Woooot. After promising videos for what seems like weeks (but has actually been only the length of time it takes me to sit on the couch and watch five episodes of Star Trek in a row), I've got some new ones.
As mentioned last week or so, I'm preparing for a workshop that my friend and I are planning to put on in Nanaimo. I'm not sure how well I can articulate dancing and movement into words, so this is kind of a trial run. The videos are all basic videos showing very fundamental different types of movement. When I say movement, I'm talking about something that a lot of people have asked me about at one time or another.
One of the hardest part of things to learn in any given dance is the basic foundations of its motion. Some people (and this is especially obvious in breaking) can spend hours practicing and getting down specific moves, but if they don't really understand the dance style - if it doesn't really speak to them - it will come out in their foundations. In between every flashy move that you do, you need some kind of basic form of motion that you can move in and out of. A guy I used to be friends with, Andrew Trueman, actually did an unusually good job of describing it, saying it was "like a samurai's ready stance".
Imagine a samurai standing in his ready stance, preparing for the next attack or defense. That's kind of what you're doing in your "basic fundamental of motion". To name a few types - breaking has toprock and sixstep, locking has pacing, boogaloo and popping have the fresno, and housestepping has the most basic form of the kick (which is actually borrowed from breaking).
That list above is by no means exhaustive, and good dancers always add their own quirks into their foundation of movement. There's never a reason you should limit yourself to one particular type of movement.
These videos are all an attempt to show and teach some of the basic types of movement you can use to put together your foundation of movement. Some of these videos show things that I've learned directly from Jake, the guy that taught the workshop I took during the summer. A few of the videos may not even be very difficult from what he shows. However, this is not an attempt to take credit for those moves as my own. I've found these movements so helpful that I think they're worth sharing, and rather than rip parts out of Jake's video, this seemed like the best way to do that. Other movements (like the knee movement in the upgroove) are things that I've adapted on my own after having learned the basics from Jake. That is, in my opinion, one way to improve: If you see someone do something you like, watch it, then practice it, then adapt it to your own style. Make it a part of your dancing, and not just a move from someone else's repetoire.
So, let's start it up. The first video I've got here is showing a basic upgroove. This is pretty much the simplest thing you can do, and is a good starting point.
I start this out slow, and I look stupid doing it. That's okay, because you will too when you first try to learn it. Your body is doing two things here:
- Stepping on the beat: that's right, just lift your leg up, then put it down. Then, raise your other leg up, then put it down. This should be easy, but make certain that you are doing it on the beat. If you're not moving on the beat, then you're going to be in trouble before you get started. If you're having trouble getting this whole move to work, just start with this part. You can add in the upper body later.
- Bend at the waist: also easy. You just bend at the waist to meet the knee of the leg that is rising, then, raise your posture back to up right.
That's it! Simple right? When practicing this, make sure that you do something with your hands. You can see that I'm focusing a little in this video at getting the rhythm down when I'm moving slowly, and as a result, my arms are just hanging their like two slabs of meat. You should be doing something, *anything* with your arms when you're dancing - don't worry about what right now, you can always replace this basic movement with something more complicated. The key part is getting the muscle memory trained so that you body is able to do all of this together: Moving your arms, legs and upper body.
One variation you can see me throw in is that I'm changing my height throughout various points in the step. To do this, you just bend at the knees for one of your steps. Step down on the beat, bend your knees, then when you lift up your next leg, straighten out your knees.
We can add in more stuff later, but for now, all you need to worry about is stepping with your legs, slouching your posture, then righting it, moving your arms.
Next on the menu, we've got some hip movement.
I'd mentioned a few months ago how I'd recently discovered how much more hip movement can add to your dancing, and so it makes sense that this is the next element we want to add to our upgroove. If you want your dancing to look funky, get those hips moving. It takes a little bit of practice at first, but once you get it down, you'll never go back.
Jake told me that you want to sort of hunch/lean down low when you're bringing your hips into this, because it emphasizes them more. I think he's right, but I also like seeing the contrast of a straight body with some fat hip movement.
So, what we're trying to do here is the same leg movement as from our upgroove before, but now we're going to add our hips into it. Choose whichever side you prefer to throw your hips too. I like jutting them out to the right, but you may prefer the left.
You're going to lift your leg up, put it down on the beat, and when you put it down, push your hips way over to that side. Now, when you raise your other foot up, bring your hips back in line with the rest of your body, put your foot down on the beat, and as you're doing that, jut the hips back over. That's all there is to it. The key here is to isolate so that it's just your hips are moving - try not to move your torso or legs in a sideways motion too much.
What shouldn't you forget? Get the arms moving when you're practicing. Just get them doing anything, and make sure it's not always your right arm that is moving. Mix it up. Dancing is boring when it looks repetitive.
Next thing to add is some knee movement. This is one of the things that I came up with after screwing around with some of Jake's movements a bunch. I just had some beats on and was grooving around the house, and started to really accentuate the movement my hips were making. The more I did it, the more I noticed I was starting to really bring my knees into the movement. I stopped and thought about that, then tried to isolate just the knees.
This is the trickiest of the three so far I think. Again, you start with the same form of leg movement as in the last two. This is what you're going to do: Raise your foot up, bring it down on the beat. When you bring it down, you want to push both of your knees out to the one side (again, choose whichever side you prefer), then bring your next leg up, bring your knees back aligned with your body, step your foot down on the beat, and again, just your knees back out to the side. Repeat.
