Staying on time in West Coast Swing is something that new dancers struggle with. Hopefully I can provide a couple tips to help you make the leap from ‘thinking through your dance’ into a state of ‘just dancing!’
Understanding the music. West Coast Swing (and swing in general) is structured in 2 beat increments. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8. When counting the music its important to identify these incrementsOnce you can find these 2 beat increments I want you to focus on finding these beats, the 2-4-6-8 beats. When dancing patterns in basic time, 2-4-6-8 will always be whole beats. This means you will be dancing one beat per step.

1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8

Looking at a triple step: If you look at a triple step. You have 2 beats of music. 1-2. When we dance a triple step we count it, 1&2. We are putting 3 steps into 2 beats of music. 2 steps into the first beat (1&) then one single step in the the second beat of music (2)
Exercise: Stand up and dance a whip why yourself. Count out loud. 1,2,3&4,5,6,7&8. Now dance the whip again and really pause on the 2-4-6-8. Now you are starting to feel the most critical parts of the timing.

timing is everything – west coast swing
You gotta understand your timing!
Know the rules to bend the rules: First you need to know these rules and recognize the basic rhythm structure of the dance. You need to be able to dance all of your basic patterns and timing by clearly identifying the 2-4-6-8 in each pattern you dance.
Once this is accomplished you may want to begin to play a bit more within the patterns. As pattern become more complex it becomes necessary to have your basic understanding of timing to fall back on. This is where the real magic happens as you watch high level dancers seemingly know what their partner is doing even though you don’t recognize any basics at all. They are often playing within the ‘structure’ of the dance, within these basic rules of timing. Skippy Blair says “The separation of Dance Rhythms into “2 -Beat” increments – allows the dancer to feel the connection to the heartbeat of the music….and allows for greater musical interpretation of the music.”
Explore timing in a slightly more advanced way: Return to the previous ‘whip exercise’ and explore accelerating and decelerating your dancing, leads and follows within your 2 beat increments. Just remember to always return to a clear 2-4-6-8.
There are more advanced things to do with timing but I’ll stop right here for now. I think if you master these things you will have accomplished your goal of staying on time in West Coast Swing and you’ll be well on your way to “getting really good!”

Helpful reminders:

Identify the critical 2-beat increments in the music
Focus on keeping the 2-4-6-8 clear when you dance your patterns
Practice to different types of music till you can identify the critical timing without getting distracted.
Once you have mastered this start to explore different ways of accelerating and decelerating your dance inside of these critical 2 beat increments.

The post Stay on time for WCS appeared first on Dance Louisville.

How to your favorite color may influence how you dance!

Lets have a little fun here. Whats your favorite color? Is your favorite color more subtle or do you like bold colors? Pick either subtle or bold, read on and I’ll introduce some technique to help you create a style of dance thats like your favorite color.

Have you even wondered what to do with your body while you dance? After all step descriptions only cover footwork not bodywork. I’d like to help you learn to dance with your body, not just your feet but introducing you to 2 different foot positions. However I insist on having some fun along the way. So with your favorite color in mind, read on!

Get warmed up!

First try this drill with me. Seriously get up and try it! Stand with your feet together with your heels and toes together. Now keeping your heels together turn your toes out about about 15-18 degrees each. We call that turnout. Just for fun bend and straighten your knees one at a time. You will find that with a bit of turnout your body will move pretty naturally.

3rd & 5th foot position – subtle or bold?

Now take a walking step forward with your right foot keeping the turnout of your feet. Now close your feet by drawing the arch of your left foot to the heel of your right. (this is called third foot position) Finally take another forward step on your right foot. You have now just completed a forward triple step in third foot position. If you repeat the same sequence of steps but close your feet by drawing the toe of the left foot to the heel of the right foot, you would have completed a ‘fifth foot position shuffle’

To me the difference between 3rd or 5th foot position is like the difference between colors. 3rd position is softer and more relaxed like a pale blue or pink with 5th looking stronger and more bold like a midnight blue or fire engine red. Using more 3rd position in your dancing will create a softer look in your body while more 5th position will create stronger angles in your body and hence a more bold look!  Technically either on is right so artistically the choice is yours!

