"How Do I Become A Good Dancer?"
Is what i hear many students asking teachers. The answer usually is "Practice!" but i think many students and aspiring dancers don't fully understand what practice means. Let's start at the beginning and hope that this blog post will demystify many things about becoming a good dancer. There are somethings we have to get out of the way STRAIGHT AWAY - like, right at the beginning of the article and those are - 1. Definition of "GOOD" Because Good means different things to different people, always check what "good" means to YOU (yourself) when embarking upon a journey to becoming a good dancer. What other people offer will be their measures, values, benchmarks and standards, which will both differ and overlap with your personal values of "good". Because different people want different things in their dance, what each defines as good will be unique to themselves and it should be something that you yourself, come to define for yourself. What other people share with you should always be treated as reference information and not the "only truth/standard". I believe very much that this is one of the most important parts of any dancer's journey because i) this is the only way to come into your own as a dancer and person, and not just as a mishmash of whatever teachers and classes you followed/took. Everyone has to grow up and be themselves someday and this applies not only to children becoming adults, but also to young dancers becoming mature dancers. ii) it really helps one clarify what is important to you as a dancer and then streamlines/informs/shapes what you do at socials or events and helps you find the sweet spot that lets you feel secure, comfortable and satisfied with what level of dancing you are at and where to go with your dancing. A second definition of "good" in terms of technical ability is that one has to be able to demonstrate clearly the action involved, i.e. "be good at it", before one can define that action as being "good". So if you want to know if you are good at a particular step or footwork, or good at connection, or good at musicality, you have to be able to demonstrate it clearly and it should be easy for the people watching you to understand what you are doing. So similarly, when we apply the word "good" to a dancer, this dancer must be able to demonstrate clearly and consistently/repeatably that he/she can move well, express and interpret the music well, lead and follow well, execute the steps well. 2. Practice in the form of repetition and drills is UNAVOIDABLE. No one likes to hear this, but it is true. I do not know of any skill which doesn't hone itself through repetition. When a guy goes to the gym for the sake of building muscles for a nice appearance, they do reps. Women put on makeup to look nice everyday - it's practically a ritual. Repetition is the key to so many things in our lives, daily or not, so why would it be different here in dance? Being unrealistic about that is a recipe for disaster straight away. If you can't accept this fact, it's time to stop reading and forget about becoming a good dancer - because i don't know how else to help you achieve that goal, seriously. The real issue is not really practice, it's the i) lack of time (i hear this reason all the time) ii) don't know how to practice (i hear this one fairly often) iii) practice is boring (usually not applied to dance but applied to things like ...school work or something in our childhood that then gave practice a bad reputation in our heads) iv) i'm scared to practice wrongly so i want to be super sure about what i'm practicing before i start practicing (so that i can get it right and don't need to practice so much) 3. Natural Talent Some people are more gifted than others and pick up things faster. Others are slower at learning things and that is fine - don't beat yourself up because someone who has been dancing a shorter time than you appears to be better (or even actually better) than you. At the same time, i have seen people with good natural talent...learn slowly because their mindset or learning mentality/system is poor and inhibits their ability to do better. Let's address the issues under "PRACTICE". i) Lack Of Time I want to be blunt here so sorry if its hard to hear but sometimes the real issue is not a lack of time but a lack of good planning with regard to how people want to spend their time. I spoke a little about priorities in my last blog post and i just want to say again here that becoming good at anything requires a commitment to getting down and doing it. Think of it as goal setting that you must follow through with and not like New Year Resolutions that you make and then forget about. If being a good dancer is important to you, prioritize it, make it something that you will do, something that you will commit to. That's the first step. Plan out a schedule, set aside time, get a friend to practice with you etc etc. When that is not the issue, or no longer the issue...then we come to the next part here, which is really, not having enough time because one is so busy with work or with family. My advice here is just to make the most of whatever dancing time you get. It has been my observation that most dancers just come to socials and have fun. You might go "duh!!" And yes, i get that. I get that dancing is recreational for you and that the whole point of dancing is about enjoying yourself, of course - so when you come social dancing, the main priority is to maximize fun or enjoyment. That's fine in and of itself. No argument there. I m just saying, if you are one of those that is strapped for time and social dancing once or twice a week is all you can cobble out for dancing BUT you STILL WANT to become a good dancer, then the answer is to practice during the social dances that you attend. Say u attend one of the many social nights a week here in SG. Each social is about 2 hours +/-. Make a commitment to practice at least 30 mins out of the 2 hours that you are dancing. How do you practice while you are social dancing? Pick something specific that you want to work on, like styling, or a footwork, or a particular step that you have been trying to get right. And practice it. This is especially useful for follows working on styling and footwork. Both of these things are usually generic enough that you can practice it with the steps you've been given by the leader. If you want to practice bigger twists, every time the leader leads a swingout - right there - An Opportunity to do the bigger twists. How many swingouts do you do a night? maybe 100? well, that's 100 times you get to practice your big twist or twist styling a night. Don't waste it. Same goes to the leaders for styling or footwork. I need to work on my arm swing during my swingout. Well, how many times do I do a swingout a night? 