Argh.

You ever have those periods of time when you feel like there are things you should be doing, and you're not doing them?  Or where you can tell there's something intangible pulling at the back of your head, but you just can't place your finger on it?  Or maybe you come home from work and feel like you should actually be doing something, but instead you just sit in front of the TV?

I'm sure you have, because we're all human, and this is just a natural part of the cycle we go through on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis (the frequency is different for everybody).

The more I learn to practice GTD effectively, the less often I feel this way, as I can allow my brain to embrace the mind like water ideal, and return to old ideas when I see fit.  Still, it is impossible to feel and act productively one hundred percent of our time, and so the goal must be to maximize the amount of time we can exist in this state, and learn to accept (and yes, minimize, though this is less important than acceptance) the times when we do need to feel the way I currently do.

As an exercise to break out of this mental state, I write.  As of late, two things have been on my mind more anything else: squash and dancing.

I hav been dancing a lot lately, as we are running two jam sessions a week at Vibestreet Dance, and that requires that I come up with something to teach twice a week.  I can't even rely on teaching the same thing twice, as the same students may show up, and I end up feeling guilty about not being able to provide something new to them.  Maybe this is just something that I need to get over, as part of this whole exercise should be of benefit to myself, not just my students. A teacher that is not gaining something from each lesson that they teach is not missing out on part of the teaching experience, as are their students.

I have taken a couple of workshops lately, and they have been very helpful in showing me new ways of teaching something, as well as many new techniques that I would like to work on and incorporate into my own styles of movement.  Recently, I've been given lessons in breaking, locking, popping, and house dancing.  That's a lot of stuff!  Getting lessons in these new styles of dance is awesome, and is opening up my awareness and broadening my own inspiration to a great extent. However, this only results in frustration if I can't find the time to actually practice what I'm learning.  House, locking, and breaking are all very new styles to me, and really require that I take the time to sit down by myself and practice the basics. This is hard to do at home because of the way I have been feeling.

Even though I'm a reasonably experienced popper, I will never be fully satisfied with my level of skill (this is kind of a general theme for my approach to things I'm truly passionate about).  I often hesitate to teach something in class that I haven't had the time to sit down with and internalize. Part of the solution here, I suppose, is just accept that nobody's perfect, and that even if I'm still learning something, I can help the class with it.  One of the things that I really want to avoid is attempting to show my students something that I'm still learning myself, and in doing so, teach them bad habits, or end up getting them frustrated as I cannot break it down very well.

If you've read through the paragraph above, you've just seen me provide myself with some therapy, as I think I've come up with the solution to my first problem - just do it, and don't worry about whether or not the class is disappointed that I'm not perfect at a move.  We all need to learn, and there's nothing wrong with learning along with the rest of the class. Even better if I can provide a tiny bit of direction to help them along the right path.

The other thing that I think I probably need is a couple of sessions in the park with my ipod to just go over the techniques that I've been taught lately and internalize those. In GTD we have the concept of an open loop - something that requires action and is tugging at our mind.  Everything that I've learned lately is sitting in that same space.  It's occupying space in my head, saying "You should put some time into working on me, otherwise you'll lose this knowledge".

The other thing tugging at my mind has been squash. Although my opportunity to increase the amount of time and effort I'm putting into dancing has been incredible, and something that I've wanted to do for a looooong time, it's taken away from my ability to play squash. Although I've certainly been keeping myself fit (dancing requires a lot of energy, and I'm riding my bike as often as possible), I can feel the rust starting to creep up on my squash game, and this drives me nuts.  Part of the reason for that is because I trained so hard this past season, and was really feeling good about where my efforts had led me. 

Although all of our hobbies should be things that we do for fun, and don't become a burden on our mind, it's difficult for someone like me to make that leap and just let something be.  That's the nature of life though - if you want to do more of one thing, you are going to have to sacrifice something else.

In an effort to have my cake and eat it to, one of the projects I have set aside for myself to take on once I end my tenure at work, is biphasic sleep.  The notion of biphasic sleep sounds extremely silly when you initially hear about it: go to sleep more frequently in order to sleep less overall.  With one single phase of sleep during a twenty-four hour period, our body generally requires eight hours of sleep.  However, by breaking our sleep up, we are able to train our body to fall into REM sleep more quickly (which is the part of sleep that is evidently important), and thus require less sleep overall.

Although some people are absolutely insane and have managed to function quite effectively (arguably more effectively, if some of the blogs out there are to be believed) on as little as six twenty-minute naps a day (that's a mere two hours of sleep in a twenty-four hour period!), the goal I'm setting for myself is quite a bit more modest, and is based on the Hispanic tradition of siesta. The aim is to reduce my core sleep period to about five or six hours, and supplement that with a twenty-minute nap in the evening.  In doing so, I will be able to create (as though by magic) an extra two hours of spare time, everyday.

This almost sounds too good to be true, and it very well may be.  However, I enjoy an experiment as much as the next guy, so we'll see how things go.  I could end up with an extra two hours of spare time every night (which may also be essential, if the workload required for Law is what I'm told it is), or I could fail spectacularly, in which case I will have spent a couple of weeks deprived of sleep, and return to my normal monophasic sleeping schedule.  The worse-case scenario doesn't strike me as that bad, so why not try it right?

Anyhow, I think that's a sufficient ramble.  Our drop-in sessions at Vibestreet have been growing steadily, and last Monday we had about twelve people in attendance to learn some popping from myself, and some breaking from Steve (good strength training!).  If you're interested in learning more about any of this, drop a comment and I can blog and elaborate further.

I'm still here, there just hasn't been much recently inspiring me to write.  In the meantime, here are some excellent dance videos to entertain yourself with:

• Crazy Scandinavian's

These guys may look goofy, but they've definitely put some work into their isolations.  Although I think there's room for them to work on their technique, this video's giving me a few ideas for what I'll go over next drop-in class.

• Hilty and Bosch, Featuring Co-Thkoo

This is an excellent video to see the difference between popping and locking.  Most people that don't have any experience with the different styles think that they are the same thing.  Locking is actually the older dance (and was created before hiphop, breaking, and popping), and is based more on funkiness and a limited move set.  The guys wearing black shirts are two of my favorite lockers from Japan (a country with a lot of incredible lockers). 

The guys in the white vests are performing popping.  You can tell the difference if you look closely.  The poppers movements are punctuated with sharp hits, and are generally more angular in appearance.  The lockers movements are defined by faster movements with more flair and funk.  Wrist rolls, arm rolls, knee drops, and and points are all some of the locking techniques to look out for.

One very cool thing that my friend Jesse pointed out in this video is the symmetry of the choreography.  Although the two dance styles are often quite disimilar, the choreography that these guys are doing has been put together such that one group of dancers will perform a movement, and then the next group will perform similar movements and angles, but using the techniques associated with their respective styles.

• JRock and Pandora, Tutting

This is a very cool routine showing the technique of tutting.  You can tell just from the YouTube preview what the general idea is: assume geometric shapes with your body and arms that are reminiscent of egyptian hieroglyphics, and the way Bugs Bunny used to move when he would mimic egyptians in those corny cartoons.

This routine is especially cool because they've choreographed it to use two people.  However, this isn't a necessary aspect of tutting, and it works just as well (well, maybe not quite as striking, but still cool) with one person.

Tutting is a technique that I have only been working on for about two months, as I was always averse to trying to learn it because of the problem I had getting my wrist to make some of the angles.  While you can train your wrist by stretching it out each day, you can also eliminate the need to hit certain angles through creativity.

• Poppin' John

An excellent video submitted by Poppin' John for Mr. Wiggles internet video contest (correct me if I'm wrong).  Poppin' John does awesome things with waves, and is always frustrating for me to watch and try to fathom how the hell he's come up with his vocabulary.

I especially like his technique of putting one hand over the back of his head, and then using that hand to push waves down and out his other arm.  Very cool.

Anyhow, that's all I've got for today.  If any of these videos or techniques interest you and you'd like to learn more, come check out one of my classes at Vibestreet Dance.  The techniques look complicated, but with practice, you can master them and trip out your friends too!  Seriously though, popping is an awesome style of dance to learn, and a ton of fun to play around with.  It's never too late to learn..

