Fantastic Fan Veils Sedona Soulfire

Fantastic Fan Veils with Sedona Soulfire provides an amazing amount of fan veil movements and combinations sure to get the creative juices flowing for an advanced dancer.  Around 35 different fan veil movements are nicely instructed, demonstrated, and drilled.  You will learn solid technique in a concise way by a very pleasant and calm teacher.  The movements progress in a logical way from simple to more complex. We love that Sedona has creative and fun names for the movements that make the fan veils moves easy to remember. You will need to know basic belly dance hip and arm movements plus be able to do some spins and turns as Sedona combines these belly dance moves with the fan veil moves. There are five fan veil movement combinations taught.  This is enough combinations to do a short portion of a song. The video is filmed in mirror so you can see the fan veil movements from both front and back at the same time.

Introduction

Sedona describes how fan veils are very popular in belly dance as they can express  a wide variety of moods and attitudes. From soft and subtle to powerful, from flirty to free, and troubled and tragic .  Fan veils are a dramatic way to create mysterious wraps, dramatic lines, and breath-taking swirling colors. Floating veils are amazingly captivating.

3 Rules to Perfect and Poised Fan Veil Technique

Sedona talks about the three rules to help you have perfect and poised fan veil performances.

1. Practice a lot. Practice helps you to develop precision and control. Practice also helps you gain awareness of how your fan veil moves in the air.
2. Play with your veils. She says she learned by playing around with her fan veils.
3. Give your non-dominate hand extra practice. If using double fan veils, your weak hand fan doesn’t appear as good on stage. Hence, strengthen and practice moves more you’re your non-dominate hand. You can practice with your non-dominant hand while watching movies. Practice 10-15 minutes of work on your grip and hand patterns a few times a week.

About Fan Veils

Sedona gives a mini lecture on the different fan veil sizes and fabrics that they can be made from. She discusses when a dancer might choose one size of fan veil over others.

Fan Veil Sizes

Sedona uses a medium stave fan veil in this video. The most common size fan veil is 36” across  and 60” long.  You can get extra-long fabric to make more dramatic movements on a big stage.  A shorter fan veil length is good for flutters and gives more of a fan than fan veil look. Staves can be different sizes.  Use the stave size that is right for you. Use a smaller fan and stave if you have smaller hands or smaller frame.  If you plan on nesting on top one on top of another to do single fan work, smaller staves are .easier to control. Medium staves are hard to stack and work with.  When stacking medium staves, one fan usually begins to close because you can’t grip both staves tightly enough. Very large staves almost like Isis Wings. Staves should be strong, so that they do not splinter.

Fan Veil Fabric

Next, Sedona talks about fan veil fabric. Most veils are made from hand dyed silk. Veils can be made from standard silk or silk gauze. Silk gauze is sheer and romantic, but are clingier to the dancer’s body.

How to tell Right from Left Fan Veil

Fan veils are either right or left handed. To control the fan veils correctly, you need to hold the fans in the correct hands. To identify the handedness of a fan veil, open it.  Your thumb should be on the thicker, rounded, polished stave.  If you have the correct handed fan in your hand, you can hold the fan from either direction.  If the fan veil is in your proper hand, the staves move away from your body when opening. You can mark with nail polish which fan is right and left.

Fan Veil Care and Storage

Sedona suggest that you don’t wrap silk around staves to store and carry.  Instead, let them hang down in a closet.  You can put staves into paper towel cardboard roll to carry them.

Buying Fan Veils

Read our review of the top fan veils we’ve used.

Pre-dance Prep / Warm Up

Sedona leads a short section on breath work and exercises for hands, wrists, arms, shoulders.  These exercises can help build strength for and prevent injury from using fan veils. When beginning to work with fans, your hands will most likely hurt.

Fan Veil Posture and Grip

Sedona demonstrates proper posture, hand grips, wrist motion, and arm movements for doing fan veil movements. You need hand strength to keep fan staves fully open. You have to hold fan staves tightly. Fan veils require a twisting wrist motion. Practicing this motion at different speeds without the veils can help with technique. Sedona demonstrates how to properly open and close. Fan veils  A new fan may need to be opened and closed a bunch to make it open and close smoothly.  Use arm and wrist momentum in the direction you want the fan veils to open and close. Sedona next teaches and drills proper arm movement for fan veils.  A dancer should think about the fan veil being against their forearm. You should think of moving your arms and wrists, not moving the fan veils.

Fan Veil Moves

Fan Veil Flourishes and Floofs

Flourishes are big movements that fill up a lot of space on stage. She does two 8-counts of each flourish with music to practice. The flourish names appear on screen right before she teaches the flourish. She doesn’t call out names during the practice, so you just have to mimic her moves.