Dancing with your body, not just your feet!

As we get better its important to think about dancing with our entire body not just our feet. Simply put when you step forward on your right foot, your right hip and ribcage, and to a lesser degree your right shoulder, should dance over your top of your foot.

Here is another drill. Imagine you are holding a serving tray out in front of you with one hand on each side of the tray. Forget imagining it, actually put your arms out in front of your body as if you were holding a tray. Now take a forward triple step with your right foot but think about leading as much with the right side of your ribcage as you can manage.

There are 2 rules to follow while doing this. First you must keep the turnout of your front foot. You must not be pigeon toed as you step forward. Second you cannot let the tray, your arms or your shoulders stray from the direction of your step. This way you will maintain a strong frame though your shoulders while being able to dance the right side of your body over your right foot. This drill will help you understand the flexibility of your body in a specific dance sense. Don’t be surprised if the left and right sides of your body are un equal. Sometimes the paint color out of the same can of paint will look slightly different. The same will be true of your body.

Putting it all together – Painting your picture.

Hopefully by now you understand a bit about how to keep slight turnout of your feet. You have 2 basic options for the positions of your feet. Finally you hopefully understand that when you dance its important to think of using more of your body than just your feet. Imagine that as a dancer your leg goes all the way up to the bottom of your ribcage. Anytime you make a step its important to stack the hip and ribcage over the foot. From there the angles that you create with your feet and body will be like the colors of paint on a canvas. There are no right or wrong ones but having a basic understanding of your choices will help you create the picture you want.

All the best in dance,

Brian B

The post Better Technique appeared first on Dance Louisville.

“Help me with balance in turns!” Thats the overwhelming response I got when I posed the question on Facebook of what to cover this month. Perfect because I teach a turn technique workshop with a money back guarantee. I guarantee that I can improve your turns or your money back. Hows that for an offer? Balance however, is entirely up to you!  So lets start there….

I wrote a great blog on posture which you can reference here. https://dancelouisville.com/improve-your-posture/ The main takeaway from that blog post was this. Imagine 3 coke cans stacked on top of each other. They balance quite nicely right? For the sake of this example this is how your body works while turning. You can twist and turn the 3 cans provided they stay stacked. Now imagine your legs and hips as the first can, your ribcage as the second and your head the third. If they are all neatly stacked on top of one another you are in a good position to be balanced. This will help your turning immensely.

My first drill to practice your turns look like this. Step forward onto the the heel of your left foot. (we will later call this a reaching step) Slowly roll the weight to the ball of your foot. When 100% of your weight is over the ball of your left foot stop and hold yourself in that position. You should find the left side of your body stacked on top of the ball of your left foot. Immediately you will find that it might be hard to hold yourself balanced in that position for more than a second or two. This is where the work comes it. You have two things to work on in this drill

1. The mindset that you will hold yourself balanced and not put your right foot down! To improve your turns you’re gonna have to fight it out!
2. By doing this you will develop the stabilizing muscles in your ankle that will improve your balance.

Next try the drill of rolling your weight onto your left foot but as your weight arrives on the ball of your left foot use the right foot to gently push yourself into a half turn. This is called a ‘Pivot Turn’ As you finish your half rotation you’ll need to fight again to not put your right foot down immediately. Instead stay on the left foot and concentrate on your posture and balance. Once you have developed the ability to rotate that 1/2 turn calmly and perfectly balanced you will be well on your way to better turns!

Here are your 3 literal steps to improve your turns

Finally lets tackle a full turn. For the general purpose of this article we will call it a 3 step turn. A 3 step turn has 2 main parts, a reaching step which we use to set up our turn and a gathering step which we use to speed through the turn. Lets quickly discuss how this all works.

