Dance to Lyrical Music
Even though you may like to dance, you may not be very good at it. All it takes is a little time and practice. The main question is: are you doing this to impress others, or is your heart in this? Only when you know the answer for sure, will you be great.
Contents
Steps
- Understand that when you dance lyrical, your movements show the words of the song. This means that if the words were , "She falls like the petal drifting from it's rose," you would gracefully sink to the floor and pretend to be the petal. Fluent is where you pour your heart and feelings out with your movements. Let's just say if you danced fluent to the rose petal line, you would probably feel sad because "she is drifting", so you would show that with a sad, but graceful, drift away from the center.
- Try to come up with lots of different feelings and moves. It would get very boring to watch someone do the same movement over, and over, and over again.
- Find a stage, an open place, such as a basement, or even outside in your front lawn (if you do do this, make sure there is an outlet so you can plug in a CD player). The best places are the ones with a large lengthy mirror on the wall.
- Pick a song with deep meaning and flowing music, otherwise it gets a little harder to stay fluent with your movements.
- Listen to the song. You should listen to it maybe 2-3 time to get the feel of the words, instruments, and the tempo.
- Do your body a favor; before you dance, make sure you stretch. This is a key part in getting better. You don't want to pull a muscle and not be able to practice, so be sure to stretch your arms, legs, neck, and maybe do some push-ups. If you plan on doing tricks, be sure to stretch extra well, so you won't get injured.
- Just let your body flow. This sometimes is a hard concept for some people to understand. When you dance fluently, like the water in a stream, you let your body pretend you are trapped under the ocean. (Pretend you can still breathe) You would get bored just standing there with nothing to do, so you start to flow. Your limbs are floating, your heart lies on a cloud, your eyes are closed. You outstretch your fingers and open your mind to more fluent movement. You touch the sky with every reach and skim the ocean's sandy floor while the suns rays dance around you. This is how it feels to dance fluent. You move your arms and legs and head so they flow gracefully together.
- Learn tricks. To make your dance stand out, you may want to add tricks. There are hundreds of dance tutorials online. Chose a tutorial from an actual known dancer(so you can guarantee it's safe) and follow the teacher. Some examples of tricks are pirouettes, splits, barrel rolls, jumps, and leaps.
Tips
- Think soft and flowy. Always be aware of all parts of your body. When you move you arms, think about what your feet are doing and what direction you head is facing.
- Show emotion on your face. Even sad people have facial expressions. Think about your music and what it means to you.
- Don't try to be a poser and copy others' dances. It is very important you come up with your dances. Being a copy-cat is no fun.
- Decide first if you want to do the dance in a parallel or traditional position. In parallel, your feet should be pointing directly forward, ballet positioning is turned out from the hip. This dramatically changes how you perform you dance.
- Lyrical dance is ballet and modern based. Stick to traditional technique for guidance, but the style allows you to be more contemporary and modern. Pull from your own life experiences.
- When you are first trying out lyrical dance, start by dancing on your own to see what kind of things you like to do. Don't perform the first time. Let your creativity flow alone before doing it in front of an audience.
Warnings
- As stated before, it is very important to not overstretch to the point where you pull a limb. Simple stretches include touching your toes, reaching away from you, yoga, etc. Be careful not to harm your back, for it is essential in all fluent movement provided in the dance.
- Tricks, such as splits or handstands, can cause injury, without a proper teacher at a dance studio. Use a soft mat, and start out small. Do at your own risk.
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