This is part of my ongoing series related to the popping classes that I'm taking at Vibestreet Dance studios, you can read last week's entry here. The most recent class focused almost purely on tutting, a style that I have never gotten into.
Before I get into the details of the class, I want to provide a quick update on myself, as I haven't been able to sit down and write as much as I'd like to. If you are hear to read only about the dance class, you can skip past this stuff.
This was the last week I had to occupy myself before Bay got back from Brazil, where she was taking part in the international emerging markets aspect of her MBA degree at UVic. She has been gone for three weeks now, which is the longest her and I have been apart from each other in about four years.
The time apart has been very healthy. When I say healthy, I don't mean "Thank god we are away from each other!". What I mean is that it's good for a couple to spend some time apart from one another now and then, remember who we are as individuals, spend some time recalibrating ourselves, and learning to appreciate each other and what our relationship means to us all over again. I make a point of saying this every time we teach the marriage preparation course - it is imperative that the two people in a couple can function independently, if they're going to be able to function together in a healthy relationship.
Over the past three weeks, I've accomplished a bunch of things. Some of those are:
I really enjoyed watching Marc Lesser's talk at Google about accomplishing more by doing less. One thing he said that has stuck with me is his mantra that you should take time during the year to "retreat, in order to move forward". By retreat, he means remove yourself from your daily life and give yourself the opportunity to think about it from outside of the box (at least, this is how I interpreted his advice). I look at the past three weeks as the first opportunity I've had to practice this advice, and will certainly be looking to continue this practice.
Now, isn't it about time that we started talking about dance?
Tutting
At the start of this entry, I mentioned that in the past, tutting was never a style that I had pursued. The reason for this is a simple one really: I just didn't feel that I was anatomically capable of performing the dance.
Tutting, as a style, is all about moving your body in and out of positions that incorporate right angles. Wrists bent at right angles, elbows bent at right angles, shoulders bent at right angles, etc. The name derives from King Tut, and the stereotypical angles created by the body parts that mimic some hieroglyphs, and certainly Steve Martin and Bugs Bunny mimicing "walking like an Egyptian".
The problem is, my wrists don't bend back at a very sharp right angle. With a lot of effort, I can get them bent back at about 80 degrees, but when I see this in the mirror, it just looks ugly. I can take my hand and pull on the my other wrist and get a good sharp right angle, but surely this isn't what the dance is about.
So, tutting was a style that I'd watched dancers like Tommy Boy do, and always appreciated, but had put a mental barrier in place and wasn't going to bother trying to progress further with it. It turns out, many of my concerns are fairly unfounded in the dance.
The most important thing to keep in mind with tutting is that you don't need to be perfect. We should always aim to make sharper cleaner angles, and to be as tight as possible, but there are limits to what the human eye can perceive, and by and large, if you're making an effort to keep the lines created by your hands parallel and tight, you should fare just fine.
Some basic positions
Unlike the rest of what we have worked on so far, tutting didn't come with a set of fundamental moves that Dillon taught us. However, I've tried to break out some of what I perceived are fundamental positions that you will find yourself moving in and out of frequently.
Prayer position
This is a very common position, and you'll find yourself starting and ending a lot in this position (at least when you are beginning, as I am). It is exactly as it sounds like. Feet at shoulder width, arms in front of you and close to your stomach, with the palms of your hands pressed against each other as though you are praying. Ideally you want to make an effort to bend your wrists back at 90 degree angles, and keep the line created by your forearms parallel with the ground.
You have now mastered your first tutting position! Congratulations.
Variations on the prayer position
From the prayer position, there are a number of movements that you can make.
Although I'm not sure that it's actually called this, I noticed that a lot of our movements tended to flow in and out of this position.
The king tut position is what I call the position where your arms are out, your elbows are bent upwards at 90 degrees, and your wrists are bent again at 90 degrees.
The most common position I found us moving into was done from the prayer position:
Some transitions from the King Tut position
From this position, you can transition into a wide variety of other angles.
