Suhaila - Bellydance for Beginners with Suhaila: Fitness Fusion Jazz

Overall: Comedy, with a side of bellydance technique
Duration: 30 minutes of aerobic-style workout

Truthfully, this review could apply to any of her "Fitness Fusion" series. And I have one word for them all: weird

The whole thing is set up more like aerobics, with very little instruction and
very little bellydance. While I will admit I did use muscles I don't normally use and Suhalia is a beautiful dancer, I don't exactly feel like this is helping my bellydance at all, other than to get a little more exercise.

The formula is this: 30 minute aerobics style workout, followed by a 3-4 minute performance piece (I swear the first one didn't even have Suhaila in it); inspirational speech from Suhaila (no
joke - "When you have kids and the dishes are piling up, its an accomplishment just to brush your teeth every day"), then some weird circle thing where each of her background dancers stands up and improvs for Suhaila and her kid while the other girls sit and clap.

The "Jazz" DVD featured an actual dance combination (shocking!), which was about 56 moves long with no breakdown and used words I've never heard before/didn't know what the move was. Here's an example of the words
coming out of her mouth:

shassey up
walk around
hip hip hip
turn and clap (yes - this is the white man's overbite move)
step ball change
releve
attitude
padeve
shoulders back
step and kick
walk it out
hip hip
and now reverse it!

I mean, honestly, there was no way to follow what the hell was going on! And where are all these ballet terms coming from? And why doesn't she explain what the hell they mean?

Eventually, I stopped trying to follow and just shimmied around my living room while she yammered at me through the tv. It was a bit maddening.

Available from Suhaila