First, we take a ‘reaching’ step in the direction of our turn, in this case we will take a reaching step with our left foot so we can turn to the left. We take the step onto our left foot like in our drill our eyes looking into the direction that we want to land the turn.  Its important as we arrive on the foot that our left side of our body is forward over the foot and the right side of our body remains behind. This is what we call a ‘prep’ as we are preparing to turn.

Second, we are going to take a ‘gathering’ step as we close our feet transferring the weight to our right foot. Its important to make this step as small as possible. No more than hip widths distance. Anything larger that that and you are in for some serious balance issues. Its at this point that we are really moving quickly through the turn.

As we finish the turn we will make another ‘reaching’ step onto our left foot in the same direction as our first step. We should land balanced over the left foot with the left side of our bodies slightly ahead of the right exactly as we entered the turn on the first step. The first and third steps of a three step turn should look identical.

There you go! My favorite drill for balance and 3 steps to better turns. Literally 3 steps. Get it? Three step turns! LOL Thanks for taking to time to check out my tips. Hopefully you will be well on your way to better turns, balance included!

All the best in dance,

Brian ‘B’

The post Improve your turns appeared first on Dance Louisville.

How to find my monthly column online!

Hey gang,

I’m PUBLISHED! My new monthly column just came out….

I’m super excited!!! A few months past I was asked to write a monthly column for Linedance Magazine in the UK on dance technique. I was honored and a bit nervous because I just started blogging about dance related topics this year. Obviously though, I jumped at the opportunity to share little snippets of what I’ve learned over the past 18 years on the dance floor.

The magazine asked be to do an interview to profile myself which came out last month. This month the first section called “The Best in Dance” came out in the Magazine and online. For my first topic I chose tracking. How to place your feet in rhythm dancing. I will be reposting my article at DanceLouisville/Blog each month but I wanted to help everyone find it on their own so I’ll give you the steps to find the article and the video right now!

1. Go to www.linedancerweb.com and click on the grey ‘NEWS’ tab on the menu bar.
2. Then look for the big orange button called “BEST IN DANCE”
3. This will take you to the video recap.
4. To read the article click on the PDF button on the bottom right of the video.

To take a peek at this month’s column here.

Check out the video recap here.

Thanks for the support gang. I’m truly humbled by the support of my dance family. I look forward to sharing with you in the future. All the best in dance,

Brian B

The post Dance Technique Column appeared first on Dance Louisville.

I recently began blogging on subjects related to dancing and the dance business. While chatting with a long time dance friend she said “Brian the most frustrating thing to me is that people can dance for 20 years and still look like they just took their first lesson. They learn the steps but that’s it. If you can help only one person to think about what they look like dancing, I would love you forever.” So in the pursuit of eternal love here I go!

“A good stance and posture reflect a proper state of mind.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Without getting into all the technical details of ‘better dancing’ lets focus on a single basic fundamental, good posture! Sometimes I wonder why our posture doesn’t reflect the joy of dance that we all have. I mean lets face it, we love dancing  but still many of us have particularly bad posture, head down, shoulders rolled forward. When dancers begin I’m sure instructors shout “pick your head up and throw your shoulders back.” Sometime they try, sometimes they don’t. Most of the time its hard. “This hurts” a student said to me recently. Hurts? Why? I’ll tell you why! Its a lifetime of poor daily posture habits or worse a lifetime of poor mental habits! Everything  starts with whats in between your ears. If you don’t mentally make the choice to make good posture a priority then your dancing your body will surly suffer the consequences.

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” – Jim Rohn

As a dance teacher it shocks me  to see the toll ‘life’ has taken on some people both physically and mentally. Poor posture and a sour disposition are habits that are formed. We often come to dancing for reasons other than the dancing itself. We come looking for exercise, community or a diversion from something else. Personally I started taking dance classes at age 21 to ‘escape’ from my busy work week as a new business owner. The good news is that we are all here now and along the way we have fallen in love. At this stage of my teaching one of my main focuses is to teach life lessons through dance and the lesson in this blog post is this… We only have one body in this life. We must keep it healthy both internally and externally. Paying attention to our posture not only makes us better dancers but it makes us physically stronger and mentally sharper humans!

