Week Four

I am glad that UWMBDA hired me to teach a fourth class – three is barely enough to get ready to do more interesting things.

Last week (see the Class Notes, above) you worked on the Death Drop – I am glad that everyone was serious about the great responsibility that comes with this great knowledge.

Good Dancers only do the moves that they can execute safely! This means having a great awareness of not just your skills and your partner’s skills, but of the people, objects, and obstacles around you. It also means practicing potentially dangerous moves in advance – not at a social event.

This week, we introduced the three-count Hustle, which starts on a pick-up note prior to the first beat – And-One-Two-Three (vs One-Two-Three-Four).

This speeds up the Hustle a lot and drives home the importance of small movements performed with excellent control of one’s own movements and balance (and being able to stop one’s own body).

The three-count Hustle is still done to music with four beats in a measure (4/4 time, for the musicians). It is typically counted And-One-Two-Three, And-One-Two-Three, And-One-Two-Three, etc.

That may be confusing for musicians since the rhythm of Hustle (the timing for the weight changes) does not align with the measures of music (the timing of the music itself).

For musicians, you could think of representing the three-count Hustle as four times through the weight-change rhythm overlapping with three measures of music (or 12 beats)…

Starting with a pick-up note…
&-One-Two-Three, &-Four-Five-Six, &-Seven-Eight-Nine, &-Ten-Eleven-Twelve

… The above then repeats with the & of twelve as the pick-up note.

If you prefer to work exclusively in a fours (vs in twelve), we could represent the weight-changes in Hustle as…

&-One-Two-Three, &-Four-One-Two, &-Three-Four-One, &-Two-Three-Four

… The above then repeats with the & of Four as the pick-up note.

All of this is interesting in an academic sense, and if it helps the timing make more sense, great! Otherwise, understand that it is more important to move well with your partner and to change places. In the course of dancing Hustle well (and especially with dancing to the breaks in the muisc), you will almost certainly distort the weight-change ryhthm to suit what you are trying to do or where you are trying to go.

We worked more heavily on Shared Weight moves. I took you through a brief Hook and Wall exercise so you can begin to discover what kinds of things you may be able to do if you take the time to practice that exercise with a specific partner.

You can vary the exercise by standing on one foot, changing elevations (height), one person shaping more/less, etc. Every safely-excecuted trick requires working with or counterbalancing your partner (vs holding him/her or moving him/her).

I also stressed the importance (especially for the Follows in the side-by-side shaping move we did in class, but for both Leads and Follows in general) that you must be in control of your own body and you must be able to project a wall-connection toward your partner prior to doing anything that requires a hook-connection. Otherwise, you risk…

• Pulling your partner off balance
• Falling to the ground and pulling your partner down on top of you
• Flinging chaotically into the dancers next to you on the dance floor
• Yanking your partner’s shoulder out of its socket
• And numerous ugly-looking and out-of-control positions

I enjoyed teacing this class very much. I enjoy seeing your creativity and I was very happy with the kinds of questions everyone was asking. I encourage you to have fun with your dancing, and to practice your tricks safely. Use a spotter when practicing, and make sure you practice before you do your tricks at a social dance.

Be Good Dancers when you are out dancing.

Future Classes
I have ideas for workshops I would like to teach for UWMBDA at some point in the future. They include…

• Etiquette 102 – Beyond introducing yourself: How to be a welcome addition to any social ballroom dance scene. What it means to be a Good Dancer – avoid teaching on the dance floor, etiquette of rejection, projecting confidence (not arrogance).
• One Set of Cool Moves: Specific moves that could work equally well in a number of dances like Swing, Hustle, Nightclub Two Step, Merengue, Rumba, Salsa/Mambo, and Cha Cha.
• Leading and Following for New Dancers: How to react to constantly changing space with skill and confidence (ie, “what am I supposed to do when XYZ happens”).
• Leading and Following for Experienced Dancers: More precise control of timing for Leads and of power for Follows (ie, “how do they make it look so good”).
• Flashy Moves: How to safely do a variety of dips, drops, and lunges that require shared-weight. Intended for more experienced dancers, this workshop will also equip you with the tools to develop your own tricks.

If you enjoyed my teaching and would like to see me teach more for UWMBDA, please contact the UWMBDA Council – the contact form for UWMBDA is on UWMBDA’s website. Please include specific information about what you liked (or did not like). If one of the workshops I described above sounds interesting, let them know that too!

Thank You,

Darrell

Week Three

Great News! UWMBDA has decided to hire me to teach one more Hustle class. Our three-week class is now a four-week class.

Everything we have done in class is based on…

• the Alternating Right Side Pass
• controlling your own elbows

Elbow-control, to some degree or another, is part of every partner dance, so it is a useful skill to master. Instead of focusing on a particular set of “steps”, I have been presenting a useful set of “skills” and applying them to Hustle. These skills can be applied to any number of dances.

The “moves” you have been doing in class rely heavily on maintaining a constant purposeful connection with your partner (friction connection) and never abandoning your partner. I have also been presenting different ways to introduce improvisation into your dancing!

It is not necessary to fill every measure of each song with some move. Instead, you can play with the timing and add things like body rolls (the “neck thing” and the Lead’s self-dip) as well as things like Free Spins (Chaine Turns for the Follow) and the Death Drop.

By presenting the Death Drop, I was hoping to convey the importance of connection with your partner (vs simply doing some moves with your partner).

Some of the things you see more-experienced dancers do simply will not work without a good undersanding of connection. Instead of simply telling you that in words, I thought it would be more useful to set up a (relatively safe) way for you to recognize the importance of “connection” for yourself.