Head tuts
A number of angles we ended up working on were created by taking a tut and shifting it to the top of our head. For example:
Box tuts
Box tuts are just the term I use to describe any tut that mimics the shape of a box. The most common box tut is done by:
Wrist twirls
Wrist twirls were a movement that Dillon showed us because he found them useful as a way of moving in and out of various tut positions. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to describe in writing the motion that is used for a good wrist twirl. I know this, because I've just spent five minutes trying to get it down, and I haven't really had much success. However, the gist of the motion is:
Another wrist twirl that we learned is to transition from the prayer position at your chest to the one on top of your head. To do this, you:
Footwork
One thing I was curious about was what kind of footwork we would use to complement tutting. Back from my earlier days of liquid dancing, one of the things that always drove me nuts were dancers that stood in place with their feet fixed on the floor, and then proceeded to totally trip people out (their own words). I found this annoying for a couple of reasons - One, it's contrived and obnoxious to make the assumption that you're totally tripping people out, and two, standing fixed on the dance floor for an entire song is not dancing.
Dillon commented that tuts do not have a specific style of footwork that is used with them, though some dancers will raise their feet off the ground to create angles that complement those being done with their hands. The main footwork to use with tutting is the same as that which we have learned previously. Gliding will complement tutting, and the Sac-step will as well. On that note, I noticed that in spite of all of the good foundation we've covered so far, Dillon has not broken down the Sac-step for anyone, so...
Sac-step
The Sac-step is a very simple motion, but allows you to fill a few beats with your feet. The name is derived from Sacramento, where Boogaloo Sam (the creator of boogaloo) was from (I believe). The motion works as follows:
Practicing
This session left me with a lot of things to practice. One of the things I was most interested in finding out was how Dillon went from this very rough set of fundamentals to actually being able to use tutting as a dance. The main suggestion that Dillon offered was to start in any one position, keep one hand fixed, and then practice as many transitions and angles as you can with the other hand.
The main art of tutting is maintaining clean angles and transitioning in and out of various positions. Once you've developed the muscle memory for these positions and transitions, it becomes fairly easily to string them together into a dance.
Conclusion
Towards the end of the session, we went into a bit of liquid, as all of us had aching shoulders and wrists from holding the tuts for so long. Liquid was the first style of dance that I ever really got into, so most of what we were working on came fairly easily. However, I did notice that I am a bit rusty at this style, and my liquid isn't quite as smooth as I would have liked to see. I'm alright with that though, as there's simply too much other stuff that I want to practice right now.
I believe that the remaining two classes will be devoted to reviewing of what we've picked up so far, which is good. There's been so much material that we've covered that an opportunity to go back and solidify it will be a very good thing.
More updates to come!
Before I get into the details of the class, I want to provide a quick update on myself, as I haven't been able to sit down and write as much as I'd like to. If you are hear to read only about the dance class, you can skip past this stuff.
This was the last week I had to occupy myself before Bay got back from Brazil, where she was taking part in the international emerging markets aspect of her MBA degree at UVic. She has been gone for three weeks now, which is the longest her and I have been apart from each other in about four years.
The time apart has been very healthy. When I say healthy, I don't mean "Thank god we are away from each other!". What I mean is that it's good for a couple to spend some time apart from one another now and then, remember who we are as individuals, spend some time recalibrating ourselves, and learning to appreciate each other and what our relationship means to us all over again. I make a point of saying this every time we teach the marriage preparation course - it is imperative that the two people in a couple can function independently, if they're going to be able to function together in a healthy relationship.
Over the past three weeks, I've accomplished a bunch of things. Some of those are:
- Started and finished some Spring cleaning, organizing our condo and storing some things that have been left out for far too long
- Come up with a couple of new systems for managing my tasks (nerdy, but it does feel really good to come up with a new system that makes you more productive)
- Officially resigned from the VEMF management team this year (a difficult decision to make - more on this later)
- Hung out with good friends
- Caught up with old friends
- Started getting up early in the mornings to fit an hour bike ride in before work
- Continued training hard for squash
I really enjoyed watching Marc Lesser's talk at Google about accomplishing more by doing less. One thing he said that has stuck with me is his mantra that you should take time during the year to "retreat, in order to move forward". By retreat, he means remove yourself from your daily life and give yourself the opportunity to think about it from outside of the box (at least, this is how I interpreted his advice). I look at the past three weeks as the first opportunity I've had to practice this advice, and will certainly be looking to continue this practice.
Now, isn't it about time that we started talking about dance?
Tutting
At the start of this entry, I mentioned that in the past, tutting was never a style that I had pursued. The reason for this is a simple one really: I just didn't feel that I was anatomically capable of performing the dance.
Tutting, as a style, is all about moving your body in and out of positions that incorporate right angles. Wrists bent at right angles, elbows bent at right angles, shoulders bent at right angles, etc. The name derives from King Tut, and the stereotypical angles created by the body parts that mimic some hieroglyphs, and certainly Steve Martin and Bugs Bunny mimicing "walking like an Egyptian".
