Category: Dance

  • Soul Sync Workshop & Jam

    On Friday evening, August 22, I last minute minute to sign up for a workshop hosted by Alba and Princess, the workshop centered on freestyle dance: freestyle development, introspection, and connection. I was motivated to attend the workshop for a couple reasons. First, I simply wanted to dance, to move my body — not train — but just connect with myself. And having been to their previous workshop, felt the workshop’s environment would be a great atmosphere for turning inwards. Second, I consider myself an active member of the London freestyle house dance community and when I see other members of the community — Alba in this case — I want to show up and support them.

    Now, like any 3 hour workshop, there are a myriad of lessons we were taught and I want to enumerate a few exercises that resonated with me, ones that I’ll likely incorporate into my own dance practice

    A few exercises to takeaway

    • The eyes track what body part you are moving
    • Strike a pose and keep your arms in a fixed position while other parts of the body (e.g. torso, legs) move around those arms
    • Set intention with the eyes
    • During a round, breathe through the nose, then through the mouth, then hold the breathe

    Of the three, I would say that the most profound impact was the third exercise: setting intention with the eyes. Presently, I’m recognizing (and I’ve also been told in my feedback) that when dancing, often I am concentrating so intently that I end up (not intentionally, but as a byproduct of focus) hold tension in my upper body and my neck. And while I am lately directly releasing tension by actively relaxing, by adding a bounce, I also noticed that by simply intentionally directing my gaze on some part of the room (e.g. ceiling light, door knob, hinge on the door) that when I end up performing a turn, there’s much less tension being held in my body, including my neck.

    Coming in a close second is the strike a pose and maintaining a fixed point with the arms. This was the first time I’ve both heard of this exercise and attempted it and believe that I can probably apply this concept into my own freestyle rounds and as a constraint, the exercise can actually help unlock some creativity as well.

    Finally, Alba had shared an exercise less focused on composition and more on increasing one’s awareness of their breathe. During this particular exercise, we were prompted to dance and then she would cue us to either 1) breathe only through our nose 2) inhale through nose but exhale via the mouth 3) hold the breathe. I noticed in both my movement and noticed while observing others that, when we start off breathing through the nose and transition to exhaling through the mouth, the movements become more elongated. And another observation is that I likely sometimes hold my breathe because it became obvious that when holding tension, the quality of the movements become more staccato, more jerky.

    Summary

    The overarching theme of the workshop was what I would consider the double “C”: choice and commitment. For all the exercises (ones listed above and even the ones I didn’t share) revolve around these concepts. The two are essential ingredients, in my opinion. Sometimes, I myself make a move in my freestyle dance but it’s often not conscious choice. And as far as commitment of that choice, I think it influences perceived conviction — confidence — communicating that although you may not know where the movement choice may lead you, you’re confident enough to commit.

  • On taking ownership of dance and “chunking” during practice session

    Last night, I practiced at home for about 45-50 minutes, from the comfort of my own living room. I approached the solo practice session with some grace, my body still sore from the Tuesday’s Training session as well as the hip-hop class (my second one, from John Graham). Despite the muscle soreness, I was able to move my body and the intentions I set out last night were to practice the following:

    • Alternate rhythm for pas de bourree – over the past (3) private dance lessons I’ve taken with Francesa, we’ve been practicing switching between the kick and snare. One way to transition is by applying a “1+2+3” rhythmic pattern. So on top of throwing this (pas de bourree) rhythmic pattern in my round, I also wanted to incorporate an additional pattern “1+2+3+4”, followed by a drag and sweep movement. I would say that for these three “chunks”, I’m now in the skill execution phase and would like to practice deliberately injecting them into my freestyle rounds
    • Double time rhythm (on beat) transition to “On Time” – I’ve struggled with dancing double time because I had found it challenging to maintaining a bounce, my internal metronome. But it appears that the act of practicing (despite not immediately getting the movement) has someone reduced the difficulty of the exercise
    • The train movement – I really love the aesthetic (and sort of the sensation/feeling in my body) when executed by others and only up until recently do I feel my body (more specifically: my hips) can handle the load and so now I am practicing injecting the train into my freestyle rounds

    In addition to practicing each of the individual tasks above, I am taking Jo-L’s advice and attempting to “chunk” them together. That is, when I’m able to (without errors) consistently perform the “chunk”, I then try execute a subsequent chunk and build a string of chunks together. In addition to stitching chunks together, he had also suggested that when errors or faults show up, to pause in the moment, instead of continuing executing the move. The reason being that we may unintentionally repeating those faults.

  • House Dance Analysis Homework

    Was given a task to analyze some of my favorite dancers and attempt to articulate what specifically it is about their dance that inspires me. Although there are two more dancers I’d like to analyze, I’ll start with one of my favorites: Yugson. Over next few days, will update this page with some others.

