I'm finally through the DVDs volume II and III. They're designed to be comprehensive burlesque DVDs. Overall, I feel it's a mixed bag. There are some real gems, like the intermediate chair dancing and blues dancing, and the stretching and conditioning for splits and high kicks are also good as are clips from live Sugar Blue burlesque shows. I've certainly found some material that I can use in my own dancing.

The DVDs are set up in chapters that cover classic burlesque dance, boa tease, fan dancing, stocking tease, chair dancing, floorwork, tassel twirling stretching and conditioning for splits and high kicks and Parisian Can Can. So there's a lot of a material. However several chapters have no instruction at all, just short demos. These are stocking tease, boa tease and Parisian Can Can. This was a source of disappointment for me since I was interested in some Can Can instruction.

The instructional chapters are taught by various members of the Sugar Blue company. I think (and maybe I should have timed it)each instruction chapter is about 10 minutes, so not super long. They generally teach classic moves (not usually a lot of break down) and then show the moves in a short routine to music.

As far as the fan dancing, there's not a whole lot of in-depth instruction. Miss Bonnie Fox (Sharon Davis) does break down several good advanced moves in the volume III, such as a backbend while twirling fans overhead, fan tossing and floorwork, all very useful. I think it might have been useful to break down some transitions from floor moves into other floor moves. But certainly some good stuff to work with.

Overall, these are useful DVDs for a comprehensive introduction to the major elements of burlesque dancing. For fan dancing in particular, there is certainly some good material, but not a whole lot of time is devoted to fan dancing. There's also not a huge amount of break down, so if you have trouble just following or picking things up visually, this might be a challenge. So as I said, a mixed review for me. I feel like they might have tried to cram too much information into these DVDs, so nothing is quite as comprehensive as I would like. That said, I certainly have gotten some things I can use from the DVDs.

There's still some stuff I will work through, but I will keep you in mind if I decide to sell them!