List Price: $39.95
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excellent
Review: I bought Dolphina's warrior workout a few months ago out of curiosity and I developed a whole new hobby for myself. Since then I have bought Neena & Veena and also Rania's DVDs and videos. I like to watch and learn from all of them, each has a different style and each has taught me something else. I like Dolphina's warm & friendly attitude and elegance. I wish I could take her real life classes. Now I am waiting for the veil dance and cymbal dance DVDs. I make my own costumes and have great fun. I became stronger and developed some very nice curves. The only thing I have to work on some more is shimmy. I can only shimmy for a few minutes - I have yet to match Dolphina's stamina. The only thing that I would want to change about her DVDs is that sometimes they show her face and upper body rather than legs when she is doing hip and leg moves...so I cannot see how she is doing it. Other than that, she is my favorite belly dance teacher. Rania is a bit too tough and Neena and Veena do not break down their moves enough.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Dolphina is good - but her camera man is not!!
Review: I didn't care for this DVD when I first bought it last year, but I've kept at it and I must say I do like Dolphina's spirituality. It annoyed me at first, but she really adds to the DVD and helps you get into it (which is an integral part for the mind to be involved as well). Plus she breaks down the moves and puts them all together, great for beginners.

As for the negative, the camera man STINKS! When she is doing steps they focus on her face, you can't see anything! This doesn't happen once or twice, but frequently. It was (and still is) very frustrating.

In summary... spiritual, good explanation of moves, bad camera man loses you when learning!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hard to follow
Review: I found the intro video incredibly hard to follow in places - because most of the time the cameras would focus on her face or another small part of her body. As someone who has never tried this before, I really felt I needed to see what the part of her body she was talking about was doing, at least, if not her whole body, in order to mimic it. I have 11 years of ballet and gymnastics behind me, so it isn't a dance impedement, it would just be really nice to get the whole picture.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Pretty videos
Review: I have all four Dolphina DVDs and as a long time dancer of many years, I can say they truly are the prettiest ones out there. The settings and such are lovely compared to many bellydance videos that look like someone filmed the teacher in her basement. Dolphina was actually the first bellydance video "teacher" I ever had and inspired me to study the art seriously!
The first one is by and far the prettiest, as other have said! I was a little disappointed that the format changed for the other three.
As far as actual teaching -- some interesting combinations are presented, but the filming does make it hard to learn. On the new ones she is often in shadow and you can't see exactly what she is doing. As others said, on the first one, the camera person is focusing on her face or belly or something and not showing the move at all sometimes! And occasionally Dolphina's isolations are off (for example, in some exercises she says to keep your chest and shoulders still while hers are clearly bobbing up and down.)
Still, I think for beginners or folks who just want to dabble with a different workout beyond aerobics, these DVDs will do the job. If you are an experienced dancer, go for the Jillina or Ansuya videos.
Dolphina DOES have a lovely presence on the screen. I wish she did a performance segement on each one the way many videos do!!! Perhaps she will later come out with a performance DVD of some kind -- she is so lovely to watch and her outfits are so pretty it would be bound to sell!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: very fun workout
Review: i have both the beginners and the warrior goddess dvds. i think they are a great workout..very fun. and it helped that you were dancing, because normally i quit workouts because they are too boring, but this one kept my interest. however, i didn't like the fact that the workouts weren't challenging enough. after going through both the videos once, i never got a work out the second time. (and i have never done bellydancing before so that is not the problem). but all in all, it was a very fun workout. and i loved dolphina's encouragment.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Okay for some ideas and a review
Review: I initally bought the DVD set because I wanted to learn more about veil and finger cymbal work and do not have access to classes, and getting the 4 pack was cheaper than buying individual DVDs. The production quality of the dvd was better than other bellydance instructional videos I own but I was not that impressed with Dolphina herself. I have been dancing for 5 years and may be biased, but I found her movements to be stiff, jerky, with little isolation between her lower and upper body (during the hips segment her head bounces has her hips move). While the choreographies at the end of the videos in theory have some decent combinations, Dolphina executes them poorly.