Also, it gives you a chance to demonstrate good Leading and Following.

• Leads: You are not a “Good Lead” by inflicting every move you know on each new partner. Instead, you are a Good Lead only by recognizing what you and your partner can safely do together and only doing those moves!
• Follows: Despite what some non-Good-Leads might insisist, you do not have to do moves that make you feel uncomfortable and you are under no obligation to do dangerous moves with people whom you do not know!

I cannot stress that enough.

• Follows, do not do dips and drops and tricks with just anyone!
• Leads, do not inflict your presumed knowledge of dips and drops and tricks on unsuspecting Follows!

In other words, practice doing “tricks” with a specific partner before doing those tricks with that partner at a social dance. Tricks are fun and look easy. But they look easy because the people doing the tricks (1) know how to do them safely, and (2) have practiced them previously.

Before you do tricks with anyone at some public event, you must practice them some place previously!

Next week, for our Fourth Week Of Class, we will more thouroughly cover Free Spins and Death Drops, as well as a few more right side pass variations!

See you next week.

Darrell

Week Two

Hello Dancers,

You were continuing to develop and refine your Alternating Right Side Passes. This “move” is a great starting point for a lot of moves in Hustle.

Remember to control your elbows! Without elbow control, your Hustle will be wild, out of control, and potentially dangerous (injuries from flying elbows).

Remember to stop your own body (vs pulling against your partner to stop your body).

Remember to finish each move with your feet together.

I more fully explained the Change One Thing principle. You changed the right side pass into a Neck Pass (for the lead only) and a Belly Pass (for lead or follow) by changing one thing.

First, you have to let go with one set of hands. Then, you can change the level that your remaing hands are at (waist-level or shoulder-level or head-level).

It is possible to link together a variety of right-side passes and to roll with the mistakes that you might make.

Making mistakes is critical to learning how to partner dance well. As long as no one gets injured, a “mistake” is just another move. In order to be skilled at anything, a person must risk making mistakes.

It is the willingness to risk and to try that makes someone a good dancer.

See you next week!

Week One

Hello Dancers,

Each week I will post the highlights of what we covered in class. This is not meant to be a dance manual or a substitute for attending class. Instead, it is here to help you remember what we worked on between classes.

In order to learn to do something new with your bodies – like learn to dance – you need to engage in new activities. The warmup is designed to be just such an activity.

The warm up is the most important part of any dance class – it is the time when you learn to use your body in new ways. In addition to promoting greater leg and back strength, general flexibility, and avoidance of injuries, you will develop numerous isolations and greater coordination though the exercises in the warmup.

Dance classes in other genres of dance – Modern, Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, African – all begin with a comprehensive warm up. Partner dancing (ballroom dancing) is another dance discipline equally as involved as those I just mentioned, yet a warm up is frequently missing from many ballroom dance classes.

In the ballroom classes and workshops I have taken over the years, participants get through more material more quickly and with greater satisfaction and understanding of the material in the classes that began with a comprehensive warm up.

I believe in teaching you how to dance, not just how to reproduce steps, patterns, and figures. It takes a little bit of time to lay this foundation, but it is time well spent. Leading and Following are skills that you can develop in a short amount of time, by engaging in all of the activities and exercises in class.

You will continue to refine your Leading and Following skills for as long as you continue dancing.

The Lead’s role is to define space. The Follow’s role is to react to the movement of space. Partner dancing is a dialogue between two people – each person voluntarily participating in the activity, dancing together. The lead does not tell the follow what to do!

Instead, Leads initiate movement and Follows react to movement. Every basic step and complicated move in every dance involves this action and reaction.

The Lead can influence where the Follow will go by being clear about moving space.

The Lead must be attentive to how quickly the follow responds or whether the follow responds at all. Good Leads are very attentive to how their partners are moving.

Follows may stop the Leads from moving simply by not responding to the action the Lead initiates. Leads, if you do not initiate any actions, neither you or your partner will move. This effectively stops the Follow from moving.

Learning how to lead and follow from the very beginning of learning to dance (vs “doing the steps”), promotes greater understanding of dancing and ultimately allows you to add your own creativity to your dancing.

We worked on what I called the Friction Connection – not too hard, not too soft, just right – and that each person is responsible for building and maintaining the connection.

We used the Friction Connection to do a right-side Cuddle (“Up-hand”-across-the-face turn) for the Follow and for the Lead. The Cuddle (aka Cradle or Sweet Heart) evloves to a Right Side Pass by letting go with the “Down Hand” and continuing past your partner. This becomes an Alternating Right Side Pass when one partner goes through the cuddle to the right side pass, then the other partner does the same.

In Hustle, we change places when we pass each other. The closer to exactly changing places, the better. To do this, we spent a lot of time on Elbow Control.

Simply by keeping your own elbows close to your waist, and returning your elbows to your waist quickly when they must come away from your waist (as is the case for any turn), you avoid a lot of other related problems…

• Chasing the Hand (something you do not want to do),
• Getting too far apart (no more than one arm length)
• Yanking your partner’s arms (bad bad bad)
• Being back-weighted
• Using your partner to stop your body (really bad bad bad)

All of those problems go away if you just keep your elbows near your waist (and return them to your waist when they must move).

I described three socially-acceptable regions for making contact with your partner. I called them Arm Level, Shoulder Level, and Waist Level. To do a Right Side Pass (and by extension the Alternating Right Side Pass), you practiced maintaining contact at Waist Level during the pass. This is a crucial element for the material we will develop next week.

I end each class session with a review, in the form of a question. “What is something useful or interesting you learned today?” Everyone will have a chance to answer, because sometimes the best observations and really good insights can come from your fellow classmates.