Last night, I took the second popping workshop I've been aware of ever being offered in Victoria.  While I know that there have been other workshops offered between this one and the last one I took (Jake Evans, from Nova Scotia, about three years ago), these are the only two that I have been aware of.  This is an indication (to me), that there is a real lack of means to get in touch with other dancers, and the Victoria hiphop community in general, and share this kind of thing.

After meeting and talking, last night, with other people that are passionate about popping in Victoria, I feel that I have at least one small purpose to contribute towards our small but growing hiphop community, and that is to help the network grow.  But enough about that, let's talk about the workshop.

The Groovy G's

The workshop was taught by two members of the Groovy G's, a popping crew based out of Vancouver.  The first time I heard about the Groovy G's was when I started searching the net for popping classes being taught in Vancouver.  I wanted popping lessons, but since we didn't have any classes in Victoria at the time, my only option was to head over to Vancouver.  I talked briefly with Jamieson, one of the two guys that taught the classes, but aside from subscribing to their blog, things didn't get much further (I really wanted to take classes, but that didn't change the fact that the only thing in my wallet was a gaping hole - it's not cheap to take repeated trips to Vancouver).

I actually heard about last night's workshop in a very round-about manner.  The Groovy G's posted a note about a funk theory workshop that they had just finished giving.  "Whoa", I thought, "I could easily make it over for one day-long workshop, provided I budgeted for it".  I wrote the G's to ask them if they could give me some advance notice the next time they were planning something like this, and whether or not they would be having another one any time soon.  From there, things just exploded.  Hector (I believe), wrote me back to let me know that Jamieson and Trevor were apparently teaching a workshop in Victoria in a few weeks.  I added Trevor and Jamieson on Facebook, started talking to the people over here that were putting on the event, and couldn't believe that I almost missed this.

Arrival

Brooke managed to drum up some good interest, and a number of familiar (and friendly) faces showed up at the workshop with us, including Jo, Guillaume, Vincent, Sean, Jack, and Max.  As soon as we entered the studio, I recognized one guy from VEMF last year that Graham and I had seen tutting, and a few people I'd seen on the ol' Facebook.

It's funny to see that a dance workshop is really no different from any other kind of culture.  As soon as we sat down,I commented to Brooke that there were three evident cliques: The Vibestreet Dance clique, the Boston Dance Company clique, and ..  one more (which I didn't know enough about to provide a label).  It's not that any of us are elitists or anything like that - it's just human nature to be apprehensive when in new social settings.

Cody Campbell had put some music on so I practiced a little bit with the kids while we waited.  The mood was very much that of everyone sussing each other out.  "Who's that over there?", "Hmm, I wonder if that guy's a good dancer", "Hmm, don't know them", etc.  Brooke pointed out various people that were prominent in our small but growing dance community and then it was time to start.

Intros

After we paid and I met some of the people I'd been chatting with on Facebook, Liz came out and did a quick intro of the two guys that were teaching us: Jamieson de Guzman and Trevor Chung.  I had talked to Liz over e-mail a few weeks prior, and she was awesome.  Super passionate, and really keen to help hiphop grow here in Victoria.

Once we got past the intros, Jamieson talked a bit about what popping is, and how it relates to dancing.  I've heard this many times before, and always attempt to imbue the same thing in my own students, but it's always good to have it repeated and internalized.  Time to start!

Popping

The first hour of the workshop, we spent on popping.  It's always interesting to attend different workshops with different instructors, as they have different fundamentals that they are teaching, and different approaches.  Jamieson stressed that three things you should work to pop are your arms, your legs, and your neck (yup, your neck).  Personally, I think that popping your chest and tightening your abs is also important and will further the power of your hits.  It could be that Jamieson was just providing the basic building blocks, and those last two sets of muscles can be added in later.

We drilled the basics for a while, focusing on the fresno, and mixing it up between singles and doubles (shift your weight on every beat, or every second beat).  Some people get impatient revisiting their foundation like this, but I can never get enough, and I was content to take it as an opportunity to tighten things up.  I actually felt pretty good about my hits from these basic positions - the work I've been putting in has helped keep things clean and tight.

I noticed things started to fall apart when we started moving into positions that I haven't trained at all.  Getting my legs to hit when I'm in poses that are new is quite difficult when I don't yet have the muscle memory in place.  Jamieson let us know that the general rule to follow was that you pop whichever leg has the most weight on it, and whichever leg you can straighten most easily.  That's a good general rule to have, but I still need to practice hits in various positions, like during walkouts.

As we went through the choreography, one move I had never seen before came up, called the popcorn.  You do the following:

1. Raise up one leg and hit
2. Lower your leg in front of you, place your weight on it, and raise your back leg (essentially taking half a step forward).  Hit.
3. Reverse the motion you just did so that you are now in the same position as in 1, and hit.
4. Put your feet back together, and hit.

Pretty simple really, but it creates a neat visual that I haven't seen broken down before.  I quickly realized that I needed to work on hits when I'm balanced on one leg - these are especially challenging, and the illusion is instantly broken if you don't maintain your balance throughout.

Likewise, while practicing walkouts, I realized that although I've drilled the movement, I haven't touched on actually hitting throughout it.  Another thing to work on...

Tutting

After Jamieson finished, Trevor took over the class, and we started focusing on tutting and waving.  The segment related to tutting was actually quite short.  Trevor mentioned the basics of tutting, although he didn't get as explicit as I would have (which is cool, all teachers are different) about what makes a tight angle, and things to watch out for.  He did only have so much time though, so it's possible he was just trying to cram as much in as he could.

Trevor showed us a bit about how he practiced (come up with a set of angles and transitions, and then drill that set), and went over some basic poses (like prayer stance).  After that, Trevor went through two different routines with us, and included some footwork.  I've been feeling pretty good about my tuts lately, as I've been working a fair bit on developing the discipline and muscle memory to keep clean angles.  The footwork was brand new to me though, and I had to keep myself from falling right over a couple of times.

Waving

After tutting we moved on to waving.  I've been putting a lot of work into waves lately, and I'm pretty happy with the progress.  There's infinitely more room for progress, but at least I'm seeing some changes that I'm happy with.  Trevor went over the details of what makes a good wave versus a bad wave, and what it is that leads towards an aesthetically-pleasing wave (the secret is that wherever the wave is not, remains stationary.  This is the real key to a good wave).

I noticed that the one thing Trevor did not teach was the isolations of a wave.  His approach was more intuitive than mine, using techniques like visualizing the path that your hands and arms are taking, imagining there is a bar that your hands are travelling over, and so forth.  I made a mental note to incorporate these kinds of visual metaphors in my teaching as well, so that both types of learners can benefit.

Trevor provided some names for a few types of waves that I've been working on lately, but haven't had a name for them.  The main one was a track wave, wherein you move your hands and arms as though they are travelling along a rollercoaster track (or any kind of path really).  Once you've done this, you can reverse the wave and travel back in the opposite direction - the key is that you travel back along the same imaginary path.

One of the most helpful ideas that Trevor put in my head was the notion of setting up a specific geometry with your body, and then waving within that geometry.  Eg, put your arms up in some kind of shape.  Then, run a wave through that shape.  Think about the way a wave might travel through that geometry, and mimic this path.  The example Trevor provided in class was holding your arms out in front of you, with your right arm pointing straight up, and your left arm held out so that it is parallel to the ground, with its fingertips touching the elbow of your right arm.  In this position, a wave will travel:

• Down from the fingertips of your right arm to your elbow
  
• From your right arm's elbow through to the fingertips of your left arm
• From the fingertips of your left arm up to your left shoulder
• From your left shoulder, through your head/chest, to your right shoulder
• Out your right shoulder, to your elbow, then back up and out the fingertips of your right arm

It's not necessarily complicated, but setting up various positions like these and then waving through them is part of how you turn waving from a simple technique into an actual dance that you can innovate and improvise using.