• Unicorn Horn
• Super Star
• Wrist Flick
• Kiss
• Back Stroke
• Sultry Sweep
• Chase

Van Veil Figure 8’s

Figure 8 arm movements are popular in belly dance. The fan veil figure 8 movements taught and drilled are:

• Basic at shoulder level
• Holy grail. Figure 8’s in opposite directions with the arms.
• Sand Storm

Fan Veil Flutters

Flutters are like shimmies with the fan veils.  You can layer flutters on all flourishes and floofs. You can practice flutters on top of different moves already taught.

Fan Veil Spins and Turns

In the next section, Sedona teaches and drills spins and turns using two fan veils.  You may have to work up to be able to spin as long as she does. The spins and turns covered are:

• Ballet turn. Arms in classic 4^th.
• V-spin
• Isis spin
• Plate spin
• The Silk Road
• Close Classic
• Gypsy spin
• The Chase

Fan Veil Poses, Frames, and Wraps

Poses, frames, and wraps are when the fan veils are used in more stationary ways to create a picture or frame around the dancer.

Frames  and Poses

Sedona teaches frames and poses as a rest from all the spinning in the previous section. You can do hip movements or head slides when being framed by the fan veils. The frames and poses aren’t drilled because they will be used later when combinations are taught.

• Mirabai butterfly
• Oriental Queen
• Scarlett O’Hara
• Double trouble
• Kwan Yin

Fan Veil Tucks

This section describes how to tuck fans into belt or other costume parts for when you enter onto stage without holding fans.

Closed Fan Veils

You can also use fan veils in their closed position to get different visual effects from when the fan veils are opened. The closed fan veil moves taught be Sedona are:

• Ribbons
• Circles like poi
• Puppeteering tracing body movements.
• The Athena frame
• Freedom frame
• The Empress
• Box Frame
• Basic fabric frame

Sedona drills the closed fan veil moves with some belly dance hip movements.

Single Fan Veil

Sedona next briefly talks about single van veils. You can either use a single fan veil or two stacked fan veils for single fan veil moves. All double fan moves can be done with one fan veil. With a single fan veil, you can grab edge of veil to make different shapes.  The unique single fan veil move she teaches is the:

• RockaBelly

The remainder of the video teaches combinations.

Single Fan Veil Combo

Sedona gives counts to the movements for a total of 11 measures of 8-count moves. You can follow along to practice to music twice as she goes through the combo twice.

Double Fan Veil Combinations

Next up are four double fan veil combinations. Each move in the combination is first explained using counts. Then she does a walkthrough with counts of all the moves strung together in a combination.  Lastly, she dances the combo five times to music, which you can use to drill the combo. Each combination consists of seven to nine 8-count measures.  The total number of 8-count measures for all four combinations is 30. The combinations include open and closed fan veil movements. One combo uses a slight back bend, which is optional.  She uses the names of the moves she taught earlier to describe the moves in the combinations. It would have been nice if at the end  she had strung all 4 combos together with counts to practice to.

Performances

Sedona does a performance in a dance studio against a simple red backdrop.  She wears a blue cabaret costume with full skirt. It isn’t an actual stage performance. She starts in a wrap/tuck, which to slow music, which gives you ideas for your own entrance wrap/tuck. The performance includes floorwork with the veils, which wasn’t taught in the video. The performance does not use the combos she taught. The performance is very artistic and graceful.

Skill Focus Time Breakdown Infographic

Fantastic Fan Veils with Sedona Soulfire is 128 minutes long.  The following infographic is an approximate breakdown of how many minutes are included in the DVD for various belly dance  skills.

Music Used

The following are Amazon links to the music used in the Sedona’s Fantastic Fan Veils  DVD.

• Sensual Belly Dance Series with DJ Zen. Not available on Amazon.
• Artist: Brothers of the Baladi    Song: Miserlou    Album: Presence of Past

10/05/2024 02:02 am GMT

Dancer Skill Level – Advanced

This video is suitable for advanced dancers.  Doing the fan veil movements while doing other belly dance movements is much more difficult than it would seem than doing the fan veil movements while stationary.  The dancer will probably be interpreting different parts of the music with the fan veils and their body. For example, the dancer’s hip movements may interpret the music’s beats while the fan veils are used to interpret the music’s melody. However, beginner and intermediate dancers can learn a few of the moves, especially the frames and poses,  to use as an intro to their belly dance routine.  You don’t have to learn all the fan veil movements before using the fan veils as part of your dance performance.

DVD Review Rating – 5 Stars

We give this video a rating of 5 stars because there are about 35 fan veil movements and a total of 41 8-count combos clearly taught and drilled.  That’s a lot of moves and combos to use in your own choreographies.  Because the Sedona counts out the moves, it is easy to pair the moves to your own music selection.  The videography is good with the movements shown in front of a mirror, so the you can see the movements from most angles. Sedona Soulfire really knows how to teach and her fan veil work is stunning.