| Thursday, July 2, 2009 - Day 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 8:45 - 9:35am | Ballroom A | DanceSport Endurance | Todd Borzych |
| Ballroom C | Yoga - morning warm-up | Stanley Kuo | |
| 10:00 - 10:50am | Ballroom A | Tango - "Power with grace" | Glenn Weiss |
| Ballroom B | Waltz - "Open choreography" (Advanced) | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| Ballroom C | Rumba - "Principals of movement " | Oksana Zolotarevskaya | |
| Ballroom D | Samba - "Whisks, voltas and botafogos" | Marcus Johnson | |
| 11:00 - 11:50am | Ballroom A | Waltz - "Creating movement" | Victor Fung |
| Ballroom B | Quickstep - "The art of scatter chasses" (Advanced) | Anna Mikhed | |
| Ballroom C | Cha Cha - "Developing speed" | Oksana Zolotarevskaya | |
| Ballroom D | Rumba - "Creative basics" | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| 12:00 - 12:50pm | Ballroom A | "Tango character" | Victor Fung |
| Ballroom B | "Creating controlled flight - balancing movement and control" (Advanced) | Glenn Weiss | |
| Ballroom C | Rumba - "Using energy to create power" | Karina Smirnoff | |
| Ballroom D | "How to add the spark to your routines to make them fun to watch" | Wendy Johnson | |
| 1:00 - 1:50pm | Ballroom A | "Spin like a Pro" | Oksana Zolotarevskaya |
| Ballroom B | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| Ballroom C | "Three Tangos: Argentine, American and International" | Wendy Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| 2:00 - 2:50pm | Ballroom A | "Heart of the soul - Energy" | Taliat Tarsinov |
| Ballroom B | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| Ballroom C | Cha Cha - "Principles of effective and fun competitive choreography" | Oksana Zolotarevskaya | |
| Ballroom D | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| LUNCH | Wendy Johnson | ||
| 3:00 - 3:50pm | Ballroom A | Viennese Waltz - "How to fly" | Anna Mikhed |
| Ballroom B | Waltz - "Creative syllabus patterns" | Dan Calloway | |
| Ballroom C | Jive - "Flicks and kicks" (Advanced) | Karina Smirnoff | |
| Ballroom D | Latin - "Posture and poise" | Marcus Johnson | |
| 4:00 - 4:50pm | Ballroom A | "How low can you go? Rise and fall in Waltz" | Glenn Weiss |
| Ballroom B | "Lines and Poses in Standard" | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| Ballroom C | Jive - "The bounce" | Oksana Zolotarevskaya | |
| Ballroom D | Cha Cha - "Legs, ankles, and feet" | Wendy Johnson | |
| 4:50 - 5:15pm | COFFEE BREAK | ||
| 5:15 - 6:05pm | Ballroom A | "Lead / Follow with weight and pressure" | Dan Calloway |
| Ballroom B | "Using body action in Standard" (Advanced) | Victor Fung | |
| Ballroom C | "Connection: Dancing through your partner" | Marcus Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | Jive - "Influence of swing and Rock n' Roll" | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| 6:15 - 7:05pm | Ballroom A | Foxtrot - "Horizontal movement" | Anna Mikhed |
| Ballroom B | Waltz - "Hip action" | Dan Calloway | |
| Ballroom C | Samba - "Hot hip action" | Karina Smirnoff | |
| Ballroom D | Performance (Part II) | Wendy Johnson | |
| 7:30 - 9:30pm | Ballroom A | "Pizza with the Pros" - Q&A / dinner session with the instructors. Pizza will be provided. | |
In day two my feet started to hurt, and now it's day 3 and my feet hurt like a bitch, so do my calves, thighs, shoulder blades, neck and eyes.
It's hard to decide which class to go because every class was great and full of useful information.
The samba class of Marcus Johnson was interesting because the way he taught about the basic was quite different from what Steve taught us. But I think Marcus' class is only good after learning the solid technique from Steve. Steve and Susan always emphasized on the importance of using hamstring and sway the hips to create the action in samba, and Marcus, Taliat, and Karina moved my focus to other part of the body and explain the joint effect of those other parts of body. It's like a tree that S&S point out the root and trunk, and those pros tell us with branches and leaves can a tree be like a tree.
I nearly gave up in Oksana's cha-cha class because I couldn't remember the hard routine she gave us:
front check, rounde, back check, a sliding door figure (well i think it's not the correct name, but the move is that you have your right feet ball nail to the ground in front in a side position), a side step of left foot and going into two hip thrusts (arrhh i don't know the name; the move is you are in the side position, bending both knees, and your hip almost like sit on your right foot, and then you thrust your hip to the left twice. In Bryan Watson and Carmen's chachacha teaching video by Dance Universe, Carmen did that move in the very beginning), left foot back, right foot to the side, front check, two side cuban break to the left, a slow one, move your weight to the left foot in the front then whoooosh turn on the and between 3 and 4 (that's the trick to creat speed!) and then use your left foot to push your body to the right to have a macho present posture. There are still 5 figures after these, but I cannot recall and I don't know there proper names. The class challenged me a lot. I spent almost my attention on grasping the steps, and I didn't have spare energy for the technique. Since this class, I avoided going to Oksana's class except for her samba basic action ("Hot body action"). She was an amazing teacher, but the material was to advance for me. Even Matt D. has problem learning the steps.
