How to not suck at dancing
4 Reasons Your Dancing Sucks
If you've always wanted to be a good dancer, but can't figure out how to go from awkward, stiff, and off-beat to smooth and confident on the dance floor...
You've come to the right place!
1. You’re not breathing while you dance.
2. You have a fixed mindset.
3. You’re doing the moves, but not actually DANCING.
4. You can’t take critique.
Now, watch this video for four easy solutions for all your dance struggles!
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
so you're wack.
you suck. you suck.
and the first reason you suck is probably because you're not subscribed to our YouTube channel.
oh you think we're kidding?
no!
you won't ever get better
if you're not learning anything new
and that's exactly what STEEZY gives you every week.
so subscribe to our YouTube channel
and click that notification bell.
just ding it! just ding it! ding it!
[overlapping chatter]...dingleberry!
okay now that you're subscribed
you're already miles ahead
easy right?
and our first tip is just as easy.
okay,
your dancing sucks because you're stiff.
your moves aren't flowing into each other,
which makes you look awkward...
but, good news!
there's a really simple reason why you do that
and a really simple fix for it.
#1 you're not breathing.
okay, we're gonna try this little exercise
and you don't have to get up
all you're gonna do is swing your
elbows back and forward, back and forward.
now we're gonna try this while holding our breath, okay? and we're gonna see how it feels.
ready? five, six, seven..
.
now!
now we're gonna try the same thing
but breathing through the movements, right?
five, six, seven, eight.
you see how much freer it feels?
yeah!
when you're moving around, day to day,
you're not holding your breath,
you're breathing through everything that you do,
and the same goes for dancing.
once you start focusing too much on the moves,
and getting nervous,
and you hold your breath,
your movements are gonna look stiff
because your body's not flowing the oxygen
through your veins
I don't know when I turned into a doctor...
so, the next time you find yourself feeling stiff
or cutting your movements off, you know to breathe.
the second reason why you suck is your mindset.
you fear change.
you can't handle challenges.
you're plateauing because you take classes from the same people, in the same style.
and beyond the dancing,
you listen to the same music, day in, and day out.
and hang out with the same people
basically you live a lifestyle that
stopped introducing anything new.
this is why a lot of "ok" dancers just stay "ok"
and never quite get to "great".
so, if you usually learn choreography,
then go to a freestyle jam.
if you only listen to pop music,
then turn on an R&B playlist,
and if you only take class from Franklin Yu,
then take class from J Blaze.
here's a great example of dancing outside of your comfort zone.
so Jawn Ha is known for his extremely powerful
and masculine style
but, I recently saw a video of him in a whacking class
and I dang near cried
even dancers like Sherwin Salonga, aka Baby Tight Eyez,
who is literally the EBS Krump champion of the world
is on STEEZY Studio learning pieces from Lyle Beniga,
so that he can learn to execute in ways
that he's not used to.
we get it.
of course it feels great to be good at things,
but you have to be willing to be a beginner again because if you don't learn to love the building process,
then you'll stay wack.
reason #3.
you're doing the moves, but still not dancing
there's a difference between a singer that can hit all the notes,
and a singer that pours their heart and soul into their voice
often we think being clean or getting the moves
makes someone a good dancer
but that can only take you so far.
you need to get in your feels.
A good way to do that?
be in a setting.
come up with a story for yourself,
like we did in these videos for our STEEZY Studio classes.
aw! look at Sorah!
you're a loner at sadie hawkins!
or this one where Lyle's a cool guy at a club.
ooh!
or this one where Scott's at a throwback pool party.
yeah!
i started dancing by being on different teams
so I got really used to copying moves and being clean
and you know what?
I got really good at picking up all the "1eanda2s".
but I would always watch other dancers,
who do the simplest motions
and I'm like, yeah!
they're so engaging, so entertaining, they're so dope.
what am I missing?
and then I realized I wasn't dancing.
you see, when you strip dance of all the flashiness
and the technical stuff,
it's an expression.
so what are you expressing?
how do you feel?
it all goes back to that gut feeling when you first heard that song that made you want to get up and dance.
that's a feeling, that's a vibe.
