Okay…so after a year and a half of doing West Coast Swing dancing, I’m trying to improve how my body moves…specifically body isolations. What a crazy journey. Because of dance I’ve started going to Yoga, and even doing gym boot camps to improve my understanding of physiology and how my body moves.
Is there anyone with a dance background on the board who has any recommendations on sources / videos that would help me to focus on body isolations (moving just specific body parts?). How does one improve isolating and moving specific parts of the body? As an example I would like to make my arm movement more fluid. Instructional videos / routines would be helpful to me.
And before any of you jokesters laugh me off…I have way more fun than all of you! I have become fitter than ever, more sociable, thanks to dance…so I will not stop. Thanks for helping me out!
As someone that has danced Lindy Hop for almost four years I’d say you are over thinking it. Control like that comes with being comfortable with the dance, not through isolating specific parts of the body and training them.
I’m not sure that’s the way to get the results you’re looking for.
To use your example, I don’t think that isolating your arm movements will make them more fluid. I would think that it would make your arms look kind of odd, confuse your follows, and possibly have a weird effect on your frame. To get more fluidity, I would think you’d want the movement to come from your center and extend through your arms which isn’t something that you’ll necessarily get from arm isolations.
Is there anywhere near you that you could take a modern dance, lyrical jazz, or ballet class? Those (like your yoga class) might help you figure out how movement is connected. You’ll also likely do isolation exercises as well, but they’ll be put into a context.
My teacher recommended it, mostly because I tend to be too tense, or too relaxed. Trying to find the happy medium. I think the idea is that if I practice isolating parts of my body I will have more awareness and control.
DanceVision has some awesome videos, and I’m positive that a few I have address this issue (but I don’t know if there’s a video on JUST what you’re talking about). I know next to nothing about West Coast Swing, though. Isn’t it similar to hustle, with lots of fluid movements, and a “relaxed” frame? I did some ECS for a while, but I know there’s little resemblance.
I had the hardest time (as a female) overcoming too much rigidity in the frame, but I started with waltz which can exacerbate that tendency if one is going for a formal posture. Not sure if that is part of your issue. Do you dance lead or follow? I’ll tell you what helped for me, even if you’re a guy…a bit of bellydance lessons. You don’t have to take a class, there’s plenty of Youtube videos and such. I’m dead serious. The arm and abdomen isolation techniques did so much to loosen me up and build tone in a full range of motion. Unfortunately the hip action is almost entirely opposite to what I needed for cha cha, etc., so that was confusing to the muscle memory for a while, but you can gloss over that part. (A more skilled dancer joked that I looked like I had been an expert samba dancer in a former life.)
There are many instances in WCS where you can freeze and essentially freestyle. There is lots of fluid movements. I’d like to be able to understand and control the range of motion in my body.
As for bellydancing, I took casual classes for 6 months or so, had an ok DVD for practice, but I’ll have to try and see if I can dig something up for you tomorrow.
Thanks for helping me out!