How to do the footwork dance

7 Tips That Will Take Your Footwork To The Next Level

Footwork is ESSENTIAL when you dance!

If you’re not moving your feet, then you’re not utilizing your whole body to create a complete movement!

Keone, Bam, and Lyle can show you just how effective footwork can be – ON ITS OWN:

So how do we train our feet and legs to take our freestyle and choreography to the next level?

Or even just to move ‘em naturally so we don’t look so stiff?!

We’ve got 7 training tips that you should start doing today to take you from footwork.. to foot-werrrrk.

1. Know where your weight is

Let’s start with the basics – stabilizing your balance.

To do this, feel how your weight is distributed through each move.

For example, if you have to lift your left foot up, then most of your weight should be on your right foot.

Maintain a sturdy base the next time you dance and you’ll notice how much more controlled your bottom half is!

Play around with different positions, whether it’s on one foot or both, so you get comfortable with where your weight is and how to shift between them.

See Related Article: Want To Dance With More Control? Read THIS.

2. Stay on the balls of your feet

When we asked Carlo Darang for tips for his fast-moving pieces, here’s what he had to share.

"Always try to be light-footed and ready to move from one part of the floor to another!

If you dance on your toes and heels and not set everything your entire foot, then it’s kind of like jump-roping – you’ll be ready to jump from one place to another.

This skill is like a triple-threat for basketball players, or even your ready stance for football players… for us dancers, it’s the same thing, same idea – be in a position where it’s easy for you to go anywhere."

So when you’re dancing, don’t always be flat footed! Being on the balls of your feet will help you spring and rebound off the floor much more easily.

Watch him in action in his STEEZY Studio class!

Thanks for the tips, Carlo!

See Related Article: How To Execute Choreography Better By Utilizing Your Body With Carlo Darang

3. Take it high and low

Footwork doesn’t just involve your FEET.

You can utilize your LEGS to can take your body to different levels and make your changes look more drastic.

Bend your knees to dip it low (cue Christina Milian~) and releve to reach up high.

The more burn you feel in your thighs and calves, the more dynamic your dancing is. Just kidding.

But do incorporate high and low levels to jazz up your dancing!

4. Don’t be afraid of the floor

I’m one of those people that groan when the choreographer says “there’s a little bit of floorwork..”

But once I do it, I realize how awesome it is.

For starters, it trains your athleticism by taking your body out of its comfort zone of being upright.

Second, it makes the piece look so much more dynamic because that whole level change to get to the floor is a chance to do something cool.

And lastly, working with the floor opens up a whole new door for creative choreography concepts!

You can use your hands to trace things on the floor, lay down flat and do some synchronized-swimming-esque leg movements, swivel around on your knees.

It’s like having a dance partner to work off of – except your partner is flat and unmoving.

For inspiration, check out how Chris Martin plays with the floor in his STEEZY Studio piece:

5. Travel!

Using your legs means that you can MOOOOVE.

Like literally. Move across the floor.

Get out of your box and use steps to travel! It’ll add another dimension to your dancing and bring the audience along with you for the ride.

When you’re choreographing, try challenging yourself for a segment to come up with a way to dance from point A to point B maybe 10 feet away.

When you freestyle and feel yourself repeating the same steps you can utilize those same steps but change them in direction to travel!

6. Drill steps

Drill steps that you find in footwork-heavy styles like House and B-boying.

A big key here is repetition.

If you do the loose leg or 6-step a zillion times, then your feet are going to become conditioned to move in those combinations without you even trying.

This will also allow you to be more creative with variations of those steps!

So when you encounter a tricky step or piece of footwork, don’t just get through it but master it so you’ll be ready for next time.

7. Polish your turns

A sloppy turn can totally ruin the flow of a piece. You don’t want to clumsily jump out of a turn!

Here are some tips to make your turns clean:

Engage your core musclesImagine a line from the ceiling to your head, to your toes, to the floor.