#4 you're weak and you can't take critique.
bars!
oh my gosh, it's so hard to chew.
i don't want this!
Listen, it is human nature to want to feel validated
and as dancers that's even more amplified,
because we're natural performers, you know,
we're sharing a part of ourselves in our dancing
and we want people to like what we do.
that was really cool Clay!
thanks so much, Jessie!
heck I'll admit it, I'm an attention-seeker too.
but in order to improve and not suck,
you have to be open to, and even welcome critiques.
let's say someone leaves a comment with some negative feedback on one of your videos,
or your director calls you out,
or you don't get that audition that you wanted.
of course you're gonna feel butthurt in the moment,
but, come back to it later and say,
okay, what can I learn from this?
that's a sign of maturity,
and it really is the only way
to know what you should work on
we have a Facebook group where
STEEZY Studio members post videos of themselves
taking STEEZY classes, freestyling, or even
videos of their own choreography
and we've cultivated this culture of sharing
and giving constructive feedback
so, appreciate all the props, the compliments,
the fire, praise hands, 100 emojis.
and also the helpful critiques.
as Thanos once said,
"perfectly balanced as all things should be"
these are the four main reasons
why you suck at dancing
comment one thing that you want to work on today
so you can start sucking less.
suck less fam!
but, if you want a surefire, guaranteed, foolproof way
to suck less at dancing,
then click on that link and join STEEZY Studio.
you'll get seven days free access,
and you'll be able to join that Facebook group
that we were talking about.
thanks so much for watching guys!
don't suck, get buck.
I was gonna say suck less, straws are banned.
At Dancing | How Not To Suck
“Bend your KNEES, Shelby!” That was my drama teacher’s refrain at every dance rehearsal for Little Shop of Horrors in my junior year of high school. I was cast as Crystal, one of the three “Greek chorus” style girls who narrate the action with sass, song and shimmying.
I had the first two covered, but unfortunately my dancing made me look like a chicken who’d just been shot up with epinephrine. Needless to say, that was not Mrs. Whittaker’s desired visual effect.
I’ve never been a good dancer, and I’ll probably never be a great one. I’m the opposite of athletic and my depth perception is awful, but most of the problem is in my head: I get nervous about moving my body in front of people, which makes me tense, which only makes my physical klutziness worse.
Unfortunately for people like me, dancing is everywhere; it was one of the first things human beings ever did for fun, once we got good enough at hunting and gathering to have a little time to party. Thousands of years later, young people are still gathering in large groups in dark places to move their bodies to music of varying degrees of quality. Bottom line: if you’re under 30 and you want to make friends, you have to be willing and able to dance without hurting anyone.
Nobody puts Baby in a corner… but they occasionally make her carry ovoid fruit.
Original still from Dirty Dancing. Photo from pinkpeonies73.blogspot.com
Surprisingly (or maybe not), I’ve gotten way better at dancing over the past couple of years. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m still not good, but at least I don’t look like seizing poultry. If the idea of dancing in public makes you physically ill, you don’t need to focus on getting really good at dancing; you just need to focus on getting to functional, because once you get over the initial awkwardness, dancing is really fun regardless of your skill level. Consider me your Johnny Castle—I won’t even make you carry a watermelon.
What is not sucking? Not sucking is defined in the world of rhythmic action as being able to move one’s body to the beat of music without causing bodily harm to oneself or anyone else… or looking like Jerry Lewis from The Nutty Professor.
1. Get used to beats. There are three kinds of people: the kind who listen to chords, the kind who listen to rhythm, and the kind who listen to lyrics.
I’m the third kind; music majors tend to be the first kind; the second kind tends to be made up of the best dancers. When you’re listening to music, try to find the beat; generally you can find it in the drum or bass lines. Once you find it, tap your foot or your fingers to it, and then gradually add in movements from the rest of your body. Do this while you’re driving, while you’re cooking, while you’re walking to work or class… The more you practice, the better off you’ll be.
