Rating: 
Summary: Get Ready For A Workout!
Review: You might not think this is much of a workout, but just wait till the next day! You'll feel it then! You can burn calories, get your heart rate up, and firm up. If you enjoy ballet, get this one. Beautiful classical music goes along with this one. Just looking at the dancers can give you inspiration.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Workout, Poor DVD
Review: After recovering from having my first child and rebounding from a relatively fit pregnancy, I hoped to find a workout routine I could do at home that would strengthen my weak spots and firm up my abs and stomach that softened over nine months of modified activity. This is not the workout to achieve that. This workout is meant for someone who is extremely flexible with an innate sense of grace and balance that I just do not possess. Even some of the simplest leg lifts seem unnatural to a non-professional dancer. Rotating the foot completely to one side and lifting the leg offers a strain I wasn't ready for, and my right leg now suffers a severe strain in the hip joint. Some of the exercises are really challenging and offer a good workout for muscles that have gone unused in many people, but I was looking for a more all-body workout, and this one concentrates mostly on the lower body. The abdominals and leg darts are great exercises, and I get the most out of those and the floor barre, but there are so few of them, and I feel that once I really start feeling the burn and effects of the exercises, we've moved on to the plies and unintentional acrobatics. The warm-up took me a week and a half to get down, having done it every day and messing up a lot of the moves, and I still stumble through the third section. I laugh at the same point in the video every day when the instructor tells you not to sacrifice the form in order to get the most out of the exercise...meanwhile, I'm doing a balancing act, twisting my ankle, and straining my back in order to simply regain my balance, let alone do the exercise correctly and "emulate the proper form". Perhaps it's me, and I was never meant to train like a dancer trains, but this workout requires maximum balance, maximum coordination, and maximum flexibility, and if you don't possess each of these qualities in perfect capacity, you're screwed. Many of the exercises seem impossible, and you wonder if you're getting anything out of them because you can't perfectly mimic the form of the sculpted dancer on the screen. Losing your balance and twisting your leg or foot make it difficult to focus on the workout, and you need a shaman's focus and patience in order to get through it. It also seems long for an hour, probably due to the repetition of exercises and muted colors. As a DVD, it is terrible. I should have saved the extra few dollars and gone for the VHS. There are certain sections I need to skip now because of the strain in my right leg (that becomes inflamed immediately once the warm-up starts), and in order to skip to the next section, you have to fast forward through the moves in the current section. There are no clean cut chapters unless you go to the Exercises section, and once you complete one given section, you are taken back to the menu and have to repeat the process again and again in order to get the workout that fits you. That breaks your focus and motivation, and it makes the process that much longer and more frustrating. There are a couple of sections where the audio is a little off, so the instructor is telling you to do something you've either already completed or haven't gotten to yet. Also, there is a stretching section where there seems to be a glitch. One minute, the dancer is stretching her right leg into the air. You blink, and her left leg is in the air. You hurry to catch up, and ultimately only one leg ends up getting the most out of the stretching routine. Most frustrating. As a plus, though, my four month old gets a good laugh out of my balancing act, so at least it keeps her entertained while I work out. I will look for a more complete workout that an average individual can properly perform (hopefully without injury), and I will certainly seek a better quality DVD format. Not recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding workout, a pleasure to watch, POOR narration.
Review: No doubt Peter Martins is used to giving minimal instruction to his professional dancers. I could have used a great deal more instruction. You must keep an eye on the dancers at all times, which is admittedly enjoyable but sometimes quite difficult, especially during the floor work. Martins gives instructions sometimes before the dancers do that exercise, but usually after, and sometimes not at all. He occasionally throws in directional instructions, so if you've been mirroring the dancers you may find that halfway through a section you're now being instructed to move to your right instead of your left. If you don't have a clear sense of what you've already done, this can be confusing. For these reasons, the warm-ups are nearly impossible. The workout itself is outstanding. Although I'm in pretty good shape (for a mere mortal,) I found it to be rather challenging. The key is to watch the dancers and imitate their form, and maintain an awareness of your own body. I suspect a mirror would be enormously helpful. Unlike a lot of workouts I've tried, you don't need a room the size of the Lincoln Center to do this workout. You will need room to stretch out on the floor, and you'll need enough room to take about three steps to the right and left, and three or four steps behind you. This workout can probably be done in a small apartment. The classical music soundtrack is good. The contemporary music soundtrack is not bad, though the music for the floor barre section struck me as sounding like a soundtrack to a porn movie. Perhaps I was still grumpy from the warm-ups. While I don't use this DVD on a daily basis, I do use it once or twice a week to break up the routine of my normal workout, and as a good full-body workout. If you have the patience to try to learn basic ballet moves by watching the dancers, I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, But Not a Good Workout Tape
Review: I'm not sure that this tape was seriously meant to be a workout tape. The cuing is bad, with insufficient explanation of the moves, form, and positions the dancers use. Using professional dancers as the models, exercises are demonstrated in their most extreme difficulty, with little explanation of possible modifications for those who are not as limber or fit. For instance, it is never even suggested that a beginner might like to use a chair back as a barre for the floor sections. As entertainment, this is about as beautiful an exercise video as you could hope to watch. The dancers are undeniably attractive and graceful. They are photographed artfully. Because of the minimalism and repetition of the movements--it is a workout, after all, not a ballet--dance steps are pared to a geometric abstraction that is very pleasing to watch. The segment at the end, with profiles of the four dancers who demonstrate the workout, is an added bonus. Buy it as an alternative ballet video. Unless you are very familiar with dance (and very fit) it will not serve well as a workout.
