Best As A Supplement To Bellydance Classes
I've owned four of Veena and Neena's videos for several years and only used one of them regularly. I've enjoyed them as fun workouts and I think that Veena and Neena are incredibly skilled and beautiful dancers who have earned the title "Bellydance Superstars," but I learned very little actual bellydance from them. Teaching is not what they do best. I'd tried Mystic Dance about three times before retiring it. At that time, I found it confusing and too difficult to get excited about.

I started taking a class about two months ago and popped Mystic Dance into the VCR this evening because I wanted to play with my veil. Having had just a few weeks' training from a professional instructor made a world of difference in the usefulness and enjoyment of this video.

The problem that really stands out is that the twins only give about 60 seconds' instruction on each of the moves, so it would be difficult for the novice to learn without practicing regularly for months on end. If this was the only instruction you had, you'd have to be really dedicated. The twins simply go too fast for the inexperienced dancer and don't explain most of the moves adequately, either verbally or visually. I also noticed more than once that the photography was only from the waist up on moves where the motion is in the legs and hips!

I'm blessed to have an incredible instructor who enables her students to catch on quickly. After working with her, I enjoyed this video so much more because I had a good foundation. It sat on the shelf for a long time, but now I'll keep using it to develop my dance.

If your goal is to learn bellydance, try to take a class and use this video to supplement your practice at home. If you don't have access to classes and like Veena and Neena, the Basic Moves video is best for instruction.

If you are just looking for a fun workout that doesn't feel like a lot of effort, then just about any of Veena and Neena's tapes will do, except this one. It really is too fast to enable the inexperienced dancer to participate.

veil???
Although I have enjoyed all their other bellydance videos I was extremely disappointed with this one. The veil work they had was almost non-existent. They only showed the very very basic.."i did it in kindergarten with my blankie" kind of moves. On the other hand they did some very nice arms if you are looking for some different hand/arm positions.

All in all, the first two in this series were wonderful, this one should be redone.

virtual instructor
if you dont have accesss to a professional teacher in your area, then you may want to try these series of tapes. They are very good quality as mentioned by several other people here. Of course yo dont have the one on one intruction as given by a live person, but they are definatly a step in the right direction.

a grea in addition to
I think this is a wonderful video. It is not meant as a stand alone but as an in addition to. And i think it works very well in that context. Neena and Veena's videos are great for those of us who just love a bellydance workout. I do not aspire to be a belly dancer but I love the relaxation and variety it brings to my workouts. It feels feminine and graceful. I like how accessable N and V make belly dancing. Guess I too am a Neena and Veena groupie too!

I loved it!
Two previous reviewers said some negative things about this video. One said the dancing was "all veilwork". There was a great deal of veil work within it, but, Neena and Veena make a point of saying that the dance works just as well without a veil (the veil work simply becomes hand movements in that case).

Another said the moves were displayed too quickly. There's an introductary warmup and teaching section where each move is taught, one at a time. I didn't find any later movements in the video that weren't shown at a slower pace before going through them at "normal" speed.

That said, I really enjoyed this tape. I also own the first dance tape, and all their exercise routines (on DVD). I guess that pretty much proves I'm a Neena and Veena fangirl, but, I enjoyed going through this dance much more than the first tape. It was slower paced and therefore easier for me to follow and keep up with. I don't move/dance "quickly", and so fast-paced routines are a big challenge for me. This one was nice and slow, which given the "mystical" title, made sense to me.

I bought this tape in a gift set with a veil and zills (finger cymbals). I was a little disappointed that there was no zill instruction, but, other than that, I thought it was well worth the price.