If you watch, you'll notice that my movement is off beat for part of this video. See if you can figure out where it is. I started thinking part way through and thought about using a different type of movement to bring the knees back and forth. The rhythm that this technique actually used was 6/8, instead of 4/4 - anyone familiar with music theory will probably understand what that means, but essentially it means that my movement repeats every six beats, rather than every four beats like the music's pattern does. This can result in something that the eyes will find jarring. You don't need to be conciously counting the beats and making sure your movement repeats every 2 or 4 beats, but you'll notice with a lot of the movements I've shown here, it repeats every 2 or 4 beats (the basic upgroove technique repeats every 2 beats).
I find that when I'm doing this move, I have a tendency to roll, ever so slightly, back and forth on the part of my foot touching the ground (dancing is usually easier when you're on the balls of your feet, then you can use your calves to push up with, unlike when you're on your heels). Nothing big, but it helps bring my knees further across. Make sure you keep your legs somewhat close together so that the bend in your knees is emphasized.
Notice that from the side this move doesn't look that impressive - it just looks like I'm stepping on the spot. This displays the importance of being dynamic when you're dancing. If I remain facing the same direction the entire time I dance, it's going to look a little less dynamic than if I'm changing my orientation. Not only that, but some moves look better, or at least different, from different angles. You can show the same move in a row twice, maybe three times before it gets boring, but if you change your orientation between them, you'll find it has a little more life.
One last thing - notice that my upper body is not moving side to side very much. There's a little bit, but constrast it with the movement in my knees, and you'll notice that it's pretty minimal. This is what the isolation is about - the more you can minimize the movement of the rest of your body, the better the knee movement will look.
That actually brings up the point of why these foundation movements are so simple. They need to be simple enough that you can easily move in and out of your more complex moves, and also so that anyone watching doesn't get bored straight away. It's counter-intuitive that that is how this works, but something simple can be repeated a lot more than something complex. Slow movements draw the eyes less, and showcases the more complex moves, making it escape the notice of the beholder's "repetitiveness trigger". Goddamn that was wordy.
Don't worry if you start getting these down and find them boring - you want them to feel repetitive, then comfortable. Then, once your body has developed the muscle memory and is able to perform the movements without your thought, you'll find yourself just doing them when the music is playing.
There's one more reason to return to this type of movement: You're lazy. I'm lazy too - we all are. If you just keep busting out huge moves all day long, you're going to get exhausted. Maybe some people can do that, but I don't like to because I'm lazy, and because I find that that can overwhelm the viewer. Remember, the simple movements showcase the more complicated ones. In between a complex move, you can return to the basics and just groove while you catch your breath and get ready for the next drop in the music.
Okay, so, now it's time to put all three of these last types of movements together into our movement foundation. The video is here. With only three types of movements, you can see that I have a large variety of ways that I can move around the dance floor. Yes, the movements themselves are repetitive, but I feel there is enough variety here that people wouldn't get bored watching it while I thought up my next move.
Remember, we're not going to for anything complicated. The goal here is to keep it simple, get funky, and move to the beat of the music.
Okay, last thing to work on. This last move is a little trickier to throw into the rest of your upgroove, but that's something you can work on after you've gotten the move down right. Here's the video.
This move relies solely on heel pivots. I emphasize heel pivots because it took me a while to get that lodged in my brain, and it will probably take you a few tries too. If you feel like you're not quite getting the movement right, check and make sure you're not pivoting on your toe/ball of your foot.
So, there are three pivots total involved in this move. We're going to move to our left to start off with, so your first pivot is going to be on your right foot. Put all of your weight on your right heel, and practice pivoting on it. Now we get to the actual move. While you pivot on your right heel, you're going to take your left foot (which should have no weight on it) and kind of gently kick it out to point in the same direction as your right foot. Both of your feet should now be pointing their toes diagonally to the left.
Next is the easiest pivot of the three - all you have to do is shift your weight from your right foot (which just pivoted) to your left foot, and then pivot on your heel to point the toes of your left foot inwards. Both of your feet should now be pointing inwards, and it should feel a little bit awkward.
Now the last pivot - your weight remains on your left foot, and you pivot it back out so that it would now be pointing in the same direction as your right foot, and the same position it was in at the end of step 1. Here's the tricky part: As you do this last pivot, you want to slide your back foot along the floor back behind your left foot. Your weight should remain on your left foot.
That's it. Now you got back in the opposite direction: pivot your left foot back so that its toes are pointing to the right, and as you do that, kick your right foot out from behind your left foot to rest beside your left foot, and pointing in the same direction. Now shift your weight to your right foot and pivot it so that your toes point inwards. Last pivot! Keep your weight on your right foot, pivot it back so that it's pointing outwards (to the right) and slide your left foot in behind it.
If you want to elaborate on this move more, you should try to get your hands doing soing other than hanging there like I'm doing in this video, and get your hips into it. If you sat there and played with the move a bit, you could probably get your knees into the groove as well. I like to bend my knees and kind of slouch down as I slide my foot back behind the lead foot.
This move can be a bit tricky for timing - it goes something like this *pivot on beat*, *pivot on beat*, now you pivot and slide on the last two beats. That's the tricky part. You should be pivoting and kicking out your back foot on the next beat. In my head, when doing this move, I count the beats like "1, 2, 3, and, 1, 2, 3, and, 1, 2, 3, and".
Notice that once I'm doing this move to the beats in real-time, the pivots become less pronounced. How much of a pivot you perform will really depend on how fast the music is. Remember, the first, and only unbreakable rule of dancing (and even then there are times when it's allowed) is that you move to the music. If you're getting really big pivots, but you're behind on the beats of the music, you're not dancing properly.
So, those are the five videos I've got put together so far. I'm working on some gliding videos, but that is taking a little while longer, because I'm still working on getting some of the foundations for that down pat.
Any feedback on these videos would be great, because I only have my own point of view for determining how helpful they are.