Rating:
Summary: Easy does it
Review: The NY City Ballet Workout is a great mixture of esthetics and isolated muscular movements. You will actually feel taller and stronger each time you do the whole work out. You will get terrific results if you mix this with weight training and cardio!
I definitely have sexier abs and my buns are very tight... after 6 weeks of doing the workout combined with other exercises.
Rating:
Summary: Ballet is very athletic, though very ethereal-looking!
Review: This tape is great for anyone who is an intermediate-advanced exerciser. It's 1 hours long and it's divided in 17 sections, each focusing on specific movements/muscles. All exercises are performed with beautiful classical music in the background. The video contains a warm-up, lower-body stretches, abdominal exercises, and then "floor barre" (which are basically middle and lower body toning exercises), upper body and back toning and strengthening exercises; then you have several sections that include ballet movements, and then a cool-down. This video is ideal if you want to shape your body and sculpt your muscles without "puffing them up": I never liked those hard, bulging muscles! I like better lean, long muscles like these dancers have. As one of the dancers observes, the NYC ballet dancers' bodies are different from other ballet dancers, and they truly are: these dancers have very beautiful, athletic bodies, rather than just being very thin like most ballet dancers. Another dancer says that ballet is a very athletic discipline, but most people don't notice that, because the bodies of the dancers are developed nicely and they move gracefully: we all know ballet is characterized by elegant moves and great posture and balance, and who wouldn't want that? That's why I would suggest this to anyone who wants to feel and look better thanks to exercise
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful tape, really intense workout for firming muscles!!
Review: I love this tape!! I don't have any ballet dancing experience, but found the dancers easy to follow!! The music is relaxing and the exercises are truly fun and I can really feel that it's helped me tighten up already!! Great all over body workout! I couldn't be happier with how it has helped me improve my posture and gracefulness (REALLY!!), too!! This is definitely a video I would recommend any serious fitness buff add to their collection.
Rating:
Summary: A total body experience
Review: Although I'm not much of a dancer and even less a workout freak,I found this tape to be much more than I bargained for. It's music and ambience is completely relaxing and you even forget that you're working out if not for the sweat beads and sore muscles at the end of the session. The steps are not hard to follow (although it takes a bit of practice) and the music is celestial. If you want to tone your body, improve you posture and overall get the workout you want without the sometimes annoying cheering of some other workout tapes this is the tape for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't watch this video before operating heavy equipment
Review: I purchased this video about 6 months ago and have used it several times, here are the reasons I don't like it:
1) They take the most beaufiul dancers in the world and put them in bike shorts and exercise bras, on the bleakest set in the history of videos. They have bodies that Michelangelo could not do justice to, but in this video they look as lovely as one of those medical texts showing starving children in stark black and white. Other people have said how much they liked the black and white effect, but I think it was a terrible choice and wish they might have integrated just a little color.
Also, it seems someone threatened to shred the dancers tutus if they smiled even once during the filming because never have I seen four people so determined to keep their faces a mask of boredom. 2) David Martins is no Denise Austin (okay, that can be good sometimes, but not in an exercise video). It is obvious that he doesn't use these sorts of videos very often, because he doesn't seem to know that the purpose of the narrator is to help the viewer follow along. He seems to prefer letting you figure it out on your own. 3) He never explains a lot of the ballet terminology. If you are a dancer, you'll be fine when he tells you to releve, tendu and plie. If your whole experience with ballet is that your mom dragged you to the Nutcracker when you were five, you might be a little lost. 4)The music really is lovely, but not very invigorating. The steps themselves are not very exciting, but rather boring. Some exercise routines leave you pumped and ready for the day. Not so with this tape. I find the reverence (the cool-down at the end) to be the most fun of the whole tape. Otherwise it's just repetition. 5) He has you do tendus with flexed foot, which as a dancer, bothers me extremely. If you are trying to learn ballet, you should always do tendus with very pointed feet and I think showing them flexed, especially for a beginner, can foster a bad habit. What redeeming qualities does this video have?
1) The interviews with the dancers at the end of the tape are an interesting view into the life of a professional dancer.
2) During the interviews, they show clips of the dancers actually dancing instead of boringly working out. In these clips they look happy, engaged, beautiful. If only the whole thing had been like that.
3) The exercises will help develop leg, abdominal and buttocks muscles as well as flexibility, if you can stay awake.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful, relaxing, inspirational!
Review: What a way to work out! This is an extremely high-quality production, with lithe, gorgeous dancers, beautiful music, and elegant design. Even those with little training in ballet (like me) can pick up what's going on and try to follow along without feeling like an idiot. But it's the four dancers themselves that are the highlight of this program--you see them and want to look like them so much that you keep going, and before you know it, your workout is done!
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