Putting it all together

The last hour of the class was devoted towards putting everything we'd learned together into a set of choreography that Jamieson and Trevor made up on the spot as we went along. Before we started this though, we drilled our hits a bit by doing something Jamieson called "copy cat".

Copy cat is fairly easy - the leader starts by taking a pose and hitting on it for four beats.  Then the class does the same thing.  Then the leader takes a new pose, and the class then repeats that pose. It's not complicated (but then, most of this stuff isn't - it just requires dedication), but it's a great way to work with the class.  Ironically, I'd been planning something very similar out in my head for when our classes start again in Fall, so it was really nice to see that this is a valid approach that works well.

Once we'd finished this, we got going on actual choreography.  I struggled a bit with this, as I have some difficulty remembering all of the parts of choreography when you're putting it together quickly.  I was definitely getting frustrated by the end of the class.

The other thing that I would have liked a little more would have been to spend more time on some of the additional techniques that they were including in the choreography.  We ended up including some techniques like boogaloo that I would definitely have appreciated getting more time to work on.  But that's the way things go when you only have three short hours to work with a group of people.

Boston Pizza

After the workshop was finished, I met up with the Jamieson, Liz, Trevor and a few other people that had taken the workshop.  I was a little bit hesitant to do this initially, as I generally don't like just diving into a group of strangers, but I was glad I did.  It was a little weird because noone but me was drinking beer (I stopped after the first one once I noticed that), so things were slightly awkward (bunch of strangers, but no social lubricant).  However, I met some new people, got some e-mail, and got a chance to chat a little more with Trevor and Jamieson (interestingly enough, they started the same way I did - through raves).

Take-aways

So, what did I take away from the experience?  I learned a good deal about teaching and some exercises and techniques that can be used, and I definitely picked up some new moves to practice on.

One thing that was interesting was talking to the other people that were in the workshop, afterwards.  My friend Jo mentioned that she found Trevor's more visual and intuitive approach easier to work with.  So rather than breaking up an arm wave into the various isolations, just visualize your hands travelling up, over, and around a metal bar.

Unlike some of the classes I've had, most of the knowledge that I gained from these three hours came from taking what we were shown during workshop and reflecting on it.  I'm cool with that - I love spending time reflecting about new knowledge, and figuring out where it fits into my existing understanding of the way things work.

All in all this was a really great workshop and I'm really glad to see these kind of things happening in Victoria.  I came away with a few new friends, some more ideas to work towards, and inspiration.

A Border Collie With Nothing to Do

I've been off of the squash courts for just shy of a month now.  I'm meeting up with Rob to do some light training for the first time in what feels like ever, so I anticipate some frustration due to seeing the skill I trained so hard this Winter to acquire slipping through my fingers.

Not playing squash has been very frustrating, as I really love the sport, and I do things because I want to improve.  Being removed from that element means that I have to watch that improvement slip away and a heap of rust develop in place of the game I'm used to having at my disposal.  It's especially hard because I trained very hard this Winter and Spring, and really felt like I'd reached a new level in my game.  Oh well - all things come to pass, and it is the fool that doesn't listen to what their body is telling them.

In order to avoid going completely bucknuts-mental, I've been spending most of my time biking, working out, and dancing, in order to stay in shape and keep myself occupied (ever seen a border collie without anything to do?  That's a pretty good analogy to the way I operate).  Additionally, for the previous three weeks, I've had access to the dance studio whenever needed, which makes the act of practicing vastly superior to my other options.

About eight years ago, near the very start of my degree, I took it upon myself to practice dancing for thirty minutes everyday.  Even before that, Graham and I would practice whenever the whim struck us.  Lately, I've had more motivation than ever before to get down and actually put in some serious practice time, but as soon as I started, I noticed that my practices felt very unstructured.  I would skim from technique to technique, getting distracted and never spending enough time on any one thing.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it's an indication that there are a lot of ideas that I have in my head that can legitimately evolve into dance moves and techniques.  However, if I want to see and feel real improvement, it's important to be able to focus when I set out to practice.  More for the sake of posterity than anything else, here is the practice routine that I came up with, along with a few notes describing why each part is there.

Routine vs Innovation

Before I go further, I think it's important to mention that routine and innovation are both important in any practice regimen.  Innovation is an opportunity to let yourself do whatever your body and the music are telling you to do, and is where you're going to find the most creativity.  Routine is where you will practice the fundamental movements that are core to the style of dance that you are pursuing (or even any activity in particular - scales for a piano player, for example).  Routine provides you with a solid set of fundamentals upon which you are able to actually create and innovate.  A good dancer needs to have a significant amount of both of these elements, so be sure not to neglect either of them when practicing.

Brainstorming

Before starting to plan out my routine, I wanted to do a braindump and get everything in my head out onto paper.  There's no magic to this technique - you just sit down with a pencil and paper, and write.  Don't question anything, just write.  After you've sat there for three or four minutes without writing anything, you can be reasonably assured that you've gotten everything immediate down.

The results of my brainstorm look like this:

• Waving
• Tutting
• Popping
• Fresno
• Choreography
• Glides
• Floats
• Flexes
• Foundations
• Experiments

So, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but I have an idea of the kind of stuff that I want to fit in to a standard ninety minute practice session.

Note also that I wrote down Experiments.  This is the placeholder for setting aside some time specifically to work on experimentation.  Not practicing anything in particular, probably just ten minutes or so doing whatever.  I may end up hating everything that I come up with in those ten minutes, but, on the other hand, I may discover a new type of movement that I hadn't considered before.

Practice Routine

The total amount of time I felt was reasonable for practicing was around ninety minutes.  Anything more and I'm devoting more time than I have available.  Anything less and I really don't give myself much time to innovate.  When I first started practicing, I figured that it would be a stretch to get through forty-five minutes, however, once I actually force myself to overcome the inertia and actually get started, time seems to fly by pretty quickly.

So, what do I have planned?

• Fresno and Variations (15 minutes)
  

This one is a natural starting place.  The Fresno is the technique upon which everything else in popping builds, and is the starting point for the dance itself.  Practicing the Fresno provides the opportunity to practice good isolation, good hits, getting funky, and being creative.  No matter how good I get, I will always be able to practice the Fresno, come up with new variations and tightening it up.

Some specifics I want to practice are:

• Tight, crisp hits and isolations
• Walkouts
• Broken walks and hits into and out of the Fresno
• Transitions from the Fresno into other techniques (waves, tuts, etc.)
  

• Tutting (15 minutes)

Tutting is the newest technique I've worked on, and as such, there is a lot of room for me to improve.  I need to practice not only transitions to and from various poses, but also just making the poses themselves clean and tight.  Nothing looks worse than going into a box stance and having the box look more like a shitty oval.  Don't settle for a shitty oval.  Go for a nice clean box!

Specifics I need to work on:

• Tightening up poses
• New poses
• Transitions to and from various poses
• Footwork throughout

(I have learned most of my tutting so far without footwork, but you're not dancing if you're only moving half of your body - I need to work on this)

• Waves (15 minutes)

Waving is one of the trickier techniques for me, in terms of practice.  I have a fairly good grasp of the fundamental concepts for good waves, and I've practiced arm and body waves quite a bit.  However, I feel that I'm really letting myself down when it comes to actually being innovative with waving, and having a deeper understanding of the techniques.

For example, I know enough about waving to be able to use it when I'm freestyling, sending a wave up from my feet through my body and out my arms, but that's as far as it goes.  I've never taken the time to sit down and practice sending waves in specific directions, or as specific transitions.

So, that's part of what I'm aiming to do here.  Some specifics:

• Foundations (practice the individual isolations)
• Body wave (focus on isolating the hips)
• Waves through my legs and feet
• Waving into and out of various poses (eg, into King Tut pose), and transitions from waves to various other techniques
  
• Kick wave
• One-sided body waves (wave travels only down one side of the body)
• Variations on Phil Chbeeb's wave (view here at 34 seconds)

• Glides and Floats (15 minutes)

I've never really put enough time into learning to glide well.  Part of that is because until recently, my practice sessions have been exclusively on carpet, arguably the worst surface to practice gliding on.  They're also been inside, which means I can't practice with shoes on, which makes it that much harder (less support for the toes).