2. Loosen up. If you’re not used to dancing, being at an event where lots of people are dancing can give you stage fright fast. However, unless you are actually on a stage in front of a captive live audience, the reality is that no one is watching you. Generally, in life, people are too concerned with how they look to other people to notice how you look. Like I learned from Mrs. Whittaker, worrying makes your body tense, which only serves to make dancing more difficult and less visually appealing.
Relax your muscles and joints and try to focus on having a good time.
3. Do the Xerox. Having rhythm is one thing; having the right moves is quite another. If you’re dancing somewhere like a club or a party, look around and try to copy what other people are doing. No, not the ones who immediately draw your attention; those are the really good dancers, the ones who are actually out to dance and not just to socialize. Do not copy them. You will fall down. Copy the average dancers. Sway along with the crowd. If you think a move is out of your depth, give it a shot for a few minutes—remember, nobody’s looking at you—but know your body’s limits. (Twerking is way out of my butt’s possible range of motion, for which my family and friends are thankful.) Of course, if you’re in a class trying to learn a particular style of dance, do your best to copy the teacher and flag them down if you think you need a little extra help.
4. Find a partner. This person can be someone you’re attracted to, but they don’t have to be; the only requirement is that they seem friendly and willing to suffer through some novice twitching.
Dancing with someone else gives you a chance to learn one-on-one, can satisfy a universal human need for touch, and helps you accomplish what you’re really out to do anyway: meet new people.
Maybe your niche is the Carlton. Originally filmed on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Image from gifsoup.com
5. Experiment with styles. After failing miserably at musical theater dance, ballroom and Latin and just barely passing muster at club-standard “dancing”, I found my dance niche: swing. I have no idea what makes me like it so much. Maybe it’s the retro music; maybe it’s the innate courtesy of people who are drawn to swing dancing; maybe it’s just an excuse to wear a twirly skirt. I don’t know, but after a couple of lessons and dance socials I figured out that I’m weirdly good at it. The lesson here? Maybe you’re not bad at all dancing; maybe you’re just bad at most of it. You’ll never know until you try.
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How not to screw up .
. with the wedding dance? Article:
"How not to screw up... with the wedding dance"
(tips for staging a wedding dance)
The first dance of the young ... The dance of the bride and groom, or rather the husband and wife ... What is it like? Sensual, exciting, tender, romantic and…. so exciting!
Whatever various sites and forums say and write about the romance, tenderness, harmony of the First Wedding Dance, I think the most important thing that just needs to be said here is how to cope with excitement and adequately dance the first in your life " officially" a joint dance? What do the bride and groom need to know to make your First Wedding Dance a truly beautiful, bright and memorable event? is the topic of this article.
Various sites vying with each other talk about how important it is to apply to a famous school, eminent teachers, brag about the level of their personal dance achievements, the chic of the halls. Yes, all this is certainly good and will definitely add efficiency to your future dance.
But I want to say a little about something else. I have been staging wedding dances for more than 5 years, and from personal experience I can say for sure that the main problem of the Wedding Dance is the excitement that young people experience before entering the venue. I will be immediately understood by those who have already gone through this and felt on their own experience that confusion, panic, in the truest sense of the word, trembling in the knees that appear precisely in the banquet hall, when the realization comes that now, just a few minutes there will come a moment when all the guests will get up from their tables, part and it is you who will become for a few minutes the object of attention and admiring glances of numerous relatives and friends.
- What if it doesn't work? - What if we forget the steps? “What if we don’t get into music?” - you think, counting the minutes until the solemn moment ... ... And then the feeling of the dance of two hearts, the dance of two souls, the feeling that you and your loved one are soaring together on the wings of love, whirling in a magical, sensual dance for two .
... - will come only under one condition - if you are 100% confident in your abilities !!!
And what is needed for this? - you ask. Let's take everything in order.
