Dance Workshop

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).