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She taught to two songs. The first one was Farid Atrache (I think?) and the second one was on 'The Best of Sabah'. i think it was called "ash'rah".
She basically would just have the dJ play the music, make up something on the spot, do it again to remember it and then walk us through it. The workshop was packed so typically we had to sit on the floor and watch, and then get up and do it. we would do it together a few times, then she would watch us and make corrections. She said she taught choreography & technique together, not separately. But on day one, she did stop the class and teach technique for a while because people were struggling with her style. This was awesome and worth buying the video for. Then she re-wrote the choreography to make it "easier".
She would do that if she saw people struggling too much. Too bad her version of easier was not the same as ours. For example, she didn't seem to like how we were layering a shimmy on top of a particular step. But it was an easy step choreography-wise, just shimmying forward and stepping back in different directions. She changed it a combinaton that was "easy" to her, because it was all Western ballet moves! It was a pas-de-beurre, chainet turn and an arabesque and a shimmy step-forward all together. Really really cool - but took many of us a long time to master. She said "This should be easy - it's not bellydance - it is from your ballet!" (something like that anyway). She also liked to do turns on her heels, which were cool - and a lot of moves involved turning. She also added accents to other moves. So a three point turn would have a hip lift added to it (hard to describe, sorry) - or a level-changing omi would have a little pop at the back. There were a lot of reversals - for example, if you were bringing your hips around one direction, reversing the other way. She seems to use change-of-direction to make the dancing more exciting, as well as change of speed - like parts of the choreography would be fast, contrasted by slow sections. She also used a lot of level changes, often with an omi - her direction was to keep the thighs pressed together and allow the heels to rise off the floor. She taught a cool backbend that I dare not describe because if I say it wrong, it might break a few backs. A frequent combo would be two hip moves to the front, then a rapid turn. I just dont' have the vocabulary to express it all, given that people call moves different things all over. But rest assured, it was very very Dina and unique to her even while some of the moves were familiar in their most basic form.
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