The following are dance tips, but they apply to life outside of dance as well. Hope they are of some use. 1.
1. Understanding the duality between the music’s timing and your own.
Any song/music that you are dancing to has different patterns of rhythm that your body consciously or subconsciously picks up on. You can move to these patterns or you can move to a different timing that is not set by any obvious rhythm in the music, therefore creating your own rhythm. Have you ever heard of those three beats that you always want to dance to that aren’t actually in the music? That’s your own rhythm, and you should be dancing to it. It’s usually (when it is honest) always complementary to the music, the way a melody is harmonious with the melody of another instrument.
Having said this, there is a big paradigm shift when you discover that there is freedom in music to create your own rhythm and timing. For me it came as a sort of shock, as if I had finally discovered what time actually felt like in the flesh. This sounds pretty exaggerated but it is true and the shock lasted about 6 months, and it was a very fun period of exploration.
2. PRACTICE and explore
Watch other dancers in class OBJECTIVELY (that means without that voice in your head that wants to point out the flaws and wants to put down the successes, or that which makes you want to bow down to them...get rid of it all... just watch, breathe and feel the emotions down to your stomach). Analyze what they are doing that calls your attention and emulate it with the objective to find a different path of movement for yourself.
The body has a muscle memory; it remembers more than what your conscious mind remembers. If you truly digest this truth, then you understand that in order for your body to learn something new and to expand its spectrum of movement you just have to send the command to your body and put it in that certain position or phrase that you desire. PRACTICE, until your body (not your mind) learns it.
This is my favorite process of dance...going from “How the heck do you do that, that’s physically impossible” to “I can do that 3 times fast and upside down.” In my case, in between these two phases, there’s about 5-20 hours of practice (depending on what your are trying to do) but the learning is permanent and cumulative, like riding a bike; your body doesn’t forget so PRACTICE,PRACTICE,PRACTICE.
Also going to class is not the same as practicing something on your own. Class always follows a certain progression but when you practice on your own you have the time to go through the movement slowly. This helps a lot since it matches that muscle memory with your conscious mind. It’s not about quantity (going super hard and causing injury to yourself) it’s about quality AND quantity! Put in the hours, go slowly and pay attention to the articulation of your body in each movement (that’s where the magic happens in the articulations. If your body learns to be conscious in each dance step, the movement becomes articulated. Articulation is a sign of presence).
Just going to put this here:
“Hard Work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard” – Tim Notke
3. Videotape yourself doing improvisation/your own choreo!!! And become mildly obsessed with your own dancing!!!
I have millions of videos of improvs and choreos that never saw the light of a stage, or the wall of a social media feed, but watching them and analyzing them does two things: they show you areas of improvement (the cold hard truth) and they brainwash you with your own style which will get you thinking of new ideas produced 100% by yourself.
Make sure that when you are doing improvisation or choreos you aren’t thinking of another artist, this will only make your improvisation look like theirs. It’s okay to be inspired by an artist, but it’s not okay to have them in your mind when you dance, for it always translates in the body and you stop dancing like yourself.
I can very easily spot dancers who are trying to dance like popular dancers, it’s quite obvious and disheartening because it sends the message of insecurity, cowardliness (not taking the risk of moving like yourself) and lack of imagination. I often make this mistake, that’s why I am so blunt and harsh when talking about it; because it can easily become a habit.
4. Realize that your body and your mind are tied. Analyze, question, probe,research.
Change the way you think, and it will change the way you dance. If you open up your mind, your body will relax and do the same. If you close your mind, you will start creating negative feelings because your expectations of life become limited due to a lack of education and narrow mindset and you will be constantly disappointed when reality and expectations don’t match. This causes you to suffer from anxiety/depression/sadness/insecurity etc. These negative feelings then get trapped in the body and cause tension in different areas such as the shoulders.. the hips..neck etc. Later the body becomes prone to injuries due to this tension. You also stop breathing which is the most important factor of movement since it gives life to the body, and lubricates the joints. If you are limber, relaxed, and free of tension, the body becomes more flexible, has more energy, and is less prone to injury. You know how drunk people survive car accidents because they are relaxed and just kinda go with the flow of the accident? This is very similar to dance...
In order to be relaxed one has to open their minds by reading and doing research. Most of our fears are irrational and caused by ignorance.