In her "Spin like a Pro" class, she gave us:
Alemana to the right, spin, Alemana to the left, back check, spiral or double spiral (left turn), and then three rumba walks.
Freak, I can never do double spiral; even single spiral challenges my balance.
Victor's tango choreography:
Natural pivot (1, 2) into Ronde (3) (lady, right feet inside the gentleman and turn 180 and then land in a check position with right foot in the back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-St7DoJBnAY for natural pivot, and gentleman's right thigh has to be connected to lady's right thigh, so he can push with his thigh to notify the lady's timing for the rounde: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ut92V-ijs for Ronde into PP), gentleman does a pivot on the ball of his right foot (on 4; or you can choose to do a ronde as well), lady does twister on 5 'n' 6 (left-right-left), 7 'n' 8 be into promenade position. Fallaway whisk and slip pivot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Hpf1slOXw the asshole step that always confuses me), reverse turn on heel, contra check.
muhahahha, I think I was so distracted by learning the steps rather than technique.
In Taliat Tarsimov's "Heart of Energy", he introduced 7 knots of energy of human body:
1. butt connects to earth;
2. energy gathering in lower abdomen expresses creativity, and
3. in below the chest expresses confidence;
4. the knot in the upper rib cage connects to "life and emotion": if your chest is open, it shows positive emotions; if closed, it show negative feelings like sadness.
5. the knot on the throat is the "expression" knot, which makes sense because you talk with air vibration that channels through the neck.
6. the forehead is "focus and attention."
7. the top of the head connects to the universe
So if you gathers energy or use the muscle around the specific knot, you express different feelings, which is the philosophical interpretation of body language on top of the common physical movement. He made an example with spin turn in standard dance: i n the moment when the guy has to push forward and be on the ball or both feet, he opens up his rib cage area, and that expresses confidence and positive energy (life); the lady has to show and extends her body, and that move opens up her upper chest and expresses "life" and happiness.
In Anna Mikhed's "VW: How to Fly" class, she mentions the relative sway motion and wave altitude in natural turn and reverse turn: natural turn requires stronger swaying motion, and lady's head initiates her part of swaying. Reverse turn is almost flat in altitude, or it contains little swaying because the lady is on the right side of the gentleman, so it's a physical and mechanical obstacle that causes reverse turn to have less swaying.
In Taliat's jive class, he first introduced 4 dances in the jive dance family, from the slowest to the fastest in musicality: west coast, east coast, jive, and rock 'n' roll, which is kicking motion. He mentioned that there is no need to create new moves or to learn high level moves in jive; we can borrow moves from other dances (or "get inspiration" as he put it) to enrich jive, the relative young dance in Latin that was added into Latin dance in the 1950s. He gave a very interesting choreography that merges west coast swing, jive basic, and rock 'n' roll: (on lady's perspective)
sugar step right(1)-left(2) forward and right behind the left foot like a backward lock(3), right back(4), left back, right, left foot tap out (5 and 6, or "triple step") and split weight on both feet ('n'); sugar step right(7)- left(8), turn with a right foot rounde, left, right (1 'n' 2), swivel (left foot, right foot, 180 degrees in total) (3, 4), jive chasse basic (5 and 6) rock step (7, 8), chasse R to L, under arm turn, turn back, American spin, and then another chasse R to L, the lady and gentleman should face the same side because now he lets her go... (maybe it's called Whip throwaway. I don't know the figure name, but it looks like on 7 and 8 both guy and girl slowly collect their left feet to the right feet; the whole weight is on the right), then it's a figure looks like side cuban break, but with kicks (left front check, right foot kick once, right foot back, left side, right front, left kicks twice, left back, right side, left front, right taps on the back of the left, and then kicks backwards, taps; 3 times) left on toe crosses in the back of the right, halt for 2 beats, turn and partners face each other, back to jive basic.
I like the choreography, and I practice several times after that day.
Karina's hip is God's masterpiece; I never see human body can move like that. We did (I think) corte jaca, whisk, and cruzados. She told us to squeeze one side and prolong the other, and how you open the hip to the side and collect the foot in the back to the standing foot by squeezing your abdomen, and shoulder placement. The most important thing was that she reminded us, so did her teacher Victor Kanevsky, that there is no need to dance too hard when doing samba. Everything, every movement comes naturally if you use one joint at a time, and the joint will bring up the motion of the other joints. (Here I merge some concepts learnt in Taliat ("creating speed") and Kanevsky's ("arm as an extension of your back") classes.)
In fact, I cannot really describe how good her lesson was because a big part was based on her demonstration. Her demonstration was very clear and amazing because her moves were precise and huge.)
No comments:
Post a Comment