Rachel Brice was the accelerant on the revolution of Tribal Fusion belly dance, which was started by the likes of Fat Chance Belly Dance. If there was such a thing as a “Tribal Fusion Belly Dance Spring,” Rachel Brice would be the catalyst.
Rachel focuses on yoga, technique, drills, and choreography for a dancer to develop effortless, articulated, strong, expressive, clean, isolated, and relaxed movements through muscle memory.
In her Serpentine DVD Rachel focuses on yoga, technique, drills, and choreography for a dancer to develop effortless, articulated, strong, expressive, clean, isolated, and relaxed movements through muscle memory. As she says in the video, “The secret to effortless dancing is consistency.” Rachel herself spent many hours in front of a mirror practicing her slow movements over and over. She still practices. Even famous ballerinas practice the basics over and over.
- Serpentine DVD Instructional Focus Time Breakdown
- Serpentine DVD 1: Yoga and Drills
- Serpentine DVD 2: Yoga, Choreography, and Performances
- Music Used in the Serpentine DVD
- Dancer Skill Level for Serpentine
- Review Rating for Serpentine
Top Skill Taught
The body mechanics behind safe backbends, which is mostly an illusion of a backbend, if correct technique is used. She doesn’t recommend performing her signature backbend and other backbends unless you fully understand the body mechanics and are physically capable of the movement. You risk injuring yourself if you attempt backbends with poor technique. Even with good technique, you risk injury if backbends are repeated too frequently. Listen to your body!!!
Skill Focus Time Breakdown
Serpentine Belly Dance consists of 2 DVDs and almost 4 hours of material. Not many dancers have that much time to practice for 4 hours daily. She recommends doing portions of the DVD 6 days a week with 1 rest day a week. She recommends to also end your daily practice with the “Finishing Yoga” chapter.
In DVD 1 she has a link to a sample practice schedule. However, that link is currently broken. I did find the sample belly dance practice schedule as an image on her website. You can always search her website for the practice schedule as she moves pages around on her website.
The following graph is an approximate breakdown of how many minutes are included in the DVD for various belly dance skills. Note that the total time is less than 4 hours as the same yoga workout is both DVDs, so that time is not double counted in the graph.
DVD 1 Yoga and Drills
The following is an outline of the dance skills taught in Serpentine DVD 1.
Yoga
Rachel leads a gentle yoga warmup that uses many of the movements from Viniyoga. This movements help warm up the body for the dance practice to come. This easy warmup also lets you tune into your body. Are some of your muscles tight? Is one side of your body tighter than the other? How does your back feel? Rachel teaches many of these yoga moves in her week-long workshops. These yoga poses will help keep your body in good shape for dancing. Rachel used Viniyoga to help her recover from a back injury. She has now been dancing for many decades. You really want to warm up your spine before you start on the belly dance movements.
Leg Strengthening & Drills
Rachel starts off this section with gentle ankle stretches and gradually progresses to movements requiring more leg strength and coordination. Level changes in belly dance require leg strength. Some of the leg strengthening exercises will be familiar to anyone with a dance background. For those of us that spend too much time in shoes, the foot exercises might feel hard; as if we don’t have movement in our feet and ankles any more.
She does a variation of a camel walk, grapevine in this section while nice soft drum music plays in the background. She gradually transitions from the leg strengthening exercises to belly dance drills incorporating arms, hips, steps, pivots, and patterns. Shimmies and hip circles while doing a deep squat while in plie.
Isolation Drills
Rachel does each isolation by itself and then adds it to three different step patterns both forward and backward. She starts with isolations from the top down; shoulders, rib cage, body waves, and hips. She does many of the isolations at four speed; on the beat, 1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, and 1/6 notes that works the isolations up to shimmy mode.
Shimmy Drills
In this almost 15-minute chapter, Rachel layers the previously practiced isolations with hip shimmies. She layers them individually and in combinations. This chapter will give you a little cardio workout and really test your brain and muscle memory.
DVD 2 Yoga, Choreography, and Performances
The following is an outline of the dance skills taught in Serpentine DVD 2.
Choreography 1 – Kozarica Kolo
This approximately two and a half minute choreography is to Kozarica Kolo from the album Vranjski San: Vranje Dream by Brass Menazeri.
Performance & Demo
Rachel first performs the choreography in a costume and then demos it in practice wear. This shows you what the choreography will look like during a performance.