4 Coke cans, and understanding posture.

Take 4 coke cans and stack them on top of each other. Seriously do it. If you want to be healthy use Diet Coke. Editors note: we understand water is the most healthy but water bottles won’t work for this experiment. If you carefully stack 4 cans on top of each other you’ll see that they fit quite nicely. Lets imagine them as 4 main blocks of weight in your body. The bottom one your legs, the next up your pelvis, the third, your ribcage and the final can, your head. If they are stacked neatly you’ll see that you can twist each can individually and still maintain the integrity of the little ‘structure’ you’ve just built. (think twisting your hips in cha cha) You can even afford to tilt them a bit and create as little shape. (think ballroom dance shapes) Tilt them too much though and eventually they will topple over. This is an overly simplistic way to think about your posture but it’s one that I use daily in my teaching, dancing and life. I’m always thinking about how my body is aligned. I challenge you to so the same. Pay attention to which of the 4 body blocks are out of order. Is your head tilted forward? Does your pelvis tilt forward? Backward? Concentrate on stacking your body blocks all day long, when you walk, when you sit most fun of all while you dance.

Improve your mental state too.

But wait! I said that paying attention to your posture would also make you mentally sharper. Hummmm… what the heck does that mean? Another exercise if you don’t mind…. Pretend you are depressed. Yes right now. How would you sit? How would you breath? Where would you look? Would you look up or down? Ahhhhh…. get it? Looking down is never a confidence inspiring posture. Then why the heck would you ever look down when dancing? Not only will it “topple over your coke cans’ and ruin your posture but it makes you look shy and sullen and not confident and happy. So pick your head up and if it feels a bit awkward for you when someone catches your eye with your improved posture just flash them a smile and I guarantee it will add a little pep to your dance step!

3 places to focus on your posture.

1. During your dancing. Well duh right? Thats right start thinking about it now. Keep you head up and inline with your spine. Keep your shoulders rolled down and back. Keep your hips tucked underneath you. Don’t the your bum stick out our your hips sling forward.
2. While sitting or driving. Did you know that cultures who eat, sleep or use the toilet at ground level have almost no incidence of  back issues. In cultures like ours its largely sitting that causes much of the back pain that we have. Pay attention to your low back while you sit. Keep your abs tight and your spine and head stacked up even while ‘relaxing’ in a chair or driving to work.
3. During a Yoga Class. Yogi’s have been at it thousands of years. They have a thing or two worked out about the human body. In my experience (I’ve been doing yoga for 13 years) Yoga teachers have a fantastic sense of posture, much much better than most dance teachers. It’s their job to cultivate the ability to communicate changes in your posture with only one or two verbal cues.

Digging a bit deeper into understanding your body.

If you made it this far you are probably genuinely  interested in learning more about posture, moving more efficiently that things that will ultimately make you a better dancer. May I suggest 2 fantastic physical therapists? Grey Cook & Kelly Starrett. Grey has developed a great resourceful website on basically moving like a better human! Grey Cook an his Functional Movement Screening information can be found at www.graycook.com. Kelly Starrett has an excellent site on injury prevention and simple maintenance for your body at www.mobilitywod.com. There is a great catalog of videos to help improve your posture and movement. I used both of these sites to deepen my understanding of posture and my body in general as I recovered from a major back surgery a couple of years back.

Eternal love and sharing.

If you made it this far I want to thank you for taking the time to read the entire post. Hopefully you’ve found something helpful, interesting or at the very least entertaining. If you are one of the people who found anything helpful please feel free to share this page link on your website or Facebook page. After all all I need is help one of you to “think about what you look like dancing” and I will receive eternal love from my friend! More importantly all I want is to share what I’ve learned so far through dancing with as many people as possible. That brings me more joy than you know.

All the best in dance, Brian ‘B’

The post Improving Your Posture for dance appeared first on Dance Louisville.