Dancing Journal #2 - January 9, 2005

Alright, installment two of the dancing journals. I've been trying to set aside time to practice my popping/boogaloo and locking foundations lately, because I've come to the conclusion that I'm totally unsatisfied with what I've currently got. Well, not totally unsatisfied, I mean, sometimes I can watch videos I've made and see things I really like, but, I feel that I could be a much more dynamic dancer, and have far more range and breadth if I had a better established set of foundations.

There's a reason why foundations are so important, and I just finished briefly discussing this with my friend Shaun. Dancing is about moving to the music. Good dancing should be spontaneous and dynamic. It doesn't look good to have a preset routine that you go out and do. This is the trouble with a lot of poorer quality breakdancers that I see in our nightclub/rave scene. They have two moves they've worked on, then they go into a circle, do those two moves without any acknowledgement to the rhythm of the music, and then get up and exit the circle.

Strong foundations provide a dancer with the pallette from which to draw his creative interpretations of the music. This reminds me of an anecdote - Shaun and I were at a nightclub in town, and Shaun asked me what the secret was to all of the small little moves that I do - how do you make them look cool like that? This is foundations at work. By learning to pop correctly, and to properly isolate the different parts of my body, I can combine those however I like when dancing. This is why foundations are so important. Learning specific moves is fine and good, and definitely looks impressive, but without correct foundations, it's impossible to put together anything that is dynamic.

So that's the why/what, but what about the how? Well, for now, I'm focusing on the most basic of movements. That's the fresno, as I mentioned last entry. Within the fresno, I can practice all of the main points to hit on my body, without adding anything else. When first learning and practicing to hit, it is really important to use something like the fresno as your basis. The first and foremost reason is that above all, you're dancing. Even if working on the most basic technique, there still needs to be some kind of element of dance involved with that practice, and this is what the fresno provides. I, and I suspect most people, find myself swaying back and forth to the beat of music whenever I hear it. This is basically what the fresno is. Sway to the left, hit. Sway to the right, hit.

So, my ultimate goal while working on my fresno is to be able to get my hits strong and tight enough they are visible on these videos. Right now, it's really difficult to see any special kind of motion to the fresno that I'm doing. It basically just looks like I sway to the left, stop, then sway to the right. Ideally I should be imparting the illusion that my body is stopping very suddenly, and right on the spot. As I improve, hopefully, it'll become more apparent that there is in fact a visual component to the start and end of each sway/motion.

The video I have for this entry is really just me screwing around with some of my foundations so I can get a feel for what I'm missing. As I mentioned before, I'm not able to hit as hard as I would like. I also neglect popping my legs about ninety-five percent of the time, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of a given hit. Given that, the things I would most like to focus on over the next couple of weeks are training myself to pop my legs, get my chest more involved in my hits, and improving my waves throughout my left-hand side (actually, just in general).

View the video here. I apologize for the fact that it is flipped ninety degrees. I figured I'd be able to fix this, but seem unable to find anything that will easily allow me to accomplish this feat. If you know how to do it, leave me a comment. I will be forever indebted to you (actual duration of indebtment is closer to five minutes).

Confused? Maybe this will help:

Hit

Hits are just the tensing of muscles that a popper does at the start/end of every motion. If you look closely, you may be able to see a distinct visual aspect to my movements in the above video, but not quite be able to put your finger on what is causing that. That's a hit. Let's say I want to move my arm from shoulder height down to my waist. The motion is actually composed like this: Tense all muscles in my arm, then release them (this is done very quickly). Move arm. Stop moving arm. Tense all muscles in arm, then release (again, done very quickly). If you can't see this, it's not because you have a disorder or something, it's because I'm not particularly good at making my hits as strong as they should be.

Waves

Waves are exactly how they sound: giving the appearance of a wave travelling through your body part. For a wave to look good, you should isolate each body part as much as possible. The best analogy I can think of is the following: Imagine a crowded football stadium, where all of the fans are doing the wave. Would it look better if the stadium was divided up into four sections, and each section stood up/sat down one after the other, or if there stadium was divided up into sixty-four sections, each standing up/sitting down one after the other. This is isolation - the more points at which you can isolate your body, the better the wave will look. My waves, on the whole, are quite poorly isolated, and it's something I hope to improve over the next couple of months.

That's all for now, check back later for more boring videos and thoughts on my progress.