You want to stay in that alignment as you visualize your turn – Plie for leverage, Spot!

TURN UP your piece or freestyle with some clean ass turns!

Same as any other step, turns just take a lot of repetition to master.

See Related Article: The Class You Need To Unlock Your Dancer Potential

Ready to get those feet moving? Comment below with something that helps you with your footwork!

We recommend Ray Basa, Julian Sena, Carlo Darang, or Paul Ross’ classes on STEEZY Studio to train for quicker, more dynamic footwork.

Happy (feet) learning!

Footwork: What Is It, and How Do You Make It? **UPDATED

Like so much dance music in the world today, Chicago’s footwork style owes a big debt to house. Sure, it may not sound anything like the deep-and-soulful vibes of classic Marshall Jefferson or Frankie Knuckles tracks, but the hyper-paced sound (and its attendant culture) shares a similar lineage with so many house subgenres, having worked its way through multiple scenes within a scene, providing the soundtrack for dance crews to battle it out on the floor, and becoming a worldwide phenomenon in the process. Here’s what you need to know about what it is and how to make it.

MOVE YOUR FEET

To start, footwork is primarily a dance music style that pays homage to Chicago house and hip-hop—but manages to sound unlike either. Due to its off-kilter time signatures, skittering snares and kicks, and frenetic tempo, it isn’t the easiest music to dance to (at least in the conventional club sense), but for an experimentally inclined ear, footwork explodes with intricate drum patterns, crazy sample programming, and a truly raw, DIY aesthetic. Much like hip-hop, footwork isn’t just a style of music—it’s a culture that brings together music production, eye-popping dance moves, and a playfully confrontational battle vibe.

WHERE U FROM?

The term “footwork” is often (incorrectly) used interchangeably with “juke,” the style’s closely related cousin. Truth is, the two genres do have a lot in common: both are direct descendants of ghetto house (a rougher, tougher, faster strain of house Chicago that was popularized in the late ‘90s), both run somewhere in the 150-160-BPM range, and, confusingly, both have associated dance styles of the same name. Where footwork and juke music differ is that the former is a bit more frantically paced—slightly more aggressive, and utilizing an abstract, hip-hop-styled approach to production (ie. pitched-down vocals, more sample-focused)—whereas juke is essentially a grittier, dirtier, faster version of house, made more for grinding than gettin’ fancy on the dance floor.

CHI-TOWN SOUND

To take a long look back at footwork, it’s worth starting with some of the Dance Mania label’s most prominent artists, like mid-’90s ghetto-house kings DJ Deeon, DJ Slugo, and DJ Funk—who had already sped up house’s traditional tempo to 140 BPM—to see how the sound evolved.

By the early 2000s, folks like RP Boo and DJ Clent were taking the foundation laid by Dance Mania and turning the sound on its ear, speeding it up even more, but, unlike juke, messing with its straight-ahead 4/4 groove to give footwork its signature rhythms.

Today, in the Windy City, DJ Spinn, DJ Rashad, and Traxman are some of footwork’s most well-known purveyors, but, with the attention paid to them by UK labels like Planet Mu and Hyperdub, their influence has spread all over the world. Artists like Machinedrum and the UK’s Addison Groove have also put their own spin on the sound.

BUT CAN YOU DANCE TO IT?

Short answer: Yes. But it takes some serious speed, flexibility, and practice—especially if you’re gonna step to the circle, which is where the battle is waged. Crews like Wolf Pack and Terra Squad regularly spar with one another on the dance floors of teen centers throughout Chicago, and because of dancing’s huge role in the footwork scene, producers (many of whom are or were also dancers) make tracks specifically for the intricate, quick-paced, leg-twisting manoeuvres that characterize the style.

WORK IT

Like pretty much every form of dance music, there is, at the very least, a template for plotting out a general beat for the style. Point Blank has developed a quick lesson on getting the basics down for a juke beat with 808 kicks, which will get enthusiastic Ableton producers on their way, and below Computer Music has assembled a similar tutorial. They’re not explicitly footwork tutorials—but that’s where you get to put your own spin on it. For the old-school method, Traxman knocks out a sample-based beat on his MPC in the video below that.

