musicality made simple: responding with your body.
**If you haven’t completed the first set of exercises on becoming aware of change in music, don’t try this one.
So once we are able to tune into the music and hear the changes, let’s talk about doing something with those changes! Ideally, we would like to respond to the changes in music with our bodies. The ability to both interpret and respond to the music will take your dance to that next level. These aren’t simply turn patterns, this is grown up stuff for big boys and girls.
Exercise 1 – Changing steps to the music
Play a Salsa or Timba song that you find particularly inspiring. Perform a forward and back step with correct timing. Listen carefully. As soon as you sense a change in the music, big or small, change your step pattern to a side to side step. As soon as you sense the next change, go back to your forward and back step. Stay on beat! Do this for the entire song, back and forth, using those two step patterns or any kind of body movement. It really doesn’t matter, as long as you respond to the music with your body.
This is a simple exercise that only prepares your anatomy to respond to change. This doesn’t take into an account the feeling, texture, mood or essence of the song, or even your feelings. It’s just a mechanical start.
Play around with this simple exercise for about 30 minutes and I promise you will begin to look at dance a different way. You will begin feeling the music at a deeper level and both you and others will notice it. If you are a non-Paso reader and you have become a “Salsa-bot” this is the first step in giving you human organs.
Next post I will talk about bringing emotion into the equation.
Related posts:
- musicality made simple: becoming aware of change.
- 3 steps to quickly boost your rhythm
- before you paint your body
- salsa. the good ‘ol american way.