Gliding is a very frustrating and tedious technique to work on.  Having the correct floor and footwear makes things a little easier.  Specific things I intend to work on:

• Sideglide (specifically from left to right)
• Basic float (the foundation for most gliding)
• Snake glide
• Box glide (but work on side glide first)
• Forward glide
• Stationary glide

Nothing much to elaborate on here.  Gliding is the technique I'd like to see the most progression on - there's a lot of stuff I could be doing that I don't because I've never focused on this technique.

• Flexes (15 minutes)

Flexes are a technique that I never really learned properly the first time around.  After Dillon covered them in one of our classes, it dawned on me how valuable it was to correctly learn these fundamental ways of segmenting and turning your body.  A twist-o-flex may not look astonishing when done at normal speed, but the foundation can fit in with almost everything else that you do.

Specific flexes I want to work on:

• Standard twist-o-flex (with 4 pivots)
• Twist-o-flex with 5 pivots (add an additional head pivot in)
• Twist-o-flex shown here at 4:50 (thanks Guillaume!)
• Neck-o-flex
• Master-flex (I need knee pads to work on this one)
• Standard twist-o-flex, done backwards.

• Choreography (15 minutes)

Although choreography could technically fall as a sub-item into each of the above categories, I made a point of devoting at least 15 minutes in my routine purely to practicing this skill.  If I don't, I end up spending all of my time working on fundamental movements.  It's never a bad thing to have a really strong foundation (and there's ALWAYS things that I can find that need improving), but the only way to improve at choreography (and realistically, a complete dancer) is to spend some time working specifically on this skill.

One of the things that I've been working to appreciate is that choreography doesn't need to be something complicated. It can be as simple as putting together some Fresno movement, and then sending a wave through my arms, down one side of my body, up the other, and lastly, out my other arm.  This isn't difficult choreography, but until I actually put it together and practice the sequence, it will never be as tight as it needs to be.  And therein lies a small part of why choreography matters to me.  Freestyling, to me, is the opportunity is to make use of anything that I have come up with in the past.  Choreography is the opportunity to tread new ground.  Once I've done that enough, it can become part of my freestyling repertoire, but not until.

Specific things I want to work on:

• Various routines from the Fresno
• Waving choreography
• Tutting choreography
• Some choreography including glides
• Some choreography including footwork for both tuts and waves

So that's basically my practice routine for the summer.  If I get tired of working on things in this manner, I can always mix it up and change.  That is the power of my mind - look upon its works and despair!

I'm attending a popping workshop here in Victoria put on the Groovy Gs (of Vancouver) this coming Saturday.  I'll definitely have some thoughts to post at that point, so check back soon.

It's been a little longer than normal since my last entry.  That's mostly because I've been keeping myself fairly busy.  The stuff that is keeping me busy is stuff that I don't really want to set down only to come home and spend even more time writing about (don't get me wrong - I'm extremely passionate about dancing, I just haven't felt inclined to write about it lately), and I haven't really felt inspired to write beyond that.

However, this Saturday was the end-of-year wrap-up for Vibestreet Dance, and so it seems a good time to reflect a little bit on how things have gone.  When I look back to only two months ago, when I first started taking popping classes from Dillon, I can barely fathom how much things have changed.

The Show

Before I talk about my own thoughts, it's probably worth talking about our end-of-year show.  Three weeks before the show, Brooke mentioned that our breaking instructor would be putting together a routine for it, and it would be great if I could as well.  This would pretty much be the first time I'd ever done any choreography, so I was a little bit nervous - I spent about a week putting things together, and then went over it with the class.

In retrospect, I over-simplified certain parts, as I wasn't sure how quickly the class would pick things up.  It turned out, really quickly!  All of the kids were great, but I was obviously especially proud of the kids that I had been working with, and was really happy to see how well things went.  I think that in the next year, they're going to start to really take off.

Although it's nice to pretend that the instructor gets a lot of the credit for the progression of the students, I think most of that credit belongs to Guillaume, Jack, Max and Vincent (along with Olivier and Sean, who weren't able to come to the later classes, and thus participate in the portion I put together) for being such great students.  Kids like these guys don't come easily, and their dedication and hard work make everything easier.

I also bumped in to two other guys that had been popping for about a year as well, got them out into one of our cyphers, and then got their information and told them to come out to the jam sessions I'm trying to get going.  All in all, the show was awesome.

Instruction

The biggest change that has occurred since starting at Vibestreet has obviously been that I've moved into the role of teaching, from that of a student.  Teaching is something that I've always wanted to do, and that I've always enjoyed.  My own experience has been that teaching people the art that I am interested in is one of the best ways for me to gain a better understanding of it myself.  Breaking techniques down requires thinking about each part of the technique and understanding it at a very fundamental level.  I've always felt this way, and indeed, studying calculus with friends in University, I always appreciated being asked for help with various questions.  My friends would apologize for bugging me with another question, but I was secretly being selfish and gaining from the questions they were asking me.

Back in the very early days of the world wide web, a friend and I ran a dance website called "Shaddup and Dance".  It was a piece of garbage, and would make web browsers explode from having to render the sheer ugliness of colours that we jammed onto that page.  Not only that, but there was also negative feedback from the original gangsters that took exception to my tutorial videos (many of them were indeed quite poor), or our attitude that just because you'd been around for a while didn't mean that you were above critique.  Still, there was an awful lot of positive feedback that accompanied the negative, and the opportunity to provide some advice and direction to other dancers that were attempting to learn the same techniques I had was one that I relished.

The first day that I started teaching was with the junior class.  I hadn't met any of the kids before, and I had no idea what they had learned up to that point.  Brooke told me that they were passionate about popping, which was promising, but I didn't realize how accurate she was.  These kids have been awesome, and really stuck it out with me.  They were patient with my fumbling starts, and have given me lots of inadvertent advice that I have taken to heart.  The opportunity to work with them (and hopefully to continue to do so), has been really great and has provided ample opportunities to learn myself.

Working with the adults has been slightly easier, though no less of a learning experience.  It's been easier because adults are generally more willing to focus on the foundation, and because I had the benefit of being attending the four classes previous to my taking it over.

When Brooke asked if I wanted to keep teaching, I didn't even have to think about the answer.

Choreography

Starting to think about choreography, and to actually apply that to the lessons I'm teaching, has been a completely new experience for me.  In the ten years that I have been dancing, I have always focused on building and practicing foundation movement.  No fancy moves, no fancy vocabulary of choreographed moves to draw from, just foundation.  Personally, I like this, as it means that I can very quickly adapt my dancing to work with whatever the music is asking of me, and when I focus on foundation, it is much easier to take in new influences and apply those to the existing foundation.

However, choreography is a very important aspect of dancing, and freestyle dancing is essentially coming up with choreography in real-time.  Taking on the role of teaching has required me to re-evaluate my relationship with choreography (a sentence that sounds exceptionally lame).  Seriously though, while working on foundation is essential for anyone that really wants to become a great dancer, not everyone is geared the way I am, and most people want to actually do something cool as they're learning.

Choreography provides students with a direct relationship between the foundation that you have them working on and actually dancing (honestly, it's difficult to understand how you are going to turn a chest hit until a dance until you've practiced it enough).  With a little bit of choreography, it is easy to take some basic foundation and put them together to make something that looks kind of cool, and provides a direction to train towards.  This should be one of the key goals of anyone attempting to teach - to instill in students not only the value of foundation, but also some ideas for the direction that they can take those foundations.

Friends

Finding Vibestreet Dance has been a lot like finding Victoria Squash Club - a whole new community of people to meet and interact with, and that share interests similar to mine.  Although finding people that shared my interest in squash was a bit of a challenge, I have literally been searching for ten years for people that are as passionate as I am about the styles of dance that I love.  It's not that those people don't exist, it's just that the hiphop scene in Victoria is so dry, and it's very difficult to find events that support maintaining that kind of culture.

