July 2006 Archives

Wow. As always time has been short on my end since the last entry that I wrote. As I wrote last time, I had taken a dance workshop, and had a video sitting on my computer desk for the last week waiting for me to watch it.

I've been taking a break from squash for the last week (I could tell it was time) so I came home on Tuesday with time to spare. I look around trying to decide what I wanted to do before I made dinner and my eyes fell upon the video I'd purchased. I threw it in and before I knew it I was practicing dancing again. The video is really that good. Anyone that's spent any time around me knows that I'm a pretty harsh critic, so hopefully it's seen as significant that I think that this video is, without a doubt, the clearest, easiest to follow, most motivating video I've ever seen and owned.

I learned to dance from watching videos. My first exposure to popping was watching Usher do a side glide on the Billboard Music awards probably around the year 1999. I was hooked, and wanted desperately to learn more, but due to the nature of funk styles in Victoria, my only options was watching more dance videos, slowing them down, speeding them up, and trying to mimic what I was watching on TV. Oh how I wish I'd had this video back then. Learning the way I did is very bad - it causes you to miss a ton of foundation, which you will inevitably have to spend longer time learning later, and leads to bad habits from trying to mimic moves without understanding what it is that makes the move look so good.

I've been putting the video on whenever I'm sitting around getting ready to do something, and practice quickly whatever is currently being shown whenever the TV catches my eyes. I share a very similar to philosophy on dancing to Jake, and have a great deal of respect for his thoughts on the subject. So... what have I been learning?

One of the big things that I took away from the workshop, (and from the video) is the importance of including your hips when dancing. The more you can move your hips, the funkier your dancing becomes. Although it's a movement I've used in the past, I've never specifically spent time contemplating how important the hips are when moving to the music. Jake spent a lot of time explaining how important this is, and the last fest times I've headed out to the bar, I've made an effort to include this aspect of dancing.

Some of the things I've noticed:

1. One more part of the body to use to hit the beat

People that have taken a disciplined style of dance are probably already aware of this, but it's never occured to me - your hips provide one more area where you can hit a beat. Ultimately, with a rhythmic dance (such as house stepping), you want to be moving the lower half of your body (and most often the upper half as well) to the beat of the music. However, sometimes you want to do something with your feet that moves past a given beat. Moving your hips gives you one more part of your body that can hit on a beat - with practice you can move your feet through the beat, while you hit the beat with your hips.

It's really hard to make this make sense to anyone that doesn't dance, but learning that my hips serve as one more instrument to hit the beat with was like a drummer realizing that they can use their feet to hit the pedal on the bass drum - suddenly they're able to hit beats with both of the their drumsticks and their foot.

2. Funk that stuff up!

Hips. Make. Dancing. Funky.

It's so easy. Just by adding hip movements to your dancing, you bring a whole new dimension into your dance.

So, I spent a good chunk of the evening making use of this new found aspect of dancing - hit with my body, bring my hips across and snap them into place, hit in another direction, snap the hips to a new location and hit with them. So simple - it doesn't need to be complicated.

In the meantime, I've been spending time practicing general movement with my left arm. I've been dancing for a long time, but my left hand/arm is useless - I couldn't freestlye any kind of movement over there to save my life, so that needs to change.

Well, I'm sitting here at 8:23, writing a blog entry, with a very intense week behind me and a relaxing weekend in front of me.

I made a really poor showing this past weekend at the cup tournament, but that's already been covered, so I won't provide any details about that, other than to say that the same style of gameplay was present this past Wednesday in league, and it became obvious to me that I just need to take a little bit of a break and spend some time relaxing and thinking about the game.

The week has been very busy - on top of preparing for an open house at work that we had this past Thursday, we gave a demo of our application to one of our clients on Tuesday, I've been making contact with a bunch of different people, and then, on top of that, trying to get friends to come out for the workshop this Friday and finalize plans for the tournament I'm going to in Vancouver. The week has flown by.

With all of the high pressure stuff behind me, I had the dance workshop I've been planning to attend to look forward to. I met up with my friend Simon at 10:30 and we walked down Quadra St. to the dance studio where the event was hosted. I was kind of worried - Quadra St. Village is pretty ghetto - I didn't want to be dancing amongst hobos. However, the dance studio was swedish - Nice and big, huge mirrors, smooth floor. We were stoked.

I started out talking to Dave, the guy doing the organizing for the tour. He was a pretty cool guy - easy to talk to and keen on dancing. He's not a hardcore dancer, but is really into popping and I had plenty to talk to him about. He met Jake (the instructor) when they lived together in Halifax, but it turns out he now lives in Vernon - too bad it's not a little closer.

We chatted for a while and then the class got underway: four kids, aged 13 or less, and my buddy and I. That's cool though, I don't have a problem with that at all, it means more one on one time with me. I was a bit apprehensive to learn toprock at the start - I've been into housestepping for a long time, and although I've got a lot of respect for good bboy toprock (the dancing done before hitting the floor), it's never been something I've delved into.

Man, I wish I hadn't waited so long. There were loads of techniques that Jake was showing us that I can easily envision incorporating into my dancing. One thing I really look for in a good dancer is funkiness. It's a hard quality to pin down to any one tangible thing, but it's definitely something that I take notice of. This guy was funky as hell. Crazy funky. So funky I could smell him from down the road. So yah, he pointed out a lot of things that I don't consider much as a result of spending most of my time practicing isolated, clean, rigid popping - movement of the hips, position of the upper body, keeping your arms busy as well as your feet. All things that I'm aware of in the back of my mind, but are really good to have re-emphasized and brought back to the forefront.