200? Great. 200 repetitions for the arm swing. For leaders practicing a step, the important thing is to try it repeatedly, say 4 or 5 times, during each social dance and be aware of how you are leading it, that's the only way to correct anything. Different follows will give u different responses and try to see what went well or didn't go well each time u led it. After 4 dances, u would have tried out the step 15 times. That's usually enough of a feedback loop to give u some info on how u are doing with the step. Repetition. Keep doing it until u get it right. This applies to anything. Sometimes i hear - "I need a (specific) partner to get it right." For this statement we to look at the context of the step you are trying to get right - The contexts where this applies - 1. Very specific teacher material that involves specific technique or frame where you would really need someone who attended class with you to practice with because of how specific the technique or step is (this is more common than you would think, many teachers teach material based on their own dancing and sometimes it only works between the two of them, and other people, even other teachers would not be able to follow or execute the step. Be careful about material like this) 2. Connection based steps that really require a high level of understanding about lead and follow where the partner has to be fairly skilled for you to get the correct dynamic and connection. In cases like these, u would have to practice with partners who are more skilled and not with beginners or less skilled dancers. The contexts where this doesn't apply - 1. Steps or techniques that involves you moving in a certain way (even if it affects your partner). Anything that involves you and your own movement/way of movement is completely under your control and ability to practice. Say you need to practice holding your core while you dance. That's all you, u don't need a partner for that, any partner will do. Or you need to step underneath your hips. That's all you too - you don't need a partner for that. That's why footwork and styling fall under this context, it's all you. 2. Solidifying/consolidating your own way of dancing, your personal values and systems. This applies to higher level dancers who are looking to express themselves more fully. This is a challenge to be able to stay true to your values and systems while dancing with anyone. If u have to change the way you dance/express with certain people because you cant maintain your personal desired expression, you NEED more practice doing so, and you cannot do this practicing with one specific person. You need to go and practice with MANY different people. This is of course non-exhaustive and there are more contexts where you will need to make decisions, but the important thing is that you do. Take the time to weigh/assess the situation and make decisions about it. If in doubt or in confusion, that's the time to go talk to someone else. But always do your own work first before bringing the problem to someone else. Make the effort to try and solve it on your own. That's really helps you grow as a dancer. ii) Don't Know How To Practice This really is a misnomer, what people mean when they say this is - the practice is not reaping results so they don't know what's wrong, so they abbreviate that to "dunno how to practice". The key to repetition is to perform the step/sequence/movement over and over and over again while correcting flaws in the execution. If you are not getting it, there are several thing you can do to make a complicated step or sequence easier. 1. Do it slowly. Keep slowing it down until it is manageable for you. Perform the repetitions at a slower speed until your body begins to get used to it and starts to remember the movement. Feel for it, feel what the body feels like when you are performing/executing the step. As the body remembers you will be able to perform the action quicker and quicker. Build up to the required speed. I personally do this A LOT for tap. Tap steps are ridiculously complex sometimes and you really have to do it like 100 times slowly before u speed up by 10%. Then another 100 times before you speed up by 20%. It's a slow process but it works. 2. Break down the sequence or step into its components and practice each component individually. This speaks for itself. You decide how small you need to break it down to and then perform the required repetitions until the body remembers, then you put the sequence back together again. Once again, I find this to be very useful in general, for everything, rhythms, footwork, steps, airsteps...everything. If you attend my classes, this is what i am doing most of the time in class, helping my students break it down and put it back together again. 