5. Quit using your age as an excuse to stop learning
Aging is beautiful. It shouldn’t be a harbinger of the end of your dance life. As you get older you gain accumulated knowledge about dance and about life. This should translate into your performance. If you feel you are not improving with age, you need to update your learning process, and probably you need to work harder at working hard. No class should be the same, you should come out of each class with a different lesson learned; otherwise what was the point of class?!
I remember the last class I took, I learned something new about my body:
“I usually don’t allow my shoulder blade to get into the Rhomboid area of my back which causes a strange dislocation on my shoulders and which brings my body proportions out of balance.”
If you take 5 classes and get 5 lessons from each one such as the one above, you will improve tremendously without having to take 50 thousand classes in vain
Age is no reason to quit going to fundamental classes like Ballet, age should actually be the reason why you GO to Ballet. There are a million lessons in one beginner Ballet class; you just have to keep going to look for the lessons you never applied. These lessons will help your body age without pain.
6. Check for the numb areas of your body
Our minds are naturally corrupted; we live in an era of constant stimulus. It’s almost impossible to clear your head...hence why meditation has become such a necessity. Because we live in such a conceptual world, it makes sense that we are disconnected to our bodies. You just need to be conscious of the degree of disconnection that you possess, I didn’t actually feel my lower abdomen until like 8 months ago.... I just didn’t feel it. I was aware of it, which was frustrating, (the same frustration you get when you want to move your arm but it’s asleep) and finally one day I felt it and I had this huge urge to cry, because some sort of emotion was stuck in there or something. My logic behind these numb areas of the body, is that areas (such as the back or the neck or the stomach etc) hold a lot of strong emotions and paying attention to those areas and articulating them causes the emotions to surface which can be scary, painful and shocking. Check for areas in your body that you don’t activate on a day-to-day basis, or check for limbs that don’t quite extend. If the energy is getting blocked and not going all the way to your arms,
you need to practice putting your arms/legs in those cramped positions and extend as you breathe then feel in your stomach the emotion that this movement propels, so you can be conscious of such emotion, and so your body learns the position. Also for this, I highly recommend Kundalini Yoga, the repetitive exercises and breathing help you feel different parts of your body as you complete an exercise.
7. Paying attention to the levels of energy in your body during different movements
Becoming more conscious of space and of yourself in relation to the space around you is very important and can be done with frameworks such as the Laban Cube. Once you become familiar with your weight and size in relation to space, you need to wager and calculate how much energy you actually need for each movement. It’s very easy to use too much energy for something that requires about a quarter of what you are putting in. Breathing is the tool that will teach you how much it is that you need to get the movement that you want. Don’t waste energy on things you don’t need, be an efficient machine, use your powerhouse (abdomen) and realize that if you start movement from your core you can diminish the effort from your limbs. Also be aware that movement doesn’t always have to be started from your core, it can be started from your legs, shoulders, head. The heaviness of your body parts counts, you are very real and you exist just like any other mundane item exists in space and time. Our bones are as real as a chair, so use the heaviness of your body to your advantage. Think EFFICIENT MACHINE ! EFFICIENT MACHINE! Oh and also watch out for your eyes. Your eyes should be focused on what is outside of you, not on how your body feels inside.
8. Take different types of classes
If you are a true lover of movement, you will find joy in that Capoeira class at the gym. Take it! Take it all.
I learned Tango, intensively for about 7 months. It was amazing. Contemporary will always be my one love but Tango helped me learn how to release my legs in contemporary (because boleos) and how to shift my weight evenly. Also I learned how to lead (the man’s part) and this taught me how to translate assertiveness into my body language.
I was in a Bollywood team at school one year , good old Shakti, and it was amazing. I have so many dances that became Bollywood inspired and had a cr*pload of fun. Bollywood is the happiest dance style out there, it really is. I learned how to relax, and how to perform with expressions. Also, a lot of humility because the Classical style is very, very hard.
I took Capoeira a couple of times, that really helped me get more grounded and helped me learn how to pay attention to the person you are moving with (cuz you could get hit in the face otherwise) even though I only took a couple of classes, it’s something my body will never forget.
And of course, hip-hop, ballet, tap, house, break dance, old school Jazz and lyrical. They all help reach that goal you have in mind.
These classes also open you up to different communities that are uncorrupted and free of the dreads of the ego-ridden dance world. It’s beautiful to see people dancing for the love of dance, and also to see dance bringing people together.
I hope you enjoyed these tips. Happy dancing.