Created by Neon, New York City-based star of classic bellydance and dance fitness guru, Piece of Cake - The Bellydance Workout for Beginners is a 1-hour-and-20-minute dance fitness and instruction experience that will refresh your body and mind with graceful, evocative, sensual movement, and wash away fatigue and anxiety. It will help tone your lower body and your arms and give you that lifted, confident carriage. Neon believes that, as a form of fitness, dance should retain it's artistic and evocative nature and rich continuous texture. She created her dance fitness format focusing on dance combinations as a unit, never 'drilling' moves out of the context. Each combination - even if it is only 3-4 steps - is a mini-poem. A toy to play with. Piece of Cake uses an absolute-beginner-level dance vocabulary and allows for more repetitions and recurring dance motifs than Neon's other workouts. Neon guides you with cues and technique reminders every step of the program, her combinations are built step by step starting slow and then increasing the tempo, and the dance routines are easy to follow, even if you don't have dance experience. There are 7 segments in the Piece of Cake workout focusing on bellydance hipwork, shimmy, and upper body accents. These sections are very feminine, flirty and feel like dancing at a party. They alternate with sequences of graceful fluid poses of an evocative, mysterious flair. The pose sequences allow you to stretch, relax into the music and savor the meanings and moods of the dance flow. The last segment of the workout is made entirely of poses, fluid transitions, gestures and other elements of expressive dance body language featured in the workout. - It's a cool down with a hypnotic flow that feels like a personal ritual. There is also a Tutorial section, where the dance steps from the workout are explained and broken down in detail, including all the building blocks of the arm patterns, gestures and dance poses. Even though the Piece of Cake workout is designed for beginners, it is great for dancers of all levels as daily or weekly dance practice for muscle conditioning and to increase fluidity and range of motion in hipwork. So.. enjoy this delicious piece of cake, it's yours!
A**I
Ow
As always Neon delivers a great dance experience. I don't think I've been able to find a teacher as good as she is. She always says that every dancer has there own strength and teaching is her's. Although I don't care much for her dance style when she isn't teaching. I wouldn't say this DVD is "a Piece of Cake" but it is fun.The pros:Neon talks you through the moves and gives good technique reminders throughout. I personally love this because i'm not always sure what to do with my head or my hands. I'm not usually into a one teacher experience if there are three people pictured, but this time it seemed okay. I really enjoyed the music the mix of fast and slow was a good change of pace. I didn't mind the black background actually. Neon is always wearing pink and since she's the only "teacher" I didn't pay much attention to the other two, so seeing them or not wasn't a big deal to me. Pink wearing Neon is always easy to see.The Cons:Ouch, my legs and arms hurt after doing the workout, this may change as I get more used to the workout and the dance experience. Right now though it hurts to hold my arms in neutral position for as long as I have to and occasionally I just have to move them even when she isn't. I walk up and down stairs a lot so all the lunges etc hurt my legs after awhile. Again this may change as I get more used to the workout.I really missed the practice flow section she has on both Hard Candy and Love Potion, I felt like simply jumping into the workout was detrimental to me. I'm still not sure how to do a few moves and I've been working with the DVD for a bit now. The Tutorial was a bit too short and didn't cover everything, that I could see I haven't watched all of it, but I was looking for the cross steps and a few other moves and couldn't find them.Overall the music and the moves are all here it gives a great dance experience even if you are already taking classes. If you are looking for a "teacher" give her a shot she is very good.
L**Y
Fun, Different Workout - Helps if you have Bellydanced Before
The title of this is a little misleading. I took some bellydancing lessons over 20 years ago so I know the difference between a hip lift and a hip drop. This will be difficult if you've never had a lesson and are unfamiliar with the moves, but for a natural dancer or someone who picks up choreography quickly it really will be a piece of cake.The main dancer and narrator is beautiful and graceful, she's really interesting to watch.The nice thing about this is you don't need any special zumba sneaker slide thingys or even sneakers for that matter. I did this in bare feet and no sports bra. It is a good workout for your arms; I had to drop mine frequently. There are some deep bends and lunges, but I just did what was comfortable and still worked up a sweat. I will try this again. It's fun, give it a try!
M**E
Learn as you dance
I tend to jump into the deep end of the pool first and figure out how to swim afterward. This dvd facilitates that habit of mine while simultaneously keeping me from drowning. I learn some basic moves and poses and it has a feeling of dancing to it even though it's not performance choreography. It's whipping my muscles into shape and although I don't know if I've lost weight, I see my body shape changing in a very good way. This dvd is wonderful when you just want to move instead of drilling basic moves in isolstion. And of course, I'm sure I look just as fantastic as the dancers do in their beautiful costumes. As long as there's not a mirror around to disprove me, I know I must look fantastic. I feel fantastic. Great fun and great training for impatient people like me.
K**L
Scratched on Arrival
Unfortunately, I received a dvd that skipped on section 2. However, from what I was able to see, compared to the quality of Love Potion, Hard Candy, and Luscious, this workout (although for beginners ) was not done with the same finesse.The black background made it difficult to see, and the same moves from the dvds are used over and over again. Unless something new was added in the section that skipped, Love Potion is your best bet.
M**N
Fun and easy to pick up the motions
This is a fun video!!!! The motions are fairly easy and instruction is straight forward. Of course, learning the moves are hard at the beginning, but so is everything else when learning something new. The moves are fun and flirtatious! Plus, the video is a great workout. I didn't even think about how much I moved my body until I stopped. My muscles reminded me of the amount of exercise I got from feeling sore, especially in my arms- wow!
A**I
I didn't make it to the end-30m tops to start off for me
It goes very fast and builds upon itself. I'm in shape and coordinated and it was tough (just keeping the arms out was exhausting after 20m). I thought it was too long and didn't allow enough time to explore the movement, it seemed more like a performance than a how-to. Though I'm sure she'd do much harder things if it were a performance.
J**S
Not a great workout.
This was a bit of a tutorial, but not one for someone who either has never done these moves with a trainer before, nor for someone who was actually looking for a workout. There was not much step-by-step instruction in this, just a whole lot of "move like this, then this, then this...". I guess it would be a good refresher video for someone who had already done this type of thing. But it was also kind of unenthusiastic. Really, I got more of a workout laughing at myself and the ridiculousness of the situation than I did trying to do the motions.
H**R
Not instructional. No flow.
This isn't a work out for a beginner. There is no instruction and no way to keep it. The video jumps into a work out without any help on how or why to do the moves. There are better belly dance work outs available.
Trustpilot
1 week ago
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