Search - CrossRoads: Middle East to Spain on DVD

This no-budget amateur turkey does no justice to the dancers

Natasha Wink | 03/14/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I would give this DVD a negative rating except the site won't go below 1 star. One of the first things I noticed, aside from the ramshackle staging was a yellow kangaroo crossing sign in the background of the performance. I had no idea Spain and the Middle East intersected in Australia. In any case it was symbolic and representative of everything that followed, most especially the camera work.

The published premise and description of this product were highly ambitious, but the actual DVD was very poorly executed and fails to deliver whatever message it could've had. Granted these were live performances, but I've seen far too many well done, videotaped live performances to excuse any part of this sloppy production. Whoever put this turkey together did so with VERY amateur homemade video and zero notion of editing. A good deal of it had spot lights shining into the camera. Terrible lighting. The single stab at style was to hold the camera at a 45 degree angle in a few sections. Maybe the kangaroo was filling in for the camera man.

Ms Maria took a spare, minimalist approach to makeup, hair, costume and props which left only her performance to speak for her. Very well performed and presented. Even the super-crappy camera work could not detract from that.

On the other hand, Ms. Zamora could have taken a few minimalist costuming cues from Ms. Maria. For starters, she looked like she was wearing crumpled and bulky colored rags in every performance. It was difficult to see her dance through all the wadded costuming. For all I know she could've been dancing her heart out, but I only got brief glimpses of her ability. The red/green skirt was tacky enough, but the rumpled brown sword dance getup was a disaster all the more ghastly for being taped on a patch of public grass near a sidewalk with pedestrians walking past and ignoring the show. People do that sometimes when something is too embarrassing to look at. Ms Zamora's hair looked too dark for her complexion, poorly dyed, over processed and badly in need of a good trim (at least 8-10"of frizzy dead ends) and styling. All her personal grooming attention apparently went into her manicure, which looked like 2" dark, lacquered daggers waving about. Very distracting, and very unappealing. There are fashion disasters and train wrecks. Ms Zamora's costuming falls into the latter category.

There was a tall, slender male dancer who did a marvelous job, IMHO the best of the 4 bellydancers. I wish he'd done lots more dancing because I haven't seen a male bellydancer perform that well since I studied in Egypt. If the DVD had featured him alone, I'd have given it a much higher rating. There was one other bellydancer, a large woman who danced with a great deal of joy and gusto. Her costuming was minimal but perfect for what she did. Both these dancers after Ms Maria were the best efforts of the DVD.

Save yourself some money and buy something else instead. This DVD should be used only as a case study example of what can go or be done wrong in an amateur production. I don't think this DVD should be sold as a commercial production because it's far too shodily made. What a disappointing rip off."