    Yugson

    One of my favorite rounds that I used to watch on repeat

    Without music

    • Explosiveness – from soft toe taps to big movement
    • Arms seems quite relaxed and not flailing around but with some intention and direction
    • Moves the groove from footwork to upper body and back down
    • Again, small subtle movements to big explosive movements in chest
    • Seems very grounded and “heavy” in the feet
    • With the footwork able to do “double time” and then transition in and out of that rhythm
    • Controlled turns
    • Can see texture changes from hard and sharp to “flowy”

    With music

    • He’s able to accent the “clack”
    • Wow, at the end of the round, the musicality of taking the heavy bass rhythmic pattern
    • On his loose legs, its even more obvious with music that he’s accenting certain parts of the song and not just doing the standard loose legs
    • Even more obvious now he’s able to take the “1 and” sound

    Traits to take away

    • Turning
    • Use of hands in the farmer
    • Grounded
    • Footwork

    Criticisms

    • Lack of using space
  • 1:1 Dance questionnaire

    Below are some questions (along with my answers) asked by Francesa in preparation for our upcoming 1:1 dance private scheduled this Friday. Also included a couple of my favorite dance clips that inspire me.

    • What are 3 house steps that you are comfortable with and use frequently?
      • Pas de bourree
      • Loose Leg / Chase
      • Cross Step
      • Shuffle
    • What are 3 house steps that you struggle with or tend to avoid?
      • Farmer
      • Skate
      • Train
      • Sidewalk, Salsa (and others that I’ve practiced that sometimes don’t make appearances during rounds/sessions etc)
    • Can you identify what in particular you struggle with for those steps?
      • Falling off beat (exclusively with the farmer)
      • Not quite aesthetically where I want it to be (Skate / Train)
      • Inability (or have not yet attempted really) to convey different rhythms beyond the foundational, syncopated rhythmic pattern
      • Develop a groove (where I doing more dancing than steps) that I can dance and intertwine these steps with
      • Often forget that I’ve even trained these steps and thus rarely come out
    • Who are 3 house dancers who inspire you or whose style you enjoy?

      So difficult to name just three so going to toss out a few more at the risk of violating the constraint in the question 😊
      • Brian Green
      • Kwame
      • Yugson
      • Rick Indigo
      • Shan S
      • J Soul Zuberi
      • Rachad
    • Can you identify what is about those dancers that you appreciate?
      • One common theme is the beautiful simplicity in their movements
      • Ability to dance both masculine and feminine energy
      • Laid back while also energetic and crisp and clear
      • Versatility and their ability to adapt to different types of (house) music
      • While the steps are “beautiful”, the ability to gracefully move other parts of the torso
    • Is there anything in particular you’re really keen to get out of this initial session?
      • Curious to hear your observations from the past 3 weeks of Kev’s Kitchen
      • Incorporating double time without looking or feeling so robotic
      • Turns and space without looking robotic / stiff in the torso
      • From the wide array of “elements” (e.g. levels, space, rhythm, musical, isolation, footwork) how to manage training routine and practice and develop them over both the short and long term
  • Dance, discomfort and making mistakes

    Lots of dance activities going on lately and wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey.

    Choreography volunteer as a dancer for video shoot promotion

    Last week, Francesa messaged me over Instagram, re-sharing an Instagram story, where Vi (an elite dancer from Japan currently located in London, teaching House and Locking and Hip-Hop) requested volunteers for dancers to come learn his choreography that would be filmed as a promotional video for his upcoming class:

    I received this message late on June 7th, the night before the shoot itself. First, I really appreciated Francesa sharing this with me and the fact that I was even on her radar. Second, I experienced mixed emotions, excitement, joy, anxiety. Excitement that I could be involved in something as cool as this, given that I just entered the dance scene about two years ago. Young Matt would’ve been so elated (I myself now, at 37, am elated). And as far as anxiety, I had thoughts like:

    “I’ve choked before during choreography, what if it happens again?”

    “I’ve never taken a class for Vi … what if his choreography is beyond my level?”

    “Should I just hide in the back? But what if only a couple people show up and there’s nowhere to run?”

    Despite having these thoughts, I not only signed up, but forwarded the screenshot to a couple friends, one of which (Aubrey) enlisted herself as well. Part of the reason (a big one), right around the same time of seeing Vi’s announcement, I had read a series of Jo-L’s stories on Instagram. In a nutshell, he basically stated that while we all know that discomfort and mistakes are part and parcel of growth, despite recognizing that reality cognitively, we tend to make decisions (unknowingly) that keep us in a state of comfort. Though I do believe that I am growing and putting myself out there, I definitely knew that signing up for Vi’s choreography was putting myself in discomfort.

    Not only that, but I had somewhat other anxiety reducing thoughts such as:

    • Even if I choke, so what? You are still whole
    • Everyone messes up sometimes
    • The pros (challenge, learning, growth) outweigh the cons (embarrassment)

    In the end, I did it and thrived and nailed the choreography. Not only that, instead of lurking in the back, I positioned myself up front, no where to hide. Finally, even if I did flop, I would’ve been proud of myself either way.

