Dr. Mo’s Entertaining Balady Routine DVD

As I've written previously, I became enamored of Dr. Mo Geddawi's teaching at Ahlan Cairo Nights in Montreal last month. At the workshop, I purchased two of his DVDs and one CD (Delli Ya Delli II) from Little Egypt. I had enjoyed his teaching so much that I wanted to take it home with me, but I didn't know whether the DVD would be as good as being in the classroom. This DVD I will talk about now is the Friday Night Workshop from Ahlan Cairo Nights 2008, the Balady routine. I also picked up the Melaya Leff routine and will probably write about that in a later post. This particular video is available here from Little Egypt: http://www.littleegypt.com/caironightsvideo.htm

This routine was taught to one of my favorite songs on the Delli Ya Delli II CD, the Balady Youkal. It's a 5 minute baladi song that starts with singing and then goes into a baladi taqsim progression. I have to say that this DVD was so much like taking class with Dr. Mo! Everything was filmed, from little stories and explanations he gave in between, and the repetitions of each part of the choreography, and even rewinding of the music and waiting for it to start. Normally, this verbatim reproduction of the workshop can be a disadvantage in these DVDs – but since Dr. Mo is such an organized teacher, it works very well. The DVD set contains 2 DVDs, each about an hour and a half long. The choreography is very clear and easy to learn, partially because of his explanation of the steps, and the whole thing is peppered with his thoughts on dancing and choreography.

The last DVD in the set contains a Q&A section where he talks about what makes a good dancer, the difference in talents between dancing, choreography and teaching, and even advice for a professional dancer to maintain her audience's interest and her performer's mystique!

One thing I had to learn about the Little Egypt DVDs. Each DVD tends to have two sections. The first section starts out always with an advertisement for Little Egypt's store. If you think that this is just an ad and skip to section #2, you miss the entire first section of the choreography. For a long time, with all my Little Egypt DVDs (I also own Dina Montreal 2007), I thought that the whole workshop wasn't filmed and that we only got select parts of it. It didn't seem to make much sense just jumping into the choreography. Of course, with Dina, I knew that we weren't really learning a choreography – it was mostly following the bouncing butt. But with Dr. Mo, I knew how he taught the choreographies in big sections, breaking it down into smaller combinations, so when the DVD started out in the middle of the song – I knew I had missed something. That's when I realized that you have to tell your DVD player to play the first section, and then use the "skip" button on your remote to skip the LE advertisement.

I am eagerly awaiting Little Egypt's release of the 2009 DVDs from the workshops I attended in Montreal. I really adored both the Baladi and the Oriental routine we learned. Something I like about his choreography is that I never find it awkward to execute, once I've gotten it down. I loved the Yousry choreography that I learned in April, but parts of it still feel uncomfortable on my body. Perhaps Dr. Mo's choreographies are simpler than Yousry's, or just better suited to my dance style – I'm not sure.

To learn more about Dr. Mo and his theories, there is a great interview with him at the Gilded Serpent. http://www.gildedserpent.com/art43/cebdrmo.htm