In prepping for our show, it’s been a juggle as the dancers all have different schedules so can’t come at the same times, we usually manage to have 2-3 at a time though and that’s been going well.

I’m sure many choreographers run into this problem especially if a student is on a tight schedule or a dancer lives a good distance.

One of our dancers came up with the brilliant idea of filming all the choreography so they can learn at home and catch up on anything they miss. Learning off videos is great but very difficult if you’re not used to switching rights and lefts. With my nifty Windows Movie Maker (2.6 for those interested) I found it’s very easy to flip the image horizontally making all the steps reverse. Since I use my webcam to film it also sometimes has an option there to set it as ‘mirror’ which does the same thing.

I was also going to film a slow version of walking through the steps but found it would take a LOT of time to go through everything and I couldn’t decide how slow to go through them so found another nifty video effect of  slow motion. It goes to exactly half time so I take the same mirrored video of just running through the song only now of course it moves very slowly and I dub the voice over (since Indian and Belly Dance music at half speed sounds like an robot alien doing country music on valium) and say all the 8 counts and add any comments or tips.

Anyway, I hope that helps someone, somewhere but I’ve found it’s such a dream to learn off a video that slows it down to a good speed, still has the 8 counts and is mirrored so you can see the motions clearly but with the correct rights and lefts you need. It’s also great to give all your dancers a copy to practice with at home so they can catch up on any steps they found challenging or just to make sure they’ve got it all down pat.

Happy Dancing!