How to teach yourself how to dance?
I start my blog today with ABCD!
That literally means Any Body Can Dance!
Dancing is something that comes naturally to every human being by way of expression. In all honesty, to learn basic moves, you don’t need to go to a studio or have a dance teacher with an exception to dance forms such as Ballet, Balldance etc. You can definitely learn on your own using a number of credible resources online that can give you all the tools you need! All you need to do is stick to practising consistently.
We have all gone through times we were really motivated to learn dancing, but the nearest best dance studio was either in the adjoining state, or was not offering classes on that day, or the current batch was full, or even better there was an uber strike right that day and you had no other ride, or the cracker of the day was, that it was so outrageously expensive that it started to discourage you!
In short, it’s not always possible to take a dance class or workshop whenever inspiration strikes! But that certainly doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do alternatively!
You still can dance!
Let's see how? Here are the 5 steps to teaching yourself how to dance.
1.Prepare yourself to dance. Drown yourself in the concepts, ideas and the pleasure it will bring you!
2. First things first. You really need to have the passion to dance to be able to dance!
3. Free yourself of others’ opinions! It doesn’t and shouldn’t matter what people think about you!
4. It’s crucial to keep your body healthy, strong and flexible before you start. Stretch and strength train your body. Identify a few parts of your body that you’d like to strengthen such as arms that appear sloppy during dance movements.
5. To achieve this you could either join:
Yoga/Crossfit, that will improve your flexibility and train your body to slip into a variety of different steps and moves.
Zumba/Aerobic classes, that will help you improve your stamina.
6. Treat your living room as your dance arena.
7. Select a dance style for yourself
8. Hip Hop Dance, Urban Dance Choreography, Popping, House, Krump, Waacking/Whacking
9. Learn the basics and fundamentals of dance movements
10. Flow with the natural rhythm of your body. Let it dance and express. Learn the rhythm.
11. Dance as light as a butterfly as carefree as a
12. Enjoy it as much as you can and you will start developing dancing skills.
13. If you are going to teach yourself how to dance, you need to be 100 percent committed to it.
14. Start with simple movements and try to perfect it.
15. Don’t ignore your freestyle unless you are learning lyrical, ballet or ballroom dances.
16. Combining variations of those basic dance drills will frame the skeleton of your freestyle!
17. Learn the essential moves, grooves, and techniques. Learn where to clap your hands! Know where to put your moves!
18. Curate a playlist of the songs that you’d to dance on from YouTube
19. Scott Forsyth, Kinzas, Jojo Gomez, Matt Stefinina, Wilda Beast, or Kpop, each of them are fabulous and will serve as your best choreography resources. Their choreography touches everything possible. Learning choreography would enable you to put your basics and foundations into practice.
20. Dance on the beats or any special effects, not the lyrics.
21. Take advantage of the many paid/free tutorials online
22. Dance is all about ‘moving in a rhythm’, practice consistently, until those movements and patterns become encoded, ingrained in your muscle memory.
23. Start by dancing to a song of your choice, practising every 8-counts, to begin with, gradually increasing it to few 8 counts in a bunch. Once you remember the rhythm, turn off the song and go over each 8-count slowly memorizing the pattern in detail.
24. Record yourself doing moves that you like to master and use a mirror to be able to instantly correct any wrong moves.
25. Seek feedback and be open to criticism.
26. Listen to music regularly and feel the rhythm and beats pumping your adrenaline.
27. Watch and practice with as many short dance videos you can get a hold of starting with Instagram.
28. Be accountable to yourself and respect your choices.
29. Try dance workshops for a short time till you’re ready to take off on your own also because you will get authentic practical and theoretical knowledge.
30. Train yourself following a disciplined and structured regime.
31. Hire yourself a dance teacher, if you can, depending on availability! Working one on one with an instructor is the fastest way to make progress. It also absolves you of embarrassment, in case you are not able to dance properly in the beginning, qs is the case with any new learner!
32. Expression, Energy and Grace will cover up any mistake while you dance. Work on them too!
33. Gradually turn to fast, energetic music and applaud yourself for a performance worth the effort and wait!
Finally,
Remember, all dance moves won’t come so easily, there may be some dance moves that will take longer than others to master so practise diligently with perseverance. Also, check out the following resources to jumpstart your dancing today:
Boogie Frantick’s Popping Program
Happy Dancing!