Tips for Great West Coast Swing Training
- Jul 30, 2017
- 2 min read
Here are some of my tips and ideas on how to effectively train in your own time to help you increase your skills in west coast swing and other dances. I hope it gives you some inspiration!
Solo Practice
I totally recommend practicing on your own. What you could do is put on a music track and then practice dancing to it solo. Not necessarily in west coast swing but as a solo dancer. Perhaps use just one body part such as your arms to move to the music, then your ribcage, then your shoulders and so on. You could imagine you are performing a freestyle routine on YouTube!
Solo West Coast Swing
You can then put on another track and practice dancing west coast swing on your own. You could hold onto an object such as a cabinet or fridge handle to see how your movement affects your “partner”. I will often practice dancing my anchor steps in the kitchen whilst my porridge is in the microwave thinking about how my hips are moving, whether I have a straight leg, trying different step sizes etc. You can focus on a different aspect in each track such as shaping your body or not repeating two passes, blocks or whips in a row. A tip Michael Kielbasa gave during a class that I found useful was to practice your class video notebooks on your own so that you know the steps and positioning well.
Practicing with a Partner
Practicing with a partner - ah don’t we love this! Perhaps make sure you don’t just freestyle together. You may want to film some dances together and watch it back. You could both work on an aspect of technique such as anchoring together and gifting each other feedback. “Am I allowing my shoulder to move too far forward when I anchor?”, “Am I using my arm muscles rather than my body?”. I also will practice patterns from class video notebooks with my practice partner so that I can get better at them and keep from forgetting them. Remember though, in my opinion, patterns are not everything!
Go on, Try Other Dances!
I train in other dance styles such as street dance and find this to be a big source of inspiration. Go on, try a class in another dance style such as street, contemporary, ballet, tap, modern or others. There are certain YouTube channels that I subscribe to of choreographers that I admire who will post regular updates! I get a lot of ideas form these! I hope this has giving you some new ideas and inspiration. Do you have any training tips? Feel free to post in the comments below.
Have a great day!
Filipe
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If you are interested in one-to-one sessions with me to work on your west coast swing or solo dance, contact me below.
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