*** If you purchase the Instant Video version - the video access link will be sent to you by email. Please keep the email - as long as you have the link, you can access the video any time, anywhere in the world, on any device.

When you have an organized understanding of principles and build on a rock-solid foundation, not only do you get better faster and with less effort, but you have more fun in class and take more satisfaction from your practice. So let's make sure your ducks are in a row! This course takes a detailed inventory of every Absolute Beginner vocabulary element and concept, and is designed both as a review and refresher for students who have completed Autumn's Absolute Beginner Course, and as a quick catch-up preparation for continuing beginner students who are coming from classes taught by other teachers. Use this course to discover and fill in any gaps in your expertise, to take full ownership of the material you have learned, and to move on to Continuing Beginner training from a place of optimal preparation.

1. Alignment and Placement Overview
   2. Footwork Overview - 53 min
   3. Footwork Practice
   4. Musicality - 42 min
   5. Arms Overview 35 min
   6. Arms Practice 16 min
   7. Arms Final Quiz 10 min

1. Alignment and Placement Overview - Class steps through descriptions and breakdowns for: hip rotation; pointing the feet; the 9 landmarks that define stance; basic stance; staggered stance; staying centered and balanced with unequal weight distribution; spiraled stance variations; heel lifts; heel drops as a unit of dance vocabulary; knee bends; the concept of weighted and unweighted movement; and the concept of pushing and lifting.

2. Footwork Overview - We review: rolling technique for the feet; walking and time-marking steps; describing weight transfer and weight distribution in terms of steps and holds, variations and layers for steps and< holds, and sequencing steps and holds into footwork combos; step-step-step-hold variations; pivots and turns.  This segment also includes an overview of rhythm and counting.

3. Footwork Practice - In this nonstop follow-along flow, we move through each component of footwork vocabulary taught in the Absolute Beginner course.

4. Music Overview- Topics include: why music education is important to dance education; understanding beat, rhythm, drum soloing and ornamentation, melody, instrumentation, and microtones; baladi, maqsoum, wahda, chiftetelli, and saidi rhythms; dance conventions for interpreting drum, oud, kanoun, violin, ney, accordion, keyboard; and structural conventions of belly dance music, including call-and-response, variation with repetition or ornamentation, and breaks. Bonus: discover how your cat has learned to control your mind! There's no follow-along content in this presentation—we're just listening to music and learning how to break it down—so please plan to watch this video on a day when you are ready to sit back and relax.

5. Arms Overview - In this class, we define foundation arm concepts and technique. -Alignment and engagement >-Hand positioning -Arm placement in six positions: open, overhead, forward and closed, forward and extended, low V, and hip-frame, plus nonsymmetrical variations and transitioning between these positions. -Five pathways: outside circles, inside circles, top-half inside circles, body-frame, step-back ball-change arms. -Wrist articulation as an ornamentation layer in arm movement -Wrist circles -Hand circles

6. Arms Practice- In this nonstop follow-along flow, we move through each component of armwork vocabulary taught in the Absolute Beginner course.