In all of the people that I've trained with and taught, I've discovered new inspiration, and it really is extremely energizing.  Nothing inspires creativity like being exposed to more creative people.  In Brooke, especially, I've found a new friend with which I can talk about new observations, epiphanies I've had while practicing, and complain about the things that have bothered me in dancing culture for as long as I've been a part of it. 

I can (and do) share many of these things with Bay on a more abstract level (as we can discuss dance with each other at a level above any particular style), but it is refreshing to be able to talk to someone else about things that have, up until now, existed solely in my own head for the last decade.

Dancing

Although I started to develop a love for popping from watching hiphop videos and tapes put out by Mr Wiggles, it was raving that actually really got the ball rolling.  For all of the negative stereotypes (many of them accurate to some extent) present at raves, good dancing is appreciated, and if that's what you're into, there's space to do it.

Not only that, but every party, I would run into the same people that were there to dance.  We knew each other, and it presented a constant drive to keep improving.  I really wanted to rise to the top, and to bring something new to the table everytime that we met.  There were many days of the summers that Graham and I would spend alternating between playing Tekken and practicing dancing.

However, raving is not really a sustainable activity, and as time went on, going out to clubs stopped being one as well.  Without either of these options, there really wasn't any outlet to fuel my desire to improve.  I would practice from time to time, but to what end?  My friend Michi can apparently derive his motivation out of thin air, but I'm not that way.

Teaching is exactly the factor that I have been missing for so long.  Having students that are thirsty for new knowledge presents an incredible amount of motivation.  With other people to be accountable to, my drive to continue progressing is stronger than ever before.  This doesn't surprise me, but it is extremely rewarding to feel that way again.

With Brooke being gracious enough to let me use the studio for practice when it's not in use, I find myself heading there at least twice weekly to work on new ideas.  Although I am still at the stage where I am planting a lot of seeds, I really feel that the coming year will mark a huge wave of progression on my part.

On top of that, I'm taking hiphop classes, a style of dance that I've never really had any exposure to aside from watching it being performed.  These classes have given me an opportunity to appreciate new ways of moving around the dance floor, new postures, and a greater appreciation for choreography in general.  Watching Brooke teach the class has given me a chance to glean as much knowledge as I can from her own wealth of experience.

Summer and the Future

It is difficult to know exactly what the future will hold, but now that I've found a dance culture that I can partake in, I will hang on to it like grim death.  The summer is already filling up with exciting opportunities, including dance camps and workshops that I am planning to take, which will really open my eyes up to new ways of moving and keep the ball rolling (I just hope I can keep pace!).

I'll be posting updates as we move further into the Summer.  Until then, stay tuned!

Fortunately, I had a super productive night at Steve's place, practicing dancing while Graham and Steve played video games.  The night was so productive that I actually ended up with 7 pages of dance notes.  Although these notes contain a fair deal of shorthand, I thought it would make for an interesting blog entry to replicate those notes here (naturally a scanned them in after getting home, as I try to move away from having any straggling paper as much as possible), and go over them, explaining some of my methodology behind how I took the notes, what I was thinking, and how I capture stuff onto paper.  Even if you don't care about dancing, it may be interesting to see the process by which I go from capturing a visual thought (dancing is highly visual) into paper, and then into the digital world.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently took over teaching the popping classes put on at Vibestreet Dance.  The story behind this is that our existing instructor fell into a wormhole and is now selling potted meat at Zarglon-7.  Or something to this effect.  Whatever he ended up doing, he sent Brooke a text message saying "Sorry, I can't teach any more.  Good luck", and that was the last we heard of him.  Pretty flakey.

Taking over for Dillon is/was pretty intimidating.  Dillon is, by my standards, a pretty good dancer.  His technique is simply much cleaner and refined than my own.  Although I believe that I have a lot of innate dance talent, I've struggled to motivate myself to practice, because Victoria has never had a culture surrounding the styles (we're working to change that).

While Dillon's ability on the dance floor certainly surpasses my own, it's my own belief that his teaching ability is severely lacking.  This isn't a diss on Dillon or anything, as I've already stated that I have great respect for his ability to bust out; It's simply an observation.  Some people are good at breaking things down and explaining them, and some people understand things on an intuitive level but are unable to share that knowledge with others.

The main thought I try to hold in my head each time I start to doubt my own ability to teach is to remind myself that while I may not be a super advanced dancer, I do spend a lot of time thinking about dancing, and I am naturally inclined to break things down and think about the fundamental units that make up each technique.

Yesterday marked the last of the six classes that I initially signed up for this term, and the last of two lessons that I was due to teach after taking over for Dillon.  This term, I've taught a total of four classes: two of them to teens, and two of them to adults.  The adult class is the one that I was previously taking, but both classes are roughly operating on the same skill level.

This post is simply an opportunity for me to reflect on the experience so far, talk about some of the things that I've learned, challenges I've had to overcome, mountains I've had to climb, and other clichés too numerous to mention.

Taking on the role of an instructor instead of an annoying student that asks too many questions has not been without challenges.  The least of which simply having the confidence in myself to accept the fact that I know enough to break down and teach the styles of dance I've been pursuing casually for all these years.

Fortunately, I've got some experience to draw upon, mostly from teaching friends tricks here and there.  Teaching Michi to pop when we first met has given me valuable experience to draw upon, and helped me appreciate the fact that everyone learn things at their own pace and in their own manner.  Incidentally, be sure to check out some of Michi's videos - the student has truly become the master!

Lesson Plans

Putting together lesson plans has been another challenge to overcome.  Figuring out the right number of exercises to review with a class is something that I think will only come with experience.  The first class I completely underestimated how much time we would need to take to review the Fresno.  As an example, I started off with the assumption that we could go right into covering both leg and upper body hits.  However, as we started this, I realized that we would probably be better served breaking things down even further, focusing first only on leg hits, then on upper body hits, and then bringing them both together into the Fresno.

The second class, I had put together some more work for our Fresno, but this time overestimated the amount of time that we would end up spending working on this (based on my observations from the previous class).  After covering off the basics thoroughly the previous class, we blew through the other stuff I'd put together, and sticking to it for longer seemed like it would only frustrate students who wanted to progress and tackle something new.

What's the lesson here?  I think basically the best approach is to underestimate how much time will be required to cover each technique, and plan more stuff than will likely be needed for each lesson.  I can then move anything in excess over into next week's lesson, and will have ample material to iterate over if the class progresses faster than I anticipate.

Quantity over Quality

Another item that I'm still learning is how much should be covered in a class (quantity), versus how much time we should spend on drilling each technique (quality).  The longer we spend practicing each step, the better the class will grasp the concept and technique, and the easier it will be for them to practice that technique later on their own.  However, the longer we spend, the less new material the class are given to work on, and the more likely they are to become bored with the class and what we're working on.

This too feels like something that will come with experience.  I have a reasonably good grasp of how the class is responding to what we are working on, but I would really like to tighten this up.  I suppose my desire is the same as most teachers - I want to see my students get stoked, really improve, and become great dancers.  Finding a balance between drilling good technique and keeping things fun is going to be one of my main goals throughout this summer.

Tediousness

One of the things that has always been challenging for me, and for people that I have attempted to teach, is the fact that some of the techniques in popping are difficult and take time to learn.  And when I mean they take time, I mean they require putting some effort into drilling basic movements that initially will not immediately be obvious as to how they connect with the end result.

The most prominent example of this occurred last night when I was teaching the class gliding.  Gliding is a very popular technique, and for a number of reasons.  First, it looks ridiculously cool when it's done well.  Second, gliding is a technique that is easy to integrate into whatever other techniques you are doing.  You can Fresno for a while, glide over to a new space on the dance floor, and then start your Fresno up again.  Lastly, when done well, gliding appears effortless and graceful.  The dancer just stands there and moves gracefully around the room.

These three elements combine to make the perfect storm. The student sees how smooth and graceful the glide looks, and immediately wants these results.  Unfortunately, gliding is not a technique that comes easily, and it requires practicing some basic drills and honing your balance before you are able to see the results that you want.

