Ways To Level Up Your Dancing
At Myriad, we know that dancers are always looking for ways to get better. While practice does make perfect – there’s no substitute for showing up to class – there’s only so much time you can spend dancing in a given day. So if you’re looking for some other ways to improve, here’s two different ways to level up your dancing!
Watch Other Dancers
Hop on YouTube or Netflix and watch some dance movies or instructional videos. Or even get some tickets to a dance show or live ballet (there’s some pretty awesome productions out there). Pay close attention to the dancers and the choreography. Take note of their body alignment, posture, and technique. Think about the things you like and want to emulate and incorporate in your own dancing. Plus, watching great dancers can be great motivation to keep practicing and working hard to level up your own dancing.
Practice Facial Expressions
When we dance, we’re using the movement of our bodies to tell stories and express emotions. But we’re also using our faces to communicate! Try practicing different faces in the mirror at home. Becoming skilled at having the right facial expression will seriously level up your dancing performances. A good exercise for this is to imagine and imitate each of the Seven Dwarves – Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, Happy, Dopey, Grumpy, and Bashful. Try cycling through expressing different emotions. If you exercise at a gym with mirrors, try maintaining certain facial expressions – for example, a peaceful smile – while exerting yourself physically. If you’ve got music playing, pick an expression for each song and maintain it throughout. This will help you when it comes time to maintain the proper facial expression during the rigors of dance.
Pretty simple, right? But that’s what makes both of these so effective! And you can practice both whenever you’ve got free time!