Have you experimented with making juke and footwork tracks? Have a tip to share? Let us know about it in the comments below.

UPDATED 4/27:
We’re sad to report that footwork pioneer DJ Rashad (aka Rashad Harden) died yesterday, April 26, in his hometown of Chicago. According to the Sun-Times, Harden was found dead of a suspected drug overdose. He was scheduled to perform later that night in Detroit with collaborator DJ Spinn, who commented: “It’s just a tragic loss of a great musical genius.”

UPDATED 5/1:
New information was revealed today that DJ Rashad died of a blood clot in his leg, not of a drug overdose. The drug paraphernalia found near his body was marijuana-related, says The Guardian.

Rashad’s new EP, We On 1, was set for release on Monday. He was 34 years old.

Breaking Terminology Guide: Basic Styles

Breaking

Time to learn the basic terminology of hip-hop's coolest dance from the pros!

Author Asel Shabdanova

Read 2 minPosted on 03/29/2020 11:31 UTC

Few of us haven't heard or are not fond of breaking. The street dance of hip-hop culture, which was formed in New York in the 60s of the XX century, has grown to a global scale. This is a spectacular direction that combines complex acrobatic movements and demonstrates the excellent physical shape of the dancer.

5 min.

Lil Zoo vs Killa Kolya – B-Boys Round of 16

B-Boys aus aller Welt treten an, um es ins

Three-time champion of Red Bull Bc One Cypher Kazakhstan and one of the best b-boys in the world Killa Kolya will talk about the main styles in breaking.

3 min.

Toprock

B-Boy Crazy Legs explains the importance of good footwork in breakdancing.

Top rock - a style that is danced at the top, without particularly spectacular elements - this is the dance itself to the music. The main factors that distinguish a good toprock from a bad one are the sense of rhythm, coordination and flexibility, and most importantly, style. Usually Toprock is used at the beginning of an exit, as a dance and initial show of his style. It serves as a transition to footwork or more acrobatic breaking elements.

Go down - how you go down to the main dance. There are a number of entries that are used to get to the bottom.

Break Advice - Lesson 03, Original Go Down

Footwork is a style that is performed squatting on all fours. These are fast and dynamic foot movements.

Break Advice – Lesson 07, Footwork

Floor rock is a style that is done down on your back or stomach. Similar movements as in foot work, but already lying down.

3 min.

The Breakdown – Episode 6 – Power Moves

Making the impossible possible, power moves are the very foundation of the b-boy scene Cico and Lil G give us the breakdown.

Power move - this is the most spectacular and complex style, consisting of elements such as helicopter (gelik), turtle (turtle), headspin (rotation on the head), backspin (torsion on the back), etc. The basis of Power Move is the legs, which perform swinging movements in order to spin, the arms perform another function: to hold the body in a certain position, lower and raise.

3 min.

The Breakdown – Episode 4 – Freeze & Tricks

Taisuke and Hong 10 breakdown the importance of freeze and tricks in a battle.

Freeze or freeze. Any stop in any figure can be a frieze. Freezing on the arm, head, elbow and other parts of the body is already considered as a more complex freeze element. Any freeze is always performed under an accent in the music to put an end to the dance.

Tricks - all kinds of tricks performed effectively and spectacularly. This includes unusual jumps or somersaults, as well as combinations of friezes in several actions.

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Breaking or break dance (break dance) is one of the most spectacular street dance styles, which includes twists, energetic "runs" and sudden stops of the dancer (freez) during his exit. The dance style began to form in the early 70s in New York in the Bronx area. Only a few years have passed and from the underground dance breakdance has received worldwide fame and recognition. Today, breaking is one of the strongest dance subcultures, with a developed technique, system of events and a real street spirit. On this page you will see break dance lessons for beginners.