Product Description

Learn the art of Ballroom dancing taught by Champion Instructors Alec Mazo & Edyta Sliwinska, both featured professional dancers on the hit ABC-TV show, Dancing With the Stars. Geared to offer something for everyone, each dance is broken down into Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced sections - so get ready to Dance like the Pros! This two-disc set features 45 minutes of instruction for each of these four dance styles: Rumba, Cha Cha, Jive, & Sumba

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21995 in DVD
• Brand: DANCING LIKE THE PROS (DVD MOVIE)
• Released on: 2007-09-25
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 5.00 pounds
• Running time: 200 minutes

Customer Reviews

This is a very well-organized DVD that makes it very easy to learn.
I bought Dancing Like the Pros DVD by Alec and Edyta from their website earlier this year, about two weeks after they performed on their tour in my home town in San Jose, California. When I first watched the introduction of the DVD, I knew exactly this is what I had expected from it.
What I had was two DVDs, each one containing two styles of dancing. Disc 1 teaches the Rumba and the Cha Cha, pretty basic dances. Disc 2 teaches the Jive and the Samba, which are more difficult. For each dance, the program is broken into three segments: beginners, intermediate, and advanced. There are also two demos, one performed by Alec and Edyta, and another performed by their students. Each segment has four or five routines that they go through one by one. Toward they end, they put all of the routines together into a well choreographed dance. For each routine, they teach you with intricate details the proper techniques to perform it slowly. Then you will be required to perform it to the actual music.
Through out the entire course, you will come across the routines (each one having a distinct name) that you would now easily recognize when you watch Dancing with the Stars. There will be basic steps, shuffle, twist, samba walk, whisk, cuban breaks, chasez, New York, spot turns, hand in hand, alemana, hockey stick, botafogo, cucaracha, and many more.
I really enjoyed watching Edyta dance gracefully with Alec. You can practice these dances with a friend or a loved one, or you can also practice alone. The beauty of this DVD set is that after having learned every routine of a dance in all three difficulty levels, you can put them all together and dance to an entire song or mix and match a few routines to your liking.
Enjoy :)

Not Very Instructional
Though beautiful to watch, this DVD is NOT for beginners and not for people who just want to learn to dance socially. It's obvious it was produced more to piggyback on the succes of "Dancing with the Stars" than to help anyone learn to dance. There seems to be no thought at all put into making the instruction accessible to the home viewer.

Despite being divided into sections labeled "Beginner", "Intermediate", and "Advanced", there's no real attempt to modify the instuction for beginners. Basically, the pros demonstrate a step one time slowly, then a couple of times quickly to music, then it's on to the next step. Besides the pace being rather fast, all the dancers are facing the camera, so you either have to try to dance the opposite direction of the dancers on TV or turn your back and try to follow as you're looking over your shoulder, both of which are hard to do. Alec often wears flowing pants that cover his shoes and Edyta wears big ankle warmers, which makes it hard to discern what they're feet are doing. At times the camera moves back and forth continuously as the pros are dancing, which is makes it hard to follow them.

There's little to no explanation of technique or terminology, and what little there is is not very helpful. For example, in the Beginner section of the Cha Cha, Edyta gives a vague instruction to "make sure you're bending and straightening your knees" without saying exactly when or how, and as she's giving this instruction, the camera is only showing her upper body. Dance steps and terms are called out as if the audience already knows what they are. Sometimes they're explained, sometimes they're not.

If you have some experience as a ballroom dancer and are interested in competitive ballroom dancing you might be able to glean some useful information from this DVD, but for most people this DVD will just be frustrating.

Not for beginners
The package contains two discs, each containing instructions for two of the 4 dances covered. There is very little initial tutorial for people, such as myself, who have never had any formal dance instruction. The transition from the earliest basic instruction is much to rapid for a beginner to grasp. The lessons would have been better if there was, for example, a "birds eye view" of how their feet were moving or they did the dance moves in even smaller pieces then joined them together. I'd imagine there are more helpful instructional videos available. If not, someone should rethink the way these videos are presented to the customers. Don't let the names on the box think you're getting anything great.