Step-by-Step & Practice Loops
This choreography is made up of 4 combinations that are repeated multiple times. After the combinations are explained, you can access from the main menu practice loops for each combination. This is great because you can practice each combination as many times as you need to get it perfect without having to keep practicing the combinations you already perfected.
Yoga for Backward Bending
Choreography 2 – Whisper Hungarian in My Ear
This is a very short, advanced choreography that incorporates several backbends. This choreography is to Whisper Hungarian in My Ear by the Toids from the album Ruupert Dances in Fins.
Performance & Demo
Rachel first performs the choreography in a costume and then demos it in practice wear. This shows you what the choreography will look like during a performance.
Step-by-Step & Practice Loops
This choreography is made up of 4 combinations that are repeated multiple times. After the combinations are explained, you can access from the main menu practice loops for each combination. This is great because you can practice each combination as many times as you need to get it perfect without having to keep practicing the combinations you already perfected.
Finishing Yoga Again
This is the same finishing yoga practice as on DVD 1. This makes it so you don’t have to swap DVDs in order to do your finishing yoga practice after your belly dance practice.
Lecture Chapters
Serpentine’s lecture chapters contain short spoken lessons that you need to understand to do the drills in DVD 1 and the choreographies in DVD 2.
Backbend Technique
In this section, Rachel briefly explains the biomechanics of how to perform backbends to lower the chances of injuring your back while doing backbends.
Foot Patterns
This mini-lecture. Rachel explains the for step patterns she uses in layering the drills and techniques in DVD 1.
Arm Patterns
In this mini-lecture, Rachel demonstrates the arm movements she uses in layering drills in DVD 1.
Music Beat & Count
In this short lecture, Rachel describes how she uses full, half, quarter, and sixteenth notes in the music to make movements slower or faster while practicing.
Yoga Breathing
In this short lecture, Rachel describes the type of breathing she uses in the yoga chapters and why this type of breathing is important.
Performances
DVD 2 of Serpentine includes several short performances by Rachel Brice in costumes. These performances include the choreographies taught in DVD 2.
Music Used
The following is the music used in the Serpentine Belly Dance DVDs:
- Balad by Helm from Tribal Dance – Tribal Drums
- Borino Oro Baraat from the album Brazen, by Brass Menazeri
- Frame Drum by Helm from Tribal Dance – Tribal Drums
- Kozarica Kolo from the album Vranjski San: Vranje Dream, by Brass Menazeri, distributed by Porto Franco Records (Used for Choreography 1)
- Maqsoum by Helm from Tribal Dance – Tribal Drums
- Masmoudi by Helm from Tribal Dance – Tribal Drums
- Sout with Spice by Helm from Itneen
- Whisper Hungarian in My Ear (San Cantrell) by the Toids from the album Ruupert Dances in Fins, on Odd Shaped Case (Used for Choreography 2)
Whisper Hungarian in My Ear (San Cantrell) by the Toids from the album Ruupert Dances in Fins, on Odd Shaped Case (Used for Choreography 2)
Kozarica Kolo from the album Vranjski San: Vranje Dream, by Brass Menazeri, (Used for Choreography 1)
Balad by Helm from Tribal Dance - Tribal Drums
Frame Drum by Helm from Tribal Dance - Tribal Drums
Maqsoum by Helm from Tribal Dance - Tribal Drums
Masmoudi by Helm from Tribal Dance - Tribal Drums
Dancer Skill Level – Intermediate+
We rate this DVD as suitable for an Intermediate+ dancer. If you are new to belly dance and don’t have a dance background, you might get frustrated at the pace of the instruction. However, if you already have experience with Tribal Fusion belly dance and/or have extensive dance training, you might find the pace a little slow.
The second choreography is not for beginners due to the backbends required.
However, no matter what your skill level, the yoga practice is good to incorporate into your practice routine if you don’t have a yoga practice already. If you practice both your belly dance technique and yoga, you can enjoy dancing for many decades.
DVD Review Rating – 5 Stars
We give Rachel Brice’s Serpentine Belly Dance DVD a 5-star rating because, if you admire Rachel’s dancing and want to integrate her style and technique into your own dance vocabulary, you need to learn from her. This DVD set contains a wide breadth of material in almost 4-hours of instruction.
Rachel focuses on yoga, technique, drills, and choreography for a dancer to develop effortless, articulated, strong, expressive, clean, isolated, and relaxed movements through muscle memory.