Welcome back, dancers! Are you ready to take your dance journey to the next level? In this week's installment of our dance blog, we're diving headfirst into the exhilarating world of building skills and intentionality on the dance floor. So grab your dancing shoes and get ready to groove with confidence as we explore the essential steps to mastering rhythm and dance foundations!

Step #3: After you have familiarized yourself with the basics and foundations listed in the blog post earlier this week "Mastering the Beat", now it's time to build up skills and intentionality.

- How do we build up skills and intentionality?

- Training, Practicing, & Drilling the foundations

  - Our focus here in these blog posts and classes offered is to take our progress in "bite-sized" steps so we don't choke on the "full plate" abyss of what can be seen as overwhelming in our dance and confidence journey. My aim is to make sure I do everything I can to make this journey for you as enjoyable and as frustration-free as possible.

  - That being said let's begin with how to go about drilling "Bounce" and "Rock".

    - In the previous blog "Mastering the Beat," I've attached video examples and tutorials for these listed foundations. Don't worry about "Groove" just yet. That's a different lesson in itself.

    WHO: YOU! If you want to truly improve, it's up to YOU to practice these foundations and tips I'm providing you. NO ONE CAN DO THE GROWING FOR YOU.

    WHEN: ANYTIME! The beauty about these foundations is that they don't require tons of energy or even extreme amounts of hyper focus, although they do require focus if these foundations are new to you and feel foreign to the body right now. You can practice these foundations while working, while sitting, while standing, while out dancing, while in the shower, LITERALLY JUST ABOUT ANYWHERE! ISN'T THAT AMAZING?!

    All this sounds good but the real question is HOW?!

"How do I go about training these foundations in a way that guarantees growth and allows me the peace of mind to know I'm actually progressing, even if I may not notice it initially?"

I'm so glad you asked! LET'S ADDRESS IT!

   HOW: Begin with foundation. Either "Bounce" or "Rock". By just selecting one foundation at a time it truly helps you with focusing easier and not feeling overwhelmed. This method allows you to break up your learning into easier segments and begin putting your practice to music more immediately. Although I do encourage challenging yourself, in these very beginning stages it's recommended to just take it one foundation at a time. By trying to train too many foundations at the same time it can cause distraction and scatter your focus. This can ultimately throw you off the track of dancing and moving with intentionality. Not dancing with intentionality can cause injury and even leave you still not feeling confident about your dancing or musicality (We'll talk about musicality in a later blog post).

  RECAP ON HOW:

  - Select ONLY ONE foundation to train at a time!

  - Put your training to music to help you with dialing in on rhythm and learning how to apply these foundations to different types of music.

WHICH LEADS US INTO YOUR FINAL STEP FOR THE WEEK!

STEP #4: Practicing Rhythm!

- Familiarizing, learning, and practicing these foundations are great! However, without rhythm, even the proper foundations can look unintentionally goofy, which is what we are wanting to improve, right?! We don't want to look silly anymore. We want to feel that ultimate unlimited level of confidence when getting down on the dance floor.

- So "HOW exactly can I effectively practice and improve my rhythm?"

- Everyone's learning curve and learning style is very different, for sure, however, in this case, the most effective way to practice and improve your rhythm is by taking your foundation drills and training and putting it to music!

- But why just stop at music you are familiar with?! Let's EXPAND OURSELVES by practicing rhythm to new music. What this does is expand your creative pathways and will come in handy later on when we are practicing musicality, which requires the ability to understand different beat patterns and time signatures in order to subconsciously be able to predict what the music is going to do before it even happens.

WHOA!! I KNOW..EXCITING! But I'll say no more about that because remember..."Bite-Sized" segments. Just know, I WILL GET YOU TO THAT LEVEL! Just stick it out with me during your journey.

NOW, back to the HOW of practicing and improving your rhythm: Let's put it into small understandable steps.

Sub-Step 1: Pick a song with a simple beat

  (If you are already familiar with the song you've chosen then skip "Sub-Step 2")

Sub-Step 2: Listen to the music through to familiarize yourself with its patterns; So you know what happens in the music and where the music goes.

Sub-Step 3: Choose a simple time signature to focus on moving too; This will help you block out the rest of the things happening in the music, making it much easier to stay on a single beat. Thus, improving your rhythm over time.

Sub-Step 4: Once you've got that time signature on lock, choose a different time signature (It doesn't matter if it's a faster time signature or a slower one, so long as it's different than the time signature you just mastered to that particular song).

There you have it!

Practice these steps over the weekend and I'm sure you will see even the smallest bit of growth. If you have questions or additional challenges PLEASE CONTACT US and we will ecstatically help you with your questions so you can keep growing and improving!

Until Next Week,

Peace, Love, and Dance!

For more practice and guidance click here -> : Practice Videos