I was sweating pretty good about 30 minutes into the workshop, but I kept going hard - we were being shown so many things, I didn't want to stop to take any breaks for fear that I'd forget some of what we were shown. About half way through we shifted towards working on some popping techniques.

I had a ton of questions to ask Jake about popping - I definitely wanted to nail down the technique used to pop your legs (unlike the upper body, where you hit by clenching your muscles, you pop your legs by gently snapping your knee back - essentially straightening your leg with snap. You don't need to do this hard or you'll hurt yourself), and I've wondered for a while if you can pop your legs while breaking a walk up with hits in between each step (the answer is yes).

I also asked about chest hits - do you actually clench the muscle in your chest, or just thrust it out hard? Jake said my chest hit was a really well isolated chest hit, using the technique of thrusting the chest out with a snap. For a more powerful shock running through your entire body, you can thrust the chest out farther. We were also shown a bunch of gliding techniques, such as the stationary glide (I've been practicing gliding for a long time, but never learned this technique, which is a pretty key part of the foundation), circle glides, and forward glides (Jake's technique differs from what I was using).

Lastly, we finished up with some locking, which was great. I've loved locking for a long time, but have had absolutely no influence locally and noone to watch or learn from. This style of dance more than popping seems to translate poorly from video, because it's so much more about being funky and showing your character when you're dancing. It's hard to learn that from just practicing moves you're watching in a video. On top of just some general guidance, we learned the techniques for doing Stop and Gos, Which-a-ways, points, wrist and elbow rolls, and a few more things.

Overall, the workshop was one of the best fifty dollars I've spent in some time. I left feeling inspired and very motivated to practice, and like I have a lot of new things to work on for the first time in quite a while. Apparently this week there was also an incredible locker out here giving a workshop that I completely missed out on. How do you find out about these things? My friend Nic and I are going to start looking into dance schools to see if there's any kind of forum that we can check to catch wind of more events like these, and Dave and Jake are going to get in touch with me when they're next coming out here (I think they said October was the next time they'd head out).

I picked up a video that they'd put together breaking down most of the steps that we learned on Friday, but haven't had a chance to check it out yet. After I've done that, I'll be able to lend it out to anyone that is interested in checking it out (if only just to see what it is I'm talking about).

I'll be working on some of the new techniques we learned, and eventually, putting up videos that actually show some of those techniques (don't hold your breath though, I have to at least get it down to the point where they don't look ridiculous, and that'll take a while).

Alright, my legs are just starting to regain the ability to support me moving anywhere around the house, so I dragged myself to the keyboard and dug in for an entry.

The weekend was good - we had another cup/team tournament this weekend, and I don't think I've ever played in one of those and not had a good time. Although I played absolutely horribly this weekend, it didn't deter from the good times of hanging out with friends and enjoying the awesome weather at a BBQ at Stu's.

I've been playing really well up until this Thursday - I was happy with my fitness, and the things I've been training were working for me. Bevan and I had a good game in league on Wednesday that went to 10-9 in the fifth, and I was stoked to play more over the weekend.

WHAT WENT WRONG??

(cue the music for the old videos you had to watch when you took foodsafe). Here's a list of what I think I did wrong, and the steps that I'm going to take to fix them.

1. Predictable squash

Oh my god. This was the worst one, because I was aware that I was doing it, but just couldn't seem to break myself out of the habit. The first game I played was against John Foxall. I'd beaten him before, and was hoping that I'd be able to take him this time too, but he did me the favour of handing me my ass on a platter (and rightfully so, given how I was playing). I started to realize how predictable I must be playing after the third time he covered my predictable backhand cross court drop to the front right corner and pounded it to the back of the court. Even aware of this, I just couldn't shake it. Predictability in squash sucks. The game is called "the thinking man's game" (or at least, so I saw somewhere on a website) for a reason, and if you're letting your opponent easily anticipate most of the shots you make, you're going to lose that mental game.

Training to avoid this is just a matter of practicing all of the shots that I like to make, and focusing on switching up what I do when I start to notice this. The next few games I play I'm going to go back to focusing on the fundamentals, and try to let my natural instincts dictate the next shot I make, rather than over-thinking things. I find sticking to the fundamentals very helpful when I get caught up in a rut. If there's nothing else you can do well, at least hit consistent straight drives to good length.

2. One dimensional squash

This is very similar to the above problem - I felt like I had two, maybe three shots that I was using this weekend - low, hard, drives to the back, and a backhand crosscourt drop. These shots are good, but squash is a game about deception, and maneuvering your opponent around the court. If all I ever do is one of these two shots, I'm limiting the tools with which to accomplish that.

Changing this is going to come from the same as above - focus on the fundamentals and let my self subconciously choose the shot - go with what feels right. The other thing I'm going to do is put on some of the squash videos I have and watch some of the pros play. This always motivates me, and reminds me of what a really good clean game of squash looks like. Seeing people play like that makes me want to get out on the court and really focus those bread and butter shots.

Those are really the two main things I want to work on right now. Once I've gotten my head back in the right place, I'll start to spend more time actually improving specific shots, but until I've got strategy back together, that's going to be my focus.

As I mentioned, I'm going to the popping and locking workshop this Wednesday. One of the main things I'm hoping to learn from the guy is how he goes about teaching people and gauging there ability. I really love the styles of dance that I'm into, and would really like to see them become more than an obscurity in Victoria - Vancouver has a very active popping scene, but I only know about three to four people on the island that are really into popping. Being able to teach it better is something I'd love to know so that I can pass on the same sort of fever that I have for it.

I'll write about the experience when I get back from the show, and hopefully find some time to make some basic videos showing the things that were focused on. Last chance if anyone is still interested in checking it out, let me know at deathsushi@hotmail.com.