DanceAbility Tips: Keep Going With It!

When you are in the midst of learning a dance combination in class and you get stuck because you don’t know or can’t get the next step—do you stop?

It’s very important to not rehearse stopping when you don’t know a step in a combination. Keep going with it, even if you have to improvise or keep going in the direction that the next step goes. This way, you won’t be practicing a stop as the next step.

In the attempt to grasp everything in a dance combination it makes it easier (and much more enjoyable) to approach like a puzzle, a game. When it’s not your turn to dance on the floor, you go over it and over it on the sidelines, making sure to not get in the path of the other dancers.

Get the first part—up until the point where you have it well. Remember it’s just a game, don’t get frustrated with yourself, get the next piece of the puzzle, put it in there.

If you do have a point where you get confused, when you’re asked for any questions on the combination, ask your question. Teachers love questions! It doesn’t reflect badly on a student, it communicates interest in getting the combination down.

By honing this ability with combinations, you start to improve on your coordination skills. You see a dance step, duplicate and then put it into action. The more times you do it the better you get at it!

A combination is simply the basic steps that we learn and go over in Boot Camp—all put together, one after the other, to a piece of music. After you learn the basics,  you can identify them put into different sequences. A game, see? After getting the choreography down you clean it up, get it neater, and get the moves down so the form starts to look more aesthetic to you. Then you’re really humming!