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Review taken fom http://www.salsa-central.com/reviews/everything-else/spins-b…Written by Catherine Jex    Tuesday, 28 October 2008Spins… by MagnaSpinning is a bug-bear of any aspiring salsa dancer, requiring practice and effort to perfect! Whilst the principles for being able to spin are simple physics, that doesn’t help you on the dance floor, the first time a lead tries to make you do multiple spins! The ways in which you practice to develop these skills are completely individual and finding a teacher who can break down key concepts, in a way and at a pace suitable for you, is not always straight forward!Magna Gopal, based in Toronto, is famous for her spinning, just check out you-tube if you haven’t seen already! She can spin, that’s a given, but how does she teach it? The DVD is split into 5 chapters. Chapter one covers a couple of warm up exercises and a review of basic right and left turns on1 and on2. I liked this as it provided a first step on the spinning ladder, taking the basic turn into a pivot turn to get the student used to keeping one foot anchored to the floor as a central axis to pivot around.Chapter two introduces right spins on1 and then on2, using spinning drills to practice such things as prep, balance, spotting and momentum control. Subtitles appear to emphasise these key concepts as Magna talks and walks you through it.Chapter three covers these same drills but for left spins, again on1 and then on2. Chapter four moves on to how these techniques are implemented during social dancing, as Magna covers the footwork of a set up for multiple spins to the right and to the left, on1 and on2, and then practices these to music. This is practiced further in chapter 5 with another drill.Things I liked include:    * Magna was really methodical, which you have to be when teaching something like spinning. Unlike styling/body movement, spinning is 100% technique! So bad news – you need to practice, but the good news – with practice anyone can do it!    * The review of basic turns: firstly stepping them out and then using a pivot. This is a really nice stepping stone into spinning.    * The pace of the DVD was really great as was the quality and clarity of how Magna described what she was doing and what you should also avoid doing.    * Magna takes it slowly in-terms of building you up to a double spin, by first introducing ¼ spins, half spins, ¾ spins, full spin and then doubles and giving you different combinations of these in the spinning drills to practice at your leisure. This gives a good introduction and I also like the fact that these exercises are for left turns as well as right; and its on1 and on2, increasing the scope of this DVD.    * I also enjoyed the conclusions and the bloopers as a nice wind-up to the DVD!Things I didn’t like so much:    * Each chapter ended with a short interview with Magna, which whilst interesting and fitting with the content of each chapter, I couldn’t help feeling that it would be better placed at the end of the DVD, which, actually it is; in addition to these short interviews, removing the need for having them after each chapter interrupting the content.    * Magna stresses the importance of proper set-up and prep, but actually I thought this wasn’t broken down as much as it could be or as I have seen it done elsewhere. Perhaps a section in chapter 4 dedicated to this would help.    * Perhaps the only other thing I would say that if you currently only dance on1, you may prefer the on2 demonstrations to be kept separate; i.e. two sections to the DVD: firstly chapters 1 to 5 on1 and then secondly chapters 1 to 5 repeated for on2. If you dance both on1 and on2, then this is not such an issue.In conclusion, this DVD is a really methodical and precise approach to spinning, from one of the best! Magna emphasis that this approach is what works for her, and that other people may learn better from a different approach. Though remember, the principles are always the same because the physics of spinning and momentum don’t change, it is only the way in which technique is broken down and taught that vary and Magna covers both very clearly. I enjoyed Magna’s approach and I would recommend this DVD to anyone learning spinning from first principles or with some experience of spinning already looking for another approach!www.magnagopal.comDuration: 1:11:41Video information: Codec: DivX 6.9.2 Resolution: 720×480 frame rate: 29.97Audio information: Format: MPEG Layer-3 Channels: Stereo Sample rate: 44100 Hz Bitrate: 192 kb/sRe-uploaded, first time people complained that the “Not downloadable for another 0 seconds” message appeared. I hope this time works.