The first and, perhaps, the most important thing is the choreographer who will be able to "see" you, your couple and offer the dance that is right for you. A choreographer who will recommend movements, figures, music, and if you have already chosen dance and music yourself, will correct and add to your dance those elements that will make it unique, and will give you confidence that you will be at the wedding look dignified and charm your guests with your dance gift. I want to say this: it is very important that the choreographer be a good teacher and coach. It's no secret that many successful dancers do not become good, strong coaches, and vice versa - dancers who have not achieved outstanding results themselves eventually become successful, talented coaches. Not everyone is given the talent to teach others. And for staging a dance, this is very important.
It is the choreographer who works with you, proposes movements to your taste that will suit your couple, while he takes into account:
- the hall in which you will dance, the size of the site, the shape, the features that will allow you to show all the nuances and beautiful moments of your dance. It is very important to learn the dance itself, and then rehearse all the figures on the site, as close as possible in size and shape to the one on which the wedding event will take place. It is also necessary to work out all the important, significant figures, dance support in terms of where they can be done in the hall where the event will take place, taking into account where the guests will be, from what place the video and photo shooting will take place, from what angle your guests will see your dance most clearly.
- the style of the dress in which the bride will dance. Depending on the style, a professional choreographer will offer certain movements, recommend the subtleties of the figures, in combination with the style of the dress.
For example, while performing support, spinning, you can add 1-2 details that will make the movements more beautiful, and it will make them much easier for you to complete them.
- features of your temperament, your learning ability. It often happens that a couple, for example, chooses Tango. And the choreographer, who does not use in his work the ability to take into account the characteristics of your couple (I mean the characteristics of perception and learning), offers beautiful, but too complex elements of dance. And for several lessons, he unsuccessfully tries to learn these figures, torturing the newlyweds and not achieving the desired result. As a result, the dance turns out to be “clumsy”, the young people get nervous before going to the stage (and after all, the nervous situation on the wedding day for young people is a normal, normal condition !!!), and panic is added to this excitement due to the fact that the guys feel that the dance is “raw”, and half of the movements they get are ridiculous and “clumsy”.
Naturally, in the end, the dance turns out to be “nothing”, the young are upset, and the time for staging and the money is wasted. Therefore, it is very important that the choreographer understands, feels the characteristics and possibilities of the couple and offers exactly those figures and that dance that will look spectacular and beautiful for your couple.
Well, that's probably all I wanted to say about the important moments when staging wedding dance
Oh, and one more thing... How important is the choice of gym for training sessions? Does the hall need to be large? To have mirrors in it? So that you were alone in the hall? The answer to all these questions is one: no! I'll explain why.
In the large hall, of course, it is spacious and comfortable to rehearse, but you will dance on a small area of the parquet, and there will be tables and chairs around. Successful improvisation is a plot rehearsed in detail and repeatedly worked out in similar conditions. So, draw your own conclusions.
Are mirrors necessary? Of course, looking at yourself from the outside is quite interesting, and we are all used to it. But did you know that professional dancers in rehearsals specifically dance with their backs to the mirrors in order to learn to dance on the sensations of their own body! That mirrors distract and do not allow you to relax and feel the rhythm of your movements? And talented coaches categorically forbid dancers to look at themselves in mirrors during training!!! And during your wedding dance, mirrors in the banquet hall are unlikely to be ....
But what about being alone in the hall during rehearsals? In order to be able to concentrate, not be distracted by anything, etc. I'll tell you one story. I put on a dance for one couple, the guys were called, it seems, Ira and Kirill, I don’t remember exactly. When we started staging the dance, and we were staging the Viennese waltz, Ira asked me if we would be alone and expressed her wish that there were fewer people in the hall during our classes.
I answered her that I would do everything so that they would successfully and beautifully dance at the wedding, and at the same time I asked them to simply listen to my advice. Throughout the training, we were not alone in the hall, and sometimes I arranged for the guys to watch in front of the “spectators” (other dancers and their friends). Perhaps they were not comfortable during such "performances", but we needed a result. The day of the wedding has come. They invited me to the event (sometimes I come to the wedding to see the couples), there was an exciting moment. The guys danced great! And after the dance, they came up, thanked, and Ira told me: “Now I understand why you wanted other couples to be in the hall while studying the dance! If we were not accustomed to involuntary spectators at rehearsals, we would be confused, finding ourselves today in a huge noisy circle, a “ring” of our guests!!!” Comments, I think, are superfluous ….
