Search - Darrin's Dance Grooves on DVD

I don't like N*Sync, but I like this video.

Robert A. Wallis | Los Angeles, CA | 02/12/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I didn't know how to dance very well at parties so I bought it. I agree it is very fast paced, and somtimes the camera angles are a little tricky. However, after the one week I have owned it, I can dance.The pace at which Darrin teaches you is very easy to get used to. He actually teaches about 2x slower than when you are dancing in real-time. And when you do get a difficult camera angle, the 2nd time through has a better camera angle. If the camera was still all the time you wouldn't get all the great shots of the other dancers that are not as skilled as Darrin. And without them I don't know how I could have learned many of the moves. If the camera was shot from behind, you wouldn't be able to see where his knees or hands are.I used to think that it would be really hard to learn how to dance like that. But now thanks to this program, it has become easy. If you like this style, and you like dancing, buy this video."

A Dance Dud.

J. Cameron | Buffalo, NY United States | 03/08/2002

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Darrin's Dance Grooves is pretty darn bad. Offensive, even.There is very little dance instruction. Most of the DVD is taken up with what amounts to infomercial material. Britney loves Darrin, N'Snyc loves Darrin, etc.The actual workout includes a warm up, followed by a break down of small portions of four MTV video dance routines. The warm up is horrible. Darrin doesn't count on the eight. Unwatchable, or at least - unlistenable. You have to hope they dubbed the music in afterwards, otherwise, Darrin doesn't have much of an ear.The "dance instruction" consists of running through the routine twice - with Darrin counting left when he's showing right (i.e., not allowing for the mirror image), and not giving much in the way of description other than "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, ok, we're moving on". The camera work frequently fails to show the movement. He then jumps to the actual video, with his class spliced in. Then he informs the viewer that if we wish to perfect our groove thing, we can always rewind. The routines include turns and floor moves, i.e., fairly complex movements that aren't broken down.It concerns me that this DVD is being marketed to a pre-teen and teen audience that could be permenantly convinced they "can't dance" because they've been victimized by Darrin's non-existent cueing and teaching syle. If you're looking to learn beginner jazz/funk/hip hop I would suggest Madonna Grimes, Culture Shock Hip Hop, Hip Hop Body Shop, Calvin Wiley, even the MTV Grind tapes over this. They all have their problems, but they're light years ahead of Darrin Grove. He's got zero "street cred" with me."

A good video

Laurie S. Friedman | New York City, NY | 01/04/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This is a good video. It teaches a lot of cool hip hop moves, but I thought it could've been a little slower to make it easier to follow. For other people who thought that too, there's another hip hop video which makes the learning part more clear called Hip Hop Shop, it's made for younger kids but adults can follow it too and it's really fun . Both videos are awsome!"

Be careful!

WorknMan | Austin, TX United States | 03/04/2002

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Unless you have a DVD player with the 'A/B repeate' feature and slow motion/frame-by-frame playback capabilities, I wouldn't even consider this video. But even if you have such equipment, I think I would still give this video a pass. I have a DVD player with the capabilities I just mentioned but even with that, the video is still frustrating and difficult to learn from, for reasons I am about to go into. I gave the video 2 stars, but it should really be 1 and a half.
The worst complaint I have about this video is the shoddy camera work. They tried to give it a flashy, 'MTV'-style presentation, but it really doesn't work here. Darrin could be showing you a move that requires you to do something with your feet, but the camera is pointed at his upper body and you can't even see his feet!!! I mean, how do they expect you to learn this way? Sometimes when the camera isn't where it is supposed to be, you can sometimes see what the background dancer's feet are doing, which is even worse because they're not always doing the same thing as Darrin!!! To its credit, Darrin will usually go over the moves more than once and the spots that had ... camera angles are usually fixed the second time around, but on the second go-around, there are all new...camera angles. This means that you are constantly going back and forth, because neither time does the camera stay steady enough so that you can watch it all the way through.
Second complaint is what so many others have mentioned - since Darrin is facing you, you have to do the exact opposite of whatever he does. I originally didn't think this would be a big deal when reading the negative comments, but it really is confusing and un-nerving. A much better approach would have been to implement multiple camera angles, so you could watch from whatever angle you needed to.
Third complaint - when Darrin is showing you the moves, he does it slower than what you normally would do it in real time. At the end, he shows you how to do the dance moves to the actual speed of the music. Only problem with that is that instead of keeping the camera focused the whole time on Darrin and his background dancers, the camera cuts between Darrin and his dancers, to the artists of the music (Britney, N'Stink, etc), to both Darrin and the artists split screen (with one on top and one on bottom). Besides this being confusing as heck, sometimes when the camera cuts in on the artists, they're not even doing the dance moves in question, so you completely miss parts of it!!!
Fourth complaint - the only thing this video shows you is how to dance to the chorus of certain songs (Bye Bye Bye, Crazy, Digital Getdown, etc). So, if you're looking for some basic dance steps, this is definitely not for you.
Overall, the whole presentation of this dance video is sloppy and unacceptable and should be avoided. I must point out that it IS possible to learn what this video has to teach, but it's not fun!! My advice to anyone who is considering making an instructional dance video is to KEEP THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!!!
The only thing I have to compare this to on DVD is Hip Hop Shop, which much better than this, but also suffers from some of the same problems (mainly the wandering camera) as this one does."