Lisa Rinna’s Dance Body Beautiful: Jive, Jump, Ballroom Bump

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre fitness Starring Lisa Rinna Directed by n/a Publisher Warner Home Video

You’ll want to dance your beautiful body right back to the store after buying Lisa Rinna’s Dance Body Beautiful: Jive, Jump, Ballroom Bump workout.  In a sense, Rinna delivers exactly what she promises: four short workouts with fairly simple steps.  She starts with a warm up and ends with a cool down.  Workouts include Jive Jump Ballroom Bump, Cha Cha Crazy, Super Sexy Salsa Sizzle, and Fat Free Disco Fever.  

As creative as the workout titles are, the dances themselves are not very interesting.  If you’re looking for a fun workout of all body parts try Richard Simmons.  Lisa Rinna’s workouts don’t fit the ballroom genre as well as the workout’s title implies (nor are they likely to give you a beautiful body in just a few weeks – no work out can do that).  Without a partner, these dances become mere simple footwork that teach you nothing about dance.  

Unfortunately, the simple steps aren’t so simple when they aren’t explained well.  Even with the split screen, allowing you to see the moves as a whole and to see close ups on the feet at the same time, the steps are not easy to learn.  Each work out includes four levels of speed: breakdown, slow, medium, and fast.  But the breakdown goes by very quickly, and Rinna gives you the names of the steps and does the steps for you, but does explain the steps in enough detail.  There’s nothing like having the instructor right there by your side to show you the steps, and Rinna does not make you feel like she is right there to show you the steps.  

The background dancers certainly have the steps down.  At times, they seem more enthusiastic than Rinna.  One wonders how much they had to practice to get the steps down just right.  They have no problem with moving their hips (which is necessary for all of Rinna’s workouts).  The background dancers probably wouldn’t have much trouble with learning the steps, anyway.  They are all skinny and fit – which may be motivational, but not exactly the way to make all viewers feel comfortable, especially when Rinna claims to have students from age seven to eighty for her workouts.

The DVD includes a short interview with Rinna in which she talks about her love for dancing, how she started the Lisa Rinna workout series, and the “genius” of the series.  Rinna comments, “It’s having fun and it’s doing something for yourself that you can feel good about.”  Unfortunately, exercisers won’t feel so good about Rinna’s workout.  There’s nothing very original about Dance Body Beautiful: Jive, Jump, Ballroom Bump.  The workouts are short, and the background music is not very exciting.  The camera often focuses on Rinna’s face, making it harder for you to follow along.  And although Rinna can be motivational in her comments, her workouts are faster and more complicated than they should be.  Regular dancers and fans of Louis Van Amstrel (cheographer) and Rinna’s work on Dancing with the Stars may be able to get something out of this workout, but most others should jive, jump, and ballroom bump to the store and spend you money on something better than Lisa Rinna Dance Body Beautiful.