Reasons Why Your Dancing Looks Amateur and How to Fix It

Dance choreography is about "moving your body according to music", isn't it?

If you can move your body at exactly the same timing as the modeling choreography, dancing is a success for the short moment.

This "dancing is a success" feels something strange though...

In theory, it should be good, if you have followed the modeling choreography. When you try incorporating dancing at cultural festivals, wedding ceremony, new year's party, we generally manage it by watching and imitating the dance videos.

We often pick up dance material from YouTube and remember the order of movement many times. It comes helpful in visualization, by practicing over and over.

This process of learning is a common task, with or without dance experience.

But when outputting, things come out differently.

Being aware of this point, you can clearly understand what kind of exercises to do. So the practice efficiency will go up greatly.

Experience = Skills of Body Control

To make it easy to understand, I will call the experienced dancer as instructors and beginners in the dance class students.

Both can seemingly do the same move, but the absolute difference between the instructor and the student is a body control. That is what we call the experience.

Body control is a skill that controls parts of your body according to your own self-image.

Even if you dance the same choreography, the difference between the instructor and the student is simply the difference of this technique.

What dance beginners should prioritize in regular exercises is not to repetitively practice choreography, but to upgrade the skills of body control.

To demonstrate, I laid out the flow that most dance school follows:

1. Stretch
2. Isolation
3. Rhythm Training
4. Basic step
5. Choreography

At any school, the lesson progresses almost always like this. When talking about body control, 1, 2, and 3 are directly connected to body control. The problem is it can be boring for beginners. Especially the second; isolation is painfully boring.

At the same time, isolation is especially the important piece.

Rhythmic training is somewhat acquirable even if you do not have dance experience. But isolation skill is hard to attain unless you put conscious effort.

It is no exaggeration to say,

the difference between the instructor beginner dancer = isolation skills

Luckily, the difference can be illuminated by the conscious effort rather than a innate talent, just like muscle strength.

The difference is physical ability.

Difference in isolation skills creates amateurism

Isolation is training to move body part piece by piece, one by one, independently and accordingly to the brain image. But is plain. It is unexciting. It is extremely boring. There are many people who sneak away even in regular practice.

First of all, why is it necessary? If you do not understand how body control contributes to dancing, motivation will not last.

For example, the silhouette asks you to move the neck 5cm to the side. But you can only move 1cm to the side of your neck.

There is a gap of 4cm. It is only 4cm, but 4cm in isolation term is quite a difference.

As long as the difference being unfilled, the "amateurism" of the novice student's dancing will never disappear.

Of course, the amount of practice you want is divided between isolation and rhythm training. Everything needs a balance.

However, while you have difficulty moving your body parts independently and accurately, the choreography of the model and the movement of ours will continue to shift. Understanding this point instead of practicing blindly makes a significant impact on the quality of practice.

Those who do not understand the importance of isolation, will either never do or simply follow the isolation practice feeling like a waste of time.

There are many people who are not getting better at all despite their long dance experience. People like this lack the isolation skills.

The sure way to improve dancing

In cooking, it is like how to use knives.
In swimming, it is like a flutter kick.
In arithmetic, it is like memorizing multiplication.
In Chinese, it is like learning the alphabet.

Everything has basics.

Isolation is an important foundation that supports your dancing ability. But it is different from other things in that it has no goal.

Of course, you would look stupid if you tell your friends how amazing the isolation part you just master. Just being able to move the body is simply a starting point.

Isolation is roughly divided into 2 stages.

You have to be able to move it in the first place. Working of 0 to 1.

As your isolation skill goes up, amateurism disappears and this problem will become soon disappeared.

The next is to widen the movable range of parts even with 0.1mm. Working of 0 to infinity.

Knowing that it is about 1 to infinity work rather than 0 to 1 work at some point, the quality of your dance will change by sticking to the practice.

Even at 0.1mm, to expand the movable range of the part the foundation will be set and lead to overwhelming power.

If it is the neck, you can move front and back, left and right, or even turn it diagonally. Once you have an oblique direction, divide the angle by 10 degrees, control more finely, etc. At that point, there is no end. It feels like real training.

You should do this with all parts of the body. But it is unlikely that you would see this through practice in regular dance classes. It is time consuming in the given time period. In fact, its simplicity of movement makes it the best practice to do it by yourself.

As it is a regular lesson, it ends in front / back / left / right - clockwise / counterclockwise.

Since isolation is a common element in all genres of dance, it is worth pursuing as well.

Even super famous dancers, even your teachers, in the beginning, there is a time for beginners, saying isolation is hard. Thinking this way might encourage you to push forward.You probably heard of running man in Hiphop, but it is also commonly used in shuffle dance. Shuffle is a rave and club dance originated in the late 80s in Melbourne, Australia. It gained popularity quickly in the underground scene.

Since electric dance music (EDM) has the tempo of club music, you have to give the step in more speedy over hip-hop music.

Therefore, trying to do a running man in the traditional way of dancing, you will definitely not be able to follow the song. If you try to forcedly do step on the tempo it will result in excess strength and it will be a performance with no margin. You will look rushed.

When shuffle dance beginners practice the basic steps one by one from now on, you need to adapt them the way EDM dances with this basic knowledge.

This is common to other footwork such as Charleston and T step, so please learn how to practice and how to execute it well with this article.

Cool dance step even for beginners

Shuffle dance and cutting shapes are styles that involve you to constantly execute stepping. So in principle, there is no time to pose and stop the movement.

The way of dancing that keeps stepping nonstop is in line with the tune of EDM including house and transformer.

The primary component of club music is about deciding the tempo that becomes the base. On top of that, musical instrument sound is applied by one layer over another in order to build a final piece.

Because shuffle dance is about dancing with pounding beat, your step will continue on steadily without a gap.

Smooth and constant stepping

So how do you do it? It is not a complicated method.

First thing is you bring your leg up in the front. How much up is up to you. If you want to show power, visualizing it to a 90-degree angle with your thigh against upper body helps. Second, you will drop your leg one by one, sliding the other leg backward. Here is a link to the video tutorial by Howcast.

This is it. The move itself is simple, but the flexibility is infinite. You can move around the flow, turn around in a circle, go front and back, etc. Musicality is also a key, especially when EDM tends to be faster.

Incorporate running man to your freestyle

Although performance is done by improvisation, it is only possible for a person who is accustomed to some extent. If you are a beginner, it is best to start from mastering basic steps one by one.

After that, you will make a progress by combining the steps and steps you have memorized together to form a short routine or choreography. Finally, you will be floating on the flowing music in freestyle form.

So even though it is different styles, there are also places that overlap with some of the breakdance entrance move. A performance with improvisation will result in reflection of your daily practice. Therefore, when practicing shuffle dance, only those who constantly brace yourself with conscious practice will improve.

This time I introduced the way of running man. Please use it for your skill improvement.