04/26/2010
Anastasia Tsuleva (Elena Antonova)
choreographer, coach
How to dance and not screw up: video tips from Minskers
better".
We thought: everyone is ready to show how to dance, but will Minskers be able to show how not to dance? In honor of the upcoming Tuborg Night party on July 15, KYKY took to the streets of Minsk and asked ordinary passers-by to show moves that should not be repeated on the dance floor. Watch and remember.
Leaving the office at the end of the working day on Wednesday, we asked ourselves only one question: how realistic is it to “rock” Minskers in the middle of the working week, after a hard day, in order to get an expert dance opinion from them? The prospects were, to put it mildly, vague. Only the sun, which had begun to break through the gloomy clouds, was encouraging: the evening turned out to be more summery than the day. A good sign, we decided.
Pa on Oktyabrskaya street
Cover photo: Martin Parr
We started the survey from Oktyabrskaya Street. At the end of the week, people here, without our requests, massively demonstrate dance master classes of all directions.
Maybe we will be lucky on weekdays?
YOU ARE READING THIS ARTICLE THANKS TO TUBORG
Lucky is not that much. There were people, but their intentions were directed towards a quiet pastime. “Damn, guys, something I’m not at all in the spirit of,” “Oh, it’s funny, but I’m completely exhausted today,” “Whatever I do, it turns out perfectly, I won’t show you how not to,” the respondents got out, as they could.
Igor helped us first. The guy sat quietly on the bench, talking with a friend. He did not look more cheerful than the previous residents of Minsk, whom we pestered, but as soon as he heard our request, he readily got up and showed all the wrong movements in his opinion. Igor's interlocutor did not take part in our impromptu dance seminar, but willingly suggested new steps to his friend.
We thanked the dance floor practitioner and moved on. To make it more fun to walk, we ourselves tried to “rock” the passers-by, showing which dance moves we consider unsuccessful.
It turned out to be a male twerk that is beyond good and evil - the apogee of bad dance.
Near the coffee shop at the Moby Dick gym, our photographer got carried away with a photo hunt for a strange-looking pigeon - there were no people on the street at all. But after five minutes we were lucky: we managed to talk to the local barista.
The girl also complained about her fatigue, but during the conversation she agreed that “tired, sitting dances are a good example of how not to do it. Came to the dance - dance, be kind. It was these sitting pirouettes that were shown to us.
At the end of our dance journeys along Oktyabrskaya, we managed to “catch” one more caring person. Oleg listened to our request, asked for a moment to think and demonstrated a set of body movements mistaken for a dance.
“That’s not how you should do it if you don’t want to screw up on the dance floor,” the guy summed up.
“Damn, I’m dancing like that,” his friend joked, who wished to remain behind the scenes.
Dancing on the way to the Upper City
The next half hour of our journey turned out to be fruitless: it was not possible to find at least someone ready for the anti-master class. Until we stumbled upon Artyom and Anton resting in a shady park. As soon as they heard the task, the young people came to the conclusion “we have been going to this moment all our lives” and with awe-inspiring agility brought down on us all the unsuccessful movements that they could remember.
But in the Upper City and on Freedom Square there are not enough dancers. We used heavy artillery, descending to the most dancing street of our city - the great and terrible Zybitskaya.
The first cheerful person was the bartender Vanya. After a little pushing, the guy gave us even a little more expression than we expected.
Ladies dancing on Zybitskaya
Since there was an overwhelming majority of male participants so far, we found Lyuda for gender balance. The girl refused to give a solo program, but promised that if we wait for her friends together, then our patience will be rewarded. Girlfriends - Masha and Kama - turned out to be punctual girls and did not keep themselves waiting long. The dance trio presented our eyes with a well-adjusted group performance explaining how not to move to the music if you are not in your own soul, but in a public place.
Foreign unitary enterprise "Vondel Media"
UNN 191112533
Video: Vladislav Rubanov
Our heroes showed how not to dance so as not to screw up.