Overall there are some good ideas of moves from the videos, and I will mopst likely continue to use them to help me guide my own practices, but I do not recommend the Goddessworkout tapes. Instead I would recommend the DVDs from Jilliana or tapes from Suhalia.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Uplifting Workouts!
Review: I love to do the workouts on these DVDs--Dolphina is wonderfully positive and full of girl power! Evertime I do one of the workouts, I finish feeling happy, beautiful, sexy, and powerful. I would have given this DVD set 5 stars if the location and costume changes on the last three DVDs were as interesting as the first DVD, if and cool down sections on the DVDs were more thorough, and if the first DVD showed Dolphina's whole body when she was instructing you on difficult moves to make. Otherwise, the DVD set is a perfect pleasure!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Skeptical at first
Review: I purchased this set recently - after exhausting several other DVD belly dance sets. I'm relatively new to the dance - Off and on taking classes since last July (have had a huge gap in class time with this latest 6 month deployment though).
I've heard so many horrendous things about this set, that I was pretty skeptical at first.
I must happily say this has been a lesson in judging for myself though. I have been pretty happy with it - the set takes a different perspective to belly dance - one on the more Pagan spiritual level. The movements taught all appear to be good and are relatively well explained from my comparisons of in class teaching as well as other video instructionals (some of which offer almost no explanation whatsoever on movement execution).
The only thing keeping me from giving this 5 stars, is a personal preference. I would have liked more repetition time instruction -but hey, it IS a DVD.. I can always replay.. it's just slightly less convenient is all.
I've already recommended this set to my sister. All in all, it's pretty good - so despite what you may have heard about this in a negative way - I'd suggest viewing it for yourself, and making your own judgements. I'm pretty happy with it as an addition to my growing collection of belly dance related DVDs.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I wanted to love them, but then I watched them
Review: I should've known by the stiff cover photos, but I got suckered in by the whole "Goddess" thing.

Pros: Beautiful teacher. Tranquil set. Very easy to watch as long as you don't pay too close attention. Lovely costumes. Relaxing. Her dance sequences are interesting in that you see her dance to please herself, not the audience.


Cons: Bad editing, and this makes her off-counting even worse 5.....6.....7..8. totally disconnected. Dolphina "shows" the viewer her style of dance, she does not "teach". She missed so many chances to teach proper technique, foot placement, muscle control, transitions, etc. She even missed several steps in her own choreography. And yes, she is beautiful, but please show her feet when she's talking about feet.

Not a good choice for newbies to learn from, although it would get them interested in learning more. Easy to watch. Easy to get bored and frustrated by.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My Favorite Workout. Very fun.
Review: I'll update this after I've gone through all the DVD's. For now I can say that the Goddess Workout is the only workout that I've done so many times that I've memorized the whole routine, and I can do it without the video.

I loved it from the first time I did it. I showed three friends the video at my house, and they all went out and bought it.

The Warrior Goddess is more difficult, I tried too hard the first time I did it and hurt my hip. I haven't even gotten through the whole Warrior Goddess wourkout yet. If you are a begginner, you should definitely do the Goddess Workout first, then try the Warrior Goddess.

Of course I bought zills and a veil, but I haven't found zills I like. So I haven't really done the whole zills (finger cymbals) routine, but the way she teaches it makes it fun and so easy to learn.

The veil workout I tried after coming home from the gym yesterday, but my arms were too sore, so after I do it, I'll write about that one too.

All in all, I love all her workouts, because it feels magical and when you're done and you've mastered the moves, you feel like a goddess, or at least like a bellydancer.

Some people complain about her talking about "shakra's" and things like that (that I don't know very much about), or they complain about how many times she changes her costume in the 1st DVD, I don't think either of these affected the workout. In fact, I recently got a hip scarf with coins, and I liked the segments when she had the coined outfits, so I could 'hear' if my movements matched hers.


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