Friday, February 19, 2016

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

"Check yourself before you wreck yourself" a common quote that many people use while reprimanding others that are making bad choices. Sometimes used by adolescents in high school to cause an even more immense conflict between the two. However this quote can also apply to dance.
      It is a common thing for dancers to give one another constructive criticism or corrections. It is also unfortunately common for a dancer to create an excuse or block out that correction simply because they are unaware that they really were doing it wrong.
        This is where technology comes in handy. Video tape. Seeing yourself doing it can bring a great amount of clarity to the cleaning process and speed things up. Often when I watch a video of myself dancing I realize it looks nothing like what I thought it did. This is were the progress happens.
          Go through the video and write down corrections for yourself and things you want to change. Then take action and fix them. Throughout this process video tape again to pick up other details or to just track your improvement. Keep in mind that watching the video is not a one time thing. Sometimes I spend up to two hours starting and stopping my videos hunting for things to make perfect or improve on.
         Another thing that is especially helpful while cleaning technical elements such as: leaps, turns, and jumps is slow motion it is really amazing how much it helps. Slow motion is very effective because it really shows you every last detail you can check alignment in great depth and those kinds of things with slow motion. However do not get down on yourself while watching your slow motion video, make sure you keep in mind you are doing these things to better your self as a dancer not to tear your self down.
       Just remember that people are giving you corrections based on their observations that you might be unaware of. So keep an open mind and take the corrections and run with them it will only make you a better dancer.

No comments:

Post a Comment