The biggest problem I felt I was encountering was taking the class through the fundamentals and the basics while maintaining their interest and avoiding discouraging them.  Becoming discouraged means that the student gives up hope that they will be able to glide with practice, and that puts an end to their progression.  A discouraged student is always going to be a signal to myself that I have failed in some way and need to adapt my learning plan.

I have not yet figured out the best way to work with the class towards learning gliding, but this is something I will definitely be working towards.  It may be the case that it is better digested in small chunks, having the class learn only floating in one class, then moving on to the sliding transition the next class, then the transfer of weight the following class, and so on.

Planning

For both classes, I've put a fair amount of preparation in beforehand.  When I am anxious about taking on something new, my experience has shown me that the best way to calm those nerves is to spend time preparing. The more I think about something, the better I can wrap my head around it and don't have to worry about unknowns popping up and turning everything on its head.

However, preparation is an iterative art, and preparing to give lessons is something new that I haven't done in the past. In the past two weeks, a couple of events have popped up and thrown me off. 

Last Saturday, our studio's amp/stereo died on us, meaning that I had to play music out of my laptop's speakers, or not at all.  Popping without music is akin to simply doing moves (thanks for the feedback Graham!).  If you're not moving to the music, you're not dancing.  Without music, it's much more difficult for student's to connect what they're doing to form an actual dance, and doing drills starts to feel like only that - just doing drills, rather than building up a foundation from which you'll drawn upon when it's time to get out there and dance.

As a result of the faulty stereo, I didn't put as much time as I should have into the music I'd pulled out for our class on Monday.  The first class was easier, as I simply searched through my playlist and found good hiphop with slow beats.  However, given that I couldn't really roll with music on Saturday, I neglected to find new appropriate music for what we were going to work on this Monday. As a result, I had to forego the music and stick to counting out beats.  This is okay at first, but it rapidly gets old, and it's not really dancing, it's doing drills.

To accommodate for better planning, I've started booking time off each week to sit down and plan things out.  With the time slotted off in my calendar, I'll make a point of doing the work and ensuring that everything is up to shape.

Next Term

So that's it!  The end of our Spring term at VSD, and the end of the first series of classes that I've taught.  Unfortunately it doesn't sound like we have enough students to keep a kid's class going, but I'm hoping that we get enough together to maintain adult classes.  We're working towards some other ideas as well, and those will get posted on the VSD website (here), as well as here.  If you're interested in any kind of popping instruction, write me a comment, send me an e-mail, or sign up for a class!

Keep it locked, and get out and start dancing! 

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:

• 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

In Bay's absence, I've tried to treat the three weeks as something of a working vacation, starting with Easter weekend, and then taking the following two Monday's off work as well.  This has given me more spare time than I would otherwise had, and given me some spare to let my mind be creative and wander.  Although this has been a bit of an experiment, I think that the results have been really good.

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.

King Tut

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.

That's it.  The transition from prayer position to this one is simple, as you don't actually have to move anything - you simply pivot around your elbows.  The hard part in this position is maintaining a 90 degree angle with your wrists.  When I asked about how on Earth this is possible, Dillon said that it's most important to make sure that your hands remain parallel with the ground.  Imagine that you've got a heavy book resting flat on the palm of each hand when you're doing this position.

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.

In this position, your forearms and wrists should be forming a box.  From here, you can collapse and recreate the box by:

• 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.

This motion in itself creates a nice visual, although doing it over and over again will get boring for the audience.  Nevertheless, you can see that you can do a lot with a little bit of movement.

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.

That's it.  If it sounds easy because there's so few steps mentioned, that's because it is.  But it only becomes easy once you get the hang of it.  If there is anyone that wants me to show them this move, just ask me in person and I can give you the goods very quickly.

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

That's it.  The step isn't complicated, and it certainly won't trip people out!!  However, this is a valuable step to learn, and lets you add in additional footwork while you're doing something more complex with your upper body.

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!

It's another Tuesday, which means another popping class has passed.  This past class was related to glides, slides, and floats - essentially all different ways of moving yourself around the dance floor.  I'll dive right in to the material we covered, adding my own thoughts throughout.

Floats

Dillon started out by showing us the most basic piece of foundation for gliding: the heel-toe pivot. This is a very simple movement (in theory), and forms the basis from which the glide flows out of.  To do this move, the motion is:

• Start with both toes pointing inwards, almost, but not quite, touching
• Pivot on the toe of your left foot, bringing its heel around so that it is now pointing to the right (and your toe will now be pointing to the left).  While you do this, you also:
• Pivot on the heel of your right foot, bringing its toe around so that it is now pointing to the right (and your heel will now be pointing to the left).
• When you have completed this motion, both of your toes should now be pointing out
• Repeat this process, this time pivot on the heel of your left foot, and bring its toe around so that it is pointing inwards (and your heel pointing outwards), and, simultaneously:
• Pivot on the toe of your right foot, and bring its heel out so that it is pointing outwards (and the toes pointing inwards).
• At this point, you should have your feet in the same position that you initially started in, but be a few feet to the right of where you started.

As you can see, this is a fairly simple movement. I have been shown this motion a couple of times, not just from watching popping instructional videos, but also in a few workshops that I've been fortunate enough to take.  However, I've never really gotten it to stick.  What I mean by this, I guess, is that I've been lazy and neglected to practice the move.  I suspect that this is because when I first started teaching myself, I didn't realize this was the foundation upon which glides were built, and just started right into actually working on the glide.  My glides aren't horrible, but they could certainly be better if I put in some time to practice proper floats.

This is really pretty unacceptable.  Since this is the foundation upon which gliding is based, I'm making a mental note to make sure that I get this down.

As we were going through this, I noticed that a couple of people were having trouble alternating where they were placing their weight on their feet.  Having worked with a couple of friends to try and help then get this motion down, I can totally appreciate this difficulty.  One of the techniques I would recommend is a good starting point is to get the first pivot setup (so raise up on the ball of your left foot and the heel of your right foot) and then just pivot back and forth, into and out of, the first and second position.  Don't worry about changing where you've got your weight positioned for now.  Just practice going back and forth between these two positions.  After you've put some time in to that, work on the pivot from the second position back into the starting position (but this time continuing in the direction you started, rather than back to the original position).

Breaking the move down into these two steps will help you solidify it in your head and ensure that they can happen without you thinking about it, and this is really the key goal to establish when we're learning new techniques.

Glides

Okay, on to the meat of what everyone has been waiting for.  First, a quick note on glides.  This is, hands down, the single technique that I get asked about the most.  Gliding is a simple movement, but is very visually confusing.  People always want me to show them how to do it, but don't realize that it only becomes a natural movement with a little bit of practice.  Not a ton, but some, definitely.  I noticed in class that some people were getting a little discouraged as we went through the various techniques, and I got worried.  I have a vested interest in seeing people getting stoked about popping (and the rest of the funk styles as well), so I want people to be pumped on these techniques.  Hopefully some group practice sessions will help with that - more on this later.

Before going any further, there is an important point to make that Dillon didn't cover in class.  The key, in my opinion, to the glide's visual effectiveness, is making sure that the foot that is raised up on the ball of its foot is not the one that is moving.  The movement will always happen with the foot whose sole is flat to the floor.  There is a good reason for this:

Imagine someone walking, running, moving normally.  Which foot is doing the movement?  It is always the foot that is raised.  During normal locomotion, the foot that is flat on the ground remains stationary (and is being used to push off forwards with), while the raised foot travels forward, then gets placed flat on the ground, and is then used to push forward (and the back foot is now raised and moved through the air). Our brains are trained to understand this kind of motion, and to expect it.

A glide works by flipping this rule on its head.  The raised foot never does any movement, and the flat foot does all of the movement.  When the brain tries to parse this visual input, the viewer focuses on the raised foot expecting movement.  However, no movement ever happens, and before you know it, the dancer has moved halfway across the dance floor.

When practicing glides, keep this cardinal rule in mind:  The raised foot does not move.

Side-Glide

The side-glide is the second most well-known type of glide, after the back-glide (popularized by Michael Jackson, incorrectly, as the moon-walk).  This glide is actually much simpler than it looks, though it does require some training to understand exactly what is going on.