The problem is, my wrists don't bend back at a very sharp right angle. With a lot of effort, I can get them bent back at about 80 degrees, but when I see this in the mirror, it just looks ugly. I can take my hand and pull on the my other wrist and get a good sharp right angle, but surely this isn't what the dance is about.
So, tutting was a style that I'd watched dancers like Tommy Boy do, and always appreciated, but had put a mental barrier in place and wasn't going to bother trying to progress further with it. It turns out, many of my concerns are fairly unfounded in the dance.
The most important thing to keep in mind with tutting is that you don't need to be perfect. We should always aim to make sharper cleaner angles, and to be as tight as possible, but there are limits to what the human eye can perceive, and by and large, if you're making an effort to keep the lines created by your hands parallel and tight, you should fare just fine.
Some basic positions
Unlike the rest of what we have worked on so far, tutting didn't come with a set of fundamental moves that Dillon taught us. However, I've tried to break out some of what I perceived are fundamental positions that you will find yourself moving in and out of frequently.
Prayer position
This is a very common position, and you'll find yourself starting and ending a lot in this position (at least when you are beginning, as I am). It is exactly as it sounds like. Feet at shoulder width, arms in front of you and close to your stomach, with the palms of your hands pressed against each other as though you are praying. Ideally you want to make an effort to bend your wrists back at 90 degree angles, and keep the line created by your forearms parallel with the ground.
You have now mastered your first tutting position! Congratulations.
Variations on the prayer position
From the prayer position, there are a number of movements that you can make.
- While maintaining the angle your wrists are bent at, you can slide one of your hands up one hand-length, so that you now have one hand in the previous position, and the heel of your other hand touching the fingertips of your bottom hand.
- While maintaining the prayer position, move your hands over to the left or right side of your chest. As always, try to maintain the angles created by your wrists, and keep the line created by your forearms parallel with the ground.
- Pivot one of your hands downward, with the base of your wrist as the pivot point. When you are finished, you should have one hand fixed in the same position it was at the start of the move (pointing upwards), and one hand pointing downwards. The heel of both of your hands should be touching.
- Do the same pivot as above, but at the end of the pivot, continue your movement to bring the back of one hand against the palm of the other hand. One hand should remain as it was in the prayer position, with the other hand bent downwards at the wrist, with its back flat against the palm of your other hand.
Although I'm not sure that it's actually called this, I noticed that a lot of our movements tended to flow in and out of this position.
The king tut position is what I call the position where your arms are out, your elbows are bent upwards at 90 degrees, and your wrists are bent again at 90 degrees.
The most common position I found us moving into was done from the prayer position:
- Start in prayer position
- Moving your arms up and out, you want to end up with your elbow bent upwards at 90 degrees, and your wrists still bent back at 90 degrees.
Some transitions from the King Tut position
From this position, you can transition into a wide variety of other angles.
- You can fold your wrists over and bend them from an outwards angle to an inwards angle. In this position, your arms and elbows remaining the same, but your fingertips will go from pointing outwards to point inwards. This is an easy one to make tight 90 degree angles with, so make sure you look in a mirror and get this right.
- You can roll your wrists in a circle so that your fingertips remain pointing outwards, but your wrists are now bend forwards at a 90 degree angle, rather than backwards (again, a much easier angle to make)
- You can pivot your arms around your elbows, so that your elbows now bend downwards at 90 degrees, and your wrists remain bent backwards, this time with your fingertips pointing inwards at roughly your stomach level
Head tuts
A number of angles we ended up working on were created by taking a tut and shifting it to the top of our head. For example:
- From the King Tut position, bring your left arm over top of your head. Your wrist should now be resting on the right side of your head, pointing up like a horn. Now bring your right arm over top of your head as well (you'll have to put it either in front or behind your left arm), and make the same position with your right hand as you are with your left hand. Ideally you want to maintain 90 degree angles with your wrists, so that both of your hands remain pointing straight up.
- From the King Tut position, make a transition similar to the one above, but bring the palms of your hands together, and rest them together on the middle of your head, with your fingers pointing up (to my eyes, this position always makes me think of Indian dancing)
Box tuts
Box tuts are just the term I use to describe any tut that mimics the shape of a box. The most common box tut is done by:
- Take your right arm, and put your fingers just against the inside of the crook of your left elbow joint. Use this elbow to bend back your wrist at a 90 degree angle
- Take your left arm, and bend your left wrist downwards just above your right arm's elbow, putting your fingers lightly touching your elbow.