3. Build awareness of the muscles and body mechanics as you are performing the step. I am not the most qualified person to speak on this, but this is super helpful if you can learn even just a bit of it. I find sometimes that we are too much in our heads - too cerebral, too intellectual when it comes to dance, which is really a body thing. We need to step out of our head by 50% and give over more awareness and responsibility to our bodies. U know the cliche "Men need to get in touch with their feelings?" - well, that's what i would to like to say to the dancers, we all need to "get in touch with our bodies" more and stop being so much in the intellect when dancing or learning dance. How to?? It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss this VERY BROAD AREA. I highly recommend taking bodywork/yoga/pilates/Alexander Technique (many different things) to help you become aware of your body and to connect to it more strongly. As a general piece of advice, i would say begin to take notice of how the step feels, in the weight shift, the dynamic, the muscle activation, the connection rather than thinking about how to do it, or what needs to be done. That hopefully should get you started. iii) Practice is Boring This is all in your head. If you have had traumatic school-years experiences where doing repetitive tasks like homework or CCA practice has scarred you for life - I also dunno how to help you .... Many of our impressions and beliefs are formed when we were younger and i think practice and our mental concept of practice is one of those things. The best way out of this is to look at it from a different perceptive and see how it could be positive, rather than negative. I personally find the repetition to be soothing, as it takes me out of my mind and into my body and somewhat restful (for the mind) - I don't know how many of you watch Nigella Lawson on TV but she always talks about how chopping and dicing is soothing and relaxing for her even though some consider it the most tedious part of cooking. So drilling is seen usually as the boring part of practice, but is it really? I also find the repetition in the pursuit of excellence rather exciting. It's almost as if you can see the progress being made as you practice consistently. I guess a good analogy is the gym analogy. When guys go gym and build muscles, they like what they see - the progress, the big muscles, the well-defined abs, the body taking shape and that motivates them even more to keep at it. Same here. When the dancing gets better and better you feel more confident, more excited, more safe, more expressive....and it makes you want to keep at it. iv) Scared of Wrong Practice Again, I have to make a very blunt statement here and sorry if it''s hard to hear - THERE IS NO WAY TO GUARANTEE THAT ANYTHING IS RIGHT. The best you can do, is just simply to try your best and forgive yourself for your mistakes, pick up the pieces and relearn things. I say this from personal experience but also it seems that this is the only way. No one ever gets everything 100% correct and never goes back and corrects or changes things. No one. I repeat again - NO ONE. NO ONE. Let's take a moment to talk about the very first thing you learn at any lindy class. The footwork. Rock-step. Triple steps. The most basic of the basic. After one year or 2 someone (could be a teacher) comes along and tells you you've been doing the triple step wrongly all this time. U cry out in anguish and have a mental breakdown. Then 5 years later, another someone comes along and tells you the way you've been doing rock-step has been wrong all this time. Your hair instantly turns white and you stop going to social for a while. Ok, so i exaggerate, but this is more common than you think. The reason is simply - when we learn anything for the first time, we usually can't get all of it right. What we define as right is usually just being able to execute the step competently enough to survive social dancing, and we're happy and at the beginning that is really all that is needed. To me, social dancing is the HEART of lindy hop, if we don't/won't/cant social dance, lindy hop really loses a lot of its meaningfulness. So in the beginning, learning the step is about being able to use it for social dancing, which is a simple objective. You are not asked to perfect the step or learn it in depth, but just required to learn enough to get you dancing on the social dance floor. But the step is far from complete. There is usually so much technique behind each step that it takes a while to learn everything about it. Once we're competent and confident with it on the social dance floor, that's when we start asking, what else is there - Is there anything more? It's after a while that we're ready to look at the step in more detail at a workshop or a class. In a lot of advanced classes, the dancers work at the basics, because then they can really rebuild their fundamentals, and they might do this for a few cycles before they are finally happy with what they have achieved. To put this in perspective, if you are happy with what you are doing and it works for you, you don't have to change. No one is forcing you to rework basics that you don't want to rework. But on the flipside, people are allowed to dislike the way you dance because you haven't worked on something and made it better, and you have to be ok with that. It's only fair - that's how it works in the real world as well - You can be lazy or complacent or stagnant, that's fine, but don't expect people to have to like that about you. The people who put in effort into their dancing and constantly improve should receive the recognition and reward for doing so, from other dancers as well as personal validation from their own progress. Dancers who aren't prepared to put in the effort should also not have unrealistic expectations of being highly desirable to dance with, or to be seen as being a good dancer on the dance floor when you haven't put in the work. Life should be fair in that sense, that's the most objective way to deal with dancing. But back to wrong practice - There is no way to fix it. Instead of being negative about it and not working on anything for fear of getting it wrong, just understand that that this is the only way, and move on with the process. Understand that this will take time, and you will be repeating