Dillon indicated that the motion for the side-glide flows directly out of the floating technique we covered earlier, and as soon as we started working on the glide, I was surprised how closely it really does.  The motion is broken down as follows:

• Start, again, with your toes pointing inwards, and your heels outwards
• Raise up (and put your weight on) on the toes of your left foot, and the heel of your right foot
• Pivot on the toes of your left foot, and the heel of your right foot, so that your toes are now both pointing outwards.
  

So far, this is identical to the float.  Here's where the change comes in:

• At the end of the last pivot, you need to shift all of your weight to your left foot (which remains up on its ball), because...  As you drop the heel of your left foot down to the ground, you want to slide your right foot away from you.  I find that the hardest part most people (including myself) have to deal with is getting their right foot to remain as flat to the ground as possible, but without it touching.  You want to avoid generating any friction between your foot and the ground.
• At this point, you should have both your toes pointed out, with your feet about two feet apart (or shoulder-width).
• Now, again, as with the float before, put your weight on the ball of your right foot, and the heel of your left foot.  Pivot to bring your toes pointing inwards again, then shift all of the weight onto your right foot and slide your left foot back in towards your right foot.  At the end of this motion your toes should just about be touching each other, and you're back at the position you started in.

Another aspect of this glide that people have trouble with is the weight transfer.  Ideally you want to do both the weight transfer AND the pivots at the same time, in one smooth motion.  However, I've always found this fairly tricky (possibly because I never learned to float properly).  I would recommend just taking things slowly for now, and focusing on the individual steps.  If you have trouble with the weight transfer and the pivot, then just repeat that motion over and over, until you get it right.

One other thing that we worked on that was helpful was simply going up on the ball of your one foot, and sliding your other foot away from it as you brought the heel of the raised foot back down to the ground.  This is a great way of developing the muscle memory for half of the motion for the glide.  You could apply this same principle to the second half of the glide, ensuring that you get these two aspects down tight.

One last principle that is very important here.  Ultimately, you want to learn to do this motion smoothly that you can carry it out without making any movement in your upper body.  Initially, you will find it difficult to maintain the balance required to stop yourself from moving around, but with practice, you should be able to glide while keeping your upper body perfectly still (and then once you've got that down, you can start doing contrasting movements like waves through your upper body while gliding.  But save that for later).

Cross-over Glides

Next up, we focused on cross-over glides.  These are done identical to the side glide, with the exception that your trailing foot either crosses in front of, or behind, your lead foot.  This glide is definitely more advanced than the side-glide, due to the high level of balance that is required to sustain the isolation that you need.

As soon as you cross your feet, it becomes much more difficult to maintain balance and keep your upper body stationary.  At this point, the class was starting to get frustrated, as we were nowhere near getting the regular side-glide down.  Adding in this additional step was simply too much to handle at that point.

Circular Glide

The circular glide is based on the same principle as the standard side glide (most of the more advanced techniques are), and as always, the cardinal rule continues to apply: The raised foot does not move, while the flat foot does.

The motion for this glide is performed as follows:

• Start in the same position as the side glide, toes inwards
• Raise up on the ball of your left foot, the heel of your right foot, and pivot your toes outwards
• Slide your right foot away as you lower the heel of your left foot
• Now, pivot your toes inwards, and raise up on the ball of your right foot
• This time, you pivot around your right foot, in a semi-circle.  Your left foot traces this semi-circle and remains flat to the ground
• Your back should now be to the front of the room, and your toes should be facing inwards.
• You can now carry on the glide as you normally would for a side-glide, or continue to rotate in another semi-circle.  The motion is the same, raising up on the ball of your lead foot, pivoting your toes outwards, and pivoting around the lead foot in another semi-circle

You can vary this glide by see-sawing back and forth as well if you like, always leading the turn with your front, or, with your back.

Snake Glide

The snake glide is one of the glides that does not actually move forwards directly from the side glide.  All of the movement is produced by one foot, while the other foot simply traces out a path beside it as you travel along.

The motion for this glide can be broken up into two distinct movements.  For the first part, your back foot will be doing the moving.

• Start with the toes of your left foot pointing to the left, and your right foot held up off the ground
  
• Put all of your weight on the heel of your left foot
  
• Pivot on your heel to move your the toes to the right
• Now shift your weight to the toes and ball of your left foot, and pivot on them to move your heel pointing to the right
• Repeat

This is the half of the motion that will actually move you across the dance floor.  The second half of the motion is should initially be practiced with all of your weight on your left foot, and leaving that foot stationary:

• Start with your right foot beside your left foot, with your toe pointing forwards
  
• Slide your right foot (flat against the ground) forwards
• As you the heel of your right foot reaches roughly your the toe of your left foot, rotate your foot around your ankle as much as you can, so that your toe is now pointing to the right (and hopefully somewhat to the back).  Then start to slide it backwards
• Slide your right foot backwards (attempting to lead with your toe as best you can), and when the heel of your right foot roughly reaches the heel of your left foot, rotate your foot again around your ankle, bringing your toes around so that they are again pointing forwards.
  

To bring everything together, you combine the pivots of the first motion with the slide on your right foot.  The visual you are aiming to produce is that your right foot is snaking along the ground, and your left foot follows along.

I've practiced this motion in the past, but I find it very difficult to get the balance correct that is necessary in order to avoid lurching your upper body all over the place.  Still, this is an excellent candidate to practice, and something that I will make a point of spending some time on, along with the floats.

Wiggles glide

The Wiggles glide is a glide created by Mr. Wiggles, of the Electric Boogaloos.  I remember the first time I saw this glide in my Mr. Wiggles 2 VHS tape, and not being able to comprehend what was going on.  The confusing part about this move is that the main amount of motion that is generated happens from a left-to-right (and vice versa) direction, while the dancer actually moves forward along the dance floor.  This makes it really confusing for someone watching to figure out how they are actually accomplishing this.

The glide is composed of a set of pivots on your heels and toes, and the rest flows from that.  First, the most important motion to train:

• Put the heel of your right foot directly in front of your left foot
• Pivot on the toe of your left foot, swinging your heel out to the left.  At the same time that you do this:
• Pivot on the heel of your right foot, swinging your toe out to the left.  Next, you pivot on the same body parts, and reverse the direction, so..
• Pivot on the toe of your left foot, swinging your heel in, through the center, and then out to the right.  While you do this, simultaneously:
• Pivot on the heel of your right foot, swinging your heel in, through the center, and to the left.

You'll notice that you can get your heel and toes out much further for the second part of the pivot than the first.  This is okay, it's just a limitation of your anatomy and the way our ankles bend.

Once you have this motion down, you're ready for the more complicated part.

• Start with your feet as before, with the heel of your right foot directly in front of your left foot
• Pivot on the toe of your left foot, swinging your heel out to the left, and on the heel of your right foot, swinging your toes out to left.
• Now pivot again, swinging the heel of your left foot in, through the center, and out to the right.  Do the same for the toes of your right foot.  Now comes the new movement:
• Place all of your weight on the heel of your right (front) foot.  Leave this foot positioned as it is
• Take your left (back) foot, and slide it out to your side, and around in front of your right foot.  While you're doing this, you want to pivot on the heel of your right foot, so that its toes swing out to the right.  This pivot should complete right as the heel of your left foot comes into position right in front of your right foot's toes.
• Transfer your weight onto the heel of your right foot, and the toes of your left foot.
• At this point, you should be back in a familiar position - with one foot in front of the other, the toes of your left (front) foot pointing to the right, and the heel of your right (back) foot pointing to the right.
• Perform the pivot you practiced above, pivoting on the front left foot's heel and swinging your toes to the left, and pivoting on the back right foot's toes, swinging your heel out to the left.  Now repeat these steps as much as you like to continue moving forwards.

Dillon mentioned that this appears and sounds like a complicated movement, but once you get the hang of it, it's actually quite simple.  I can attest that this is the case, having practiced this glide a fair bit.  It takes a little bit of time to figure everything out, but once you have it, it creates a very pleasing visual without a lot of effort.  This is, however, one of the more difficult glides to perform on "sticky" ground, as the heel of my shoes always gets caught and throws off my pivots.