- Straighten the wrists of both of your arms. Your left arm should be resting flat on top of your right arm.
- Smoothly slide your left arm behind your right arm and downwards. As you do this, the fingers of your left arm need to sit just inside the crook of your right elbow joint - remember, this is how you are going to bend back your right wrist.
- While you're doing the above movement, simultaneously bring your right arm in front of your left arm and upwards. As you do this, the fingers of your right arm should gently touch the elbow of your left arm. Continue moving your arm smoothly upwards, bending your wrist to create a 90 degree angle.
- You should now have a box tut again, but with your right arm on top instead of your left arm.
Wrist twirls
Wrist twirls were a movement that Dillon showed us because he found them useful as a way of moving in and out of various tut positions. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to describe in writing the motion that is used for a good wrist twirl. I know this, because I've just spent five minutes trying to get it down, and I haven't really had much success. However, the gist of the motion is:
- Hold your hands out, with the inside of the wrists of your hands together
- Pivot your hands in a circle, around the inside of the wrists.
- As you do this pivot, you want to make sure that the fingers on your left hand are always pointing away from the fingers on your right hand.
Another wrist twirl that we learned is to transition from the prayer position at your chest to the one on top of your head. To do this, you:
- Starting in prayer position, start raising your hands upwards.
- As you move your hands upwards, slowly start to open up your hands, showing the backs of them to the audience (so you're looking at the palms)
- Press the backs of your hands together, and imagine that the back of your wrists are now glued together
- Pivoting around the back of your wrists, rotate your hands inwards (towards you), then down, and then out and upwards.
- When you are done this motion, you should have the backs of your hands stuck together, with your fingers pointing either outwards or upwards (depending on how far along you've moved them)
- You can now continue moving your arms upwards and place your hands on top of your head. The backs of your hands should be against each other, with your wrists bent backwards at 90 degrees angles to your forearm. Done!
Footwork
One thing I was curious about was what kind of footwork we would use to complement tutting. Back from my earlier days of liquid dancing, one of the things that always drove me nuts were dancers that stood in place with their feet fixed on the floor, and then proceeded to totally trip people out (their own words). I found this annoying for a couple of reasons - One, it's contrived and obnoxious to make the assumption that you're totally tripping people out, and two, standing fixed on the dance floor for an entire song is not dancing.
Dillon commented that tuts do not have a specific style of footwork that is used with them, though some dancers will raise their feet off the ground to create angles that complement those being done with their hands. The main footwork to use with tutting is the same as that which we have learned previously. Gliding will complement tutting, and the Sac-step will as well. On that note, I noticed that in spite of all of the good foundation we've covered so far, Dillon has not broken down the Sac-step for anyone, so...
Sac-step
The Sac-step is a very simple motion, but allows you to fill a few beats with your feet. The name is derived from Sacramento, where Boogaloo Sam (the creator of boogaloo) was from (I believe). The motion works as follows:
- Start with left foot slightly in front of the other
- Take your left foot, lift it up, and then put it down beside your right foot
- When you touch the ball of your left foot down, shift your weight to this foot, and then
- Take your right foot, lift it up, and then put it down in front, roughly at the same distance that your left foot was at the start of this move
Practicing
This session left me with a lot of things to practice. One of the things I was most interested in finding out was how Dillon went from this very rough set of fundamentals to actually being able to use tutting as a dance. The main suggestion that Dillon offered was to start in any one position, keep one hand fixed, and then practice as many transitions and angles as you can with the other hand.
The main art of tutting is maintaining clean angles and transitioning in and out of various positions. Once you've developed the muscle memory for these positions and transitions, it becomes fairly easily to string them together into a dance.
Conclusion
Towards the end of the session, we went into a bit of liquid, as all of us had aching shoulders and wrists from holding the tuts for so long. Liquid was the first style of dance that I ever really got into, so most of what we were working on came fairly easily. However, I did notice that I am a bit rusty at this style, and my liquid isn't quite as smooth as I would have liked to see. I'm alright with that though, as there's simply too much other stuff that I want to practice right now.
I believe that the remaining two classes will be devoted to reviewing of what we've picked up so far, which is good. There's been so much material that we've covered that an opportunity to go back and solidify it will be a very good thing.
More updates to come!
Leave a comment