it. Listen and think about what the teacher is offering you. Is the technique you currently have suitable? Or can it do with improvement? Remember you don't have to take the advice and rework anything if you are happy where you are and don't want to improve or change anything. Or if the teacher is offering a useful alternative technique, would you like to learn that to become more versatile? Also a possibility. After a few cycles of reworking the basics, you really would have covered most of the possibilities. The best way to handle this is to change your personal perspective and mentality on what learning means - learning is a process, it doesn't stop because you achieved a certain level. There are further levels to go, until you can't see any more levels, or you start to see the levels converge at some point. As an anecdote i offer my personal story. I have reworked my basics - 4 times. My first teacher was Sing. My first reworking was Bill Borgida. He came along in Seajam 2003 and told us our rock step was wrong and so was our frame. oh gosh! I had been dancing for 1 year. My 2nd reworking was Mattias Lundmark. I had to learn how to relax and stretch and change my frame to do that. I had been dancing for 3 years. My third reworking was Skye and Naomi. My rock-step was wrong again, and so was my connection. Worse still, i didn't know how to bounce, according to them! Oh my goodness! Ok, back to square 1. I had been dancing for 9 years. My 4th reworking was learning Kevin & Jo basics. Understanding weight shifts and preps for triple steps. I had been dancing for 12 years and my weight shift was far from good. Oh well. And that's just my Lindy. I have had to rework my tap basics 3 times as well. The important thing is not to give up. In my personal experience, I looked carefully at what was being offered by each of the teachers that came along. In all of that, I saw new things i could learn that would improve my dancing and help me move forward. So i reworked my basics both from the bottom, but also not losing what was before. You don't have to destroy everything and substitute a new structure over the old one, you just have to do like a major renovation. It's like designing something. You get ideas which you like, but you have to assimilate and integrate them into your own design, and not just cut and paste it into your design, like a mishmash or collage. It has to become part of you and in the process of reworking, you integrate the new things as an upgrade to your current way of doing things, so the rock-step (for example) becomes more well-rounded,multi-faceted and versatile. Each of the times I reworked things, the previous way of doing it was "wrong" - it doesn't make me a bad dancer per se. I would suggest not taking the word "wrong" as a criticism of you or your dancing personally and substitute the word "wrong" with the word "different", "less effective" or "could it be better". When you come to see it this way, then it really becomes an option, that is just being offered to you, with certain benefits. You don't have to buy into it, but if what's being offered is really good (like when you go shopping and someone is trying to sell you a product - and is touting the benefits or why it's good - if you listen and assess the claims being made, and you really think it has merit, then you would buy it - would you not?) - why not take the technique as is being offered by the teacher/salesperson? - Would u like the "more effective or the less effective rock step, sir?" - Would you like the "more efficient or less efficient triple step, ma'am?" - Would u prefer the "full weight shift or the half weight shift, sir?" And that is the most important part of this section - assess the benefit of the information that is being offered to you and make a personal decision whether or not to accept it, based on whether it moves your dancing forwards or not, and knowing that there is no such thing as 1 time get it all correct. Sometimes, students tell me that they have no awareness or idea when or where they are going wrong. This is a big problem because it suggests/implies that there is no understanding or concept of what feels right or wrong in terms of connection/body mechanics/lead & follow, so that a distinction can be made regards the execution of the step. The best solution for this is to increase awareness, both in the body (as mentioned earlier in the article) as well as about the step one is executing. Complex steps are really just simple steps put together. Very seldom is a complex step a step that is a totally new way of doing things. Usually it is just a conglomeration of simple steps put together and perhaps done in a different rhythm or speed than what one is used to normally. So if you bring to the complex step, the awareness to do each of its component steps in the best-feeling way possible, it makes sense that the whole complex step will feel good. That's another reason to keep working on basics. If you get the feeling right for each and every basic, then since complex steps are nothing more than various combinations of basics at varying tempos, then...all your complex steps will feel good. This really is too over-simplified, but in an article it's very hard to give a good idea of what it's really like. I hope this short paragraph has helped somehow with that. For some dancers who just started dancing (less than 2 years) you might find that all of this doesn't seem to apply to you. But if you keep dancing you might find that one day, you will reach this place and ask the same questions about becoming a good dancer or practice. Overall, this is a complex topic and I've just scratched the surface. I am very much a face to face person. If you have questions come and talk to me when you see me on the dance floor., That's the most effective and most direct way of communication. All the best to all the dancers who are wishing to improve! Comments are closed.
|
Archives
February 2019
Categories
All
|