One amusing note to mention - I can remember just throwing out this glide when I was taking the Funky Stepping workshop a couple of years back, and Jake, the instructor, jokingly called me a biter.  Fair enough, I suppose.  This is a very distinctive glide that is absolutely the domain of Wiggles.  Having said that, I still think it's valid to use a move that you've seen someone else doing.  Just make sure that you give credit when it's due, and apply your own style and attitude to the move.  It's okay to derive inspiration from other dancers - just take what you like and make it your own.

Practice

So that's the whole of the class.  Dillon took things a little bit slower this class, which was good (perhaps part of that was due to my insistent prodding), but I definitely noticed that there were at least a couple of people that were getting exasperated as we went into more complicated glides.  This is definitely not what I want to see, because I have a vested interest in seeing people get enthusiastic about Popping (it means I'll have more motivation to keep at it myself).

I've been talking with Brooke about the potential to set up a practice session at the studio, and I feel more strongly than ever that this is really something we should get going.  I was originally waiting to hear back from Dillon on this, but I get the impression from him that he has too many other things currently commanding his focus, which is fair enough.  However, I'll see what can be done to take the lead on this and see if we can get something going (provided there's some interest).

Next class is apparently about tutting.  This should be an interesting class, as I've always shunned tutting due to the fact that my wrists simply don't bend back at 90 degree angles, and thus my tuts look like ass.  However, I'm sure there are a lot of techniques that I can take away from the class, regardless of how clean my angles end up looking.  I'm looking forward to the next session.

Tonight was the second popping class of the session of six that I'm signed up for.  If you missed it, you can read the archive of the first class here.

• Fingers
• Wrist
• Elbow
• Shoulder
• Chest
• Stomach
• Hips
• Knees
• Pivot on heels
• Pivot on toes

The trickiest part of the wave for most people is getting their stomach to bulge out without including their chest (which should be tucked in at this point in the isolation) or their hips (which are pushed out for the next isolation).  Although I've practiced and used the body wave for a long time, I found that I was having difficulty hitting these isolations individually, and that's usually an indication that I've been using speed as a way of cheating isolations.

When I talk about cheating with speed, what I mean is this: Many people when they first start out waving notice that if they do the wave quickly, it looks better to their eyes, and feels easier.  It is easier because you don't have to spend time worrying about hitting the isolations, and because doing the isolated segments of the wave slowly looks awful until you've learned them correctly.  However, this is the nature of everything fundamental - you simply must learn how to carry out each move slowly before you can learn how to do it quickly.  More practice time in store for me.

Different Types of Waves

At this point, Dillon explained a specific difference between a couple different waving techniques.  The most common wave is the isolated wave, as specified in the above two examples.  An isolated wave always means that you move a body part (in isolation), then return it to its original location after the wave has moved on.

The travelling wave is a wave where the body part that the wave has moved through remains in the position that the wave has moved it to.  A wave like this can typically be used to move your body parts to a new location, rather than keeping them static.  Ultimately though, it's just another technique to add to the visual complexity that your audience is presented with.

The main travelling wave that Dillon showed us was a kick-out wave.  This wave works as follows:

• Kick your right leg out and forward, then place it down
• Move your knees forward
• Move hips forward
• Move stomach forward
• Move chest forward
• Move shoulders forward
• Elbows
• Wrists
• Fingers

As you can see, the isolations remain the same as the other waves.  The biggest difference is simply that you are not resetting each body part after the wave travels through it.

Side wave

This wave provides the illusion of a wave moving you sideways.  You could theoretically do this as an isolated wave or a traveling wave.  As a traveling wave, it would look like:

• Move your head to the right
• Move your chest to the right
• Move your stomach and hips to the right (I find it nearly impossible to isolate those two for this wave)
• Move your knees to the right
• Move your left foot beside your right foot, and then move your right foot over a step

To make this into an isolated wave, you would return each body part to its original position after each step.  Once the wave hit your feet, you would pivot on the toes or heels of both your feet to provide the illusion that the wave had travelled in that direction, then return them to normal and start the wave back up.

Trace Waves

A trace wave is simply a wave within which you use one of your hands to trace along the path of the wave.  The isolations are the same as any other wave.  The only difference is that your hand is tracing out the same path, and moves over each body part as the wave passes through it.

Dillon showed us a few examples of trace waves, but at this point I was actually starting to get lost on some of the techniques he was using to isolate the lower part of his body.  The two that I remember are using a pivot on your toe (moving your heel from inside your body through to the outside) to run the wave down through the bottom of your foot, then back again (by pivoting on your toe to bring your heel back up on the inside of your body), and dropping down onto one knee.  For this drop, think of the wedding proposal stance, but only moving your knees and legs.  Your upper body should stay facing forwards, while your legs and knees are in this stance facing to your left or right.  Also, the direction that you twist your knees to the ground needs to be consistent with the direction the wave has been moving).  You bounce the wave back up through your body by twisting your legs back into a standing position.

Dillon Wave
Rolling Wave

The rolling wave is a technique I'd never heard of before, and required a few isolations that I certainly need to put some time in practicing before I'm anywhere near a place where I can execute the entire wave.  This wave operates on the concept of travelling in a rolling direction around your arms as it moves through you.  At each isolation, it is essential that you bend and move only at the joint being isolated.

The Cobra

The last technique I'll cover today was the Cobra.  At this point in the class, I think most of us were feeling fairly overwhelmed.  In addition to the techniques outlined above, Dillon showed us at least that many more ways of waving.  I'd like to keep track of them all, but it was too much.

The technique for the Cobra involves a number of different isolations happening all at once.

• Your left shoulder rolls in a circle, moving forward, then up, then back, and lastly, down.  This motion is repeated.
• Your right shoulder rolls in a circle, moving back, then up, then forward, and lastly, down.  This motion is a circle in the opposite direction to the one being made by your left shoulder.  This motion is repeated.
• Your chest rolls in a circular left-to-right fashion, going left, then out, then right, and back in.

The main aim here is for a circular wave to start at your left shoulder, carry through your chest, and then out your right shoulder.  Once you have this down, you aren't yet finished!  Now you need to include movement for your lower body parts.

• Your hips move in a circle consistent with your chest
• Your feet and knees are making rolls in a direction consistent with your hips and your chest.  At the end of each roll, you should now be facing in a direction slightly to your side.  If you were to continue this movement indefinitely, you would end up moving around in a slow circle.

As you can see, this is a very complicated technique with a lot of moving parts.  Definitely something to break down and start focusing on the basics first.

Some parting tips

Some parting tidbits that Dillon passed along, before I go any further.

• Hit at start and end of wave

To  add to the effect of the wave, you want to hit at the beginning and the end of it.  This will provide a more powerful look to the viewer, and it will also provide a strong contrast between the two kinds of movements (waves, although they don't have to be, provide a very fluid appearance, while pops are a very distinct broken appearance).

• Wave against a flat surface

I remember practicing this technique when I worked at McDonalds.  Because each joint in your arm should replace itself after the wave passes through it, you can use a flat surface as a good way to discipline yourself into doing this correctly.  Find a half-wall, if possible (if not, you can use a table, but will probably have to sit or duck down), and put your back up against it.  Lay your arms out along either side of the surface, and then practice waving back and forth along it.  Your arms should never drop beneath the surface, nor should a joint stay above the surface after a wave has passed through it.

Conclusion

There was an awful lot of material to cover during this class, and I'm finding it hard to set aside enough time to practice all of it.  To accommodate this, I got Dillon's e-mail after class and asked him about setting up some practice sessions.  Brooke says that we can rent out the studio space for $25/hr, which would be fairly reasonable if we could get at least 5 people together to go through what we've been learning.  I can't think of a better way to stay on the true path and continue to improve, so I hope that this is something we can make happen.  Stay tuned for information on that topic, should it be something that interests you. 

That's all I've got for this week, but I will continue to practice, and will be writing more after each individual class.  If anyone has any feedback or questions, it's always welcome.