    Some takeaways

    • Starting the loose legs on on the “2” (instead of the “1”) – Almost always, I start the loose legs at the start of a bar. It’s quite common for us (house) dancers to begin our movement on the first downbeat. However, Vi started the choreography with performing a little hop on the “1” and the on the “2”, starting the loose legs. This change of timing is something I’ll take away as a learned lesson
    • Tilting torso to the left while hopping on the right before the shuffle – this was an unusual move for me, one that I’ve yet to perform before. When he demonstrated the move initially, I could not at first identify what I was doing different when comparing my figure in the mirror to his. Eventually, I paused and watched carefully and noticed that he was not rotating his trunk and instead, facing forwards and only ever so slightly stretching the top left of his body
    • Applying a different variation to the tic tac toe movement – I took away a new rhythm and a variation that I like and will drill and incorporate into my freestyle (I did already actually, during Kev’s Kitchen a couple days ago, which I’ll blog about shortly)

    Challenges during choreography

    • Salsa step and then hop
    • Additional “stutter” steps between pas de bourree transition into the salsa step
  • London House Dance Workshop Summary

    I attended a house dance workshop lead by Samantha Mavinga. The workshop took place in London last Sunday on May 25th and ran for 3 hours and though I’ve attended other workshops in the past, this one felt particularly special:

    • Trained with Mavinga previously in 1:1 and so I’m familiar with her work
    • I DJ’d for the self-exporation and cypher portion of the workshop
    • I created a recap video using my DSLR

    Exercises revolving around the “Shuffle” movement

    We started the workshop with a breathing exercise, and was asked to envision (while our eyes were closed) of our safe space. Following this tapping in exercise, she revealed that we’d be focusing on a single move throughout the entire workshop: the shuffle.

    I love the fact that we focused on a single foundation move because she’s providing us with a template that can be further applied to other foundational moves. It’s like teaching us how to fish.

    1. Controlling and strengthening feet required – an exercise she had taught me during our 1:1 privates. Good refresher and reminder.
    2. Rhythm patterns – simple, syncopated, double time, 1/16th notes. I was familiar with this and actually had practiced this rhythmic pattern not only with other foundation moves (e.g. pas de bourree, cross step) but also had practiced it a bit with shuffle as well
    3. Repeating the movement on the same side (instead of switching from left to right or vice versa) – I really like this technique
    4. Combining shuffle with roger rabbit – though she combined the shuffle with roger rabbit, taking components from each one, I imagine so many opportunities where I can combine shuffle with other moves like pas de bourree and cross step
    5. Leveraging control and strengthening to stretch out and slow down the shuffle
    6. Moving up and down across the four levels – I really struggle with transitioning from level 3 (the penultimate level) and level 4, on the ground.
    7. Taking up space by traveling with the movement – I got some nice feedback from her that I was prematurely kicking out (i.e. initiating the shuffle) the non jumping leg
    8. Transition between Peter Paul on left side to right side – lovely move and transition and feels unnatural to me and will require lots of practice in a slower tempo

  • On Practicing Footwork

    Very rarely, even after 2 years of dancing house, do I throw in footwork heavy dance moves like heel toe or farmer. However, I’ve recently been motivated for forward for several reasons:

    1. About 2.5 weeks ago, I learned how to (finally) farmer on beat – historically I’ve been so focused on how the move looks and the overly focused on the aesthetic of the move. However, during my dance lesson with Chiara (MASH), she demystified the movement by providing me a different target, which was the rhythm of the move.
    2. Identified what specifically I’ve disliked about the aesthetic of my heel toe – often I’ll re-watch my videos and struggle to pinpoint what it is specifically that I don’t like about the aesthetic of the heel toe movement. But while watching a series of YouTube tutorials, I recognized that it’s not my hip movement, it’s not the jack: it’s the (lack of) dorsiflexion in the base foot. Up until now, despite having both the flexibility and mobility, I have not been loading base foot. When I do deliberately shift my weight and dorsiflex, the consequence of that the opposite leg (the one performing heel toe) extends further away from the body, making it more obvious that I am actually performing a heel toe movement. Secondarily, I’m now feeling the burn in my thighs. So much of dance, I believe, is body mind connection and awareness.

    The heel toe practice was inspired by watching the following YouTube tutorial

    What I like about the above YouTube tutorial is the way he constructs the drills. It’s a reminder to:

    1. Start at a slower tempo
    2. Start with doing the move 8 counts, followed by 4 counts, followed 2 counts
    3. Practice looping the movement over and over and over again and see how many loops you can do without making an error

    One thing missing from the above video that I decided to inject into my practice is after drilling the heel toe movement, try and connect it with other moves I am familiar with. As you can see in the first video above, I transition in and out of heel toe and the farmer. While it’s great to practice the move in isolation (which has its purpose for refining the movement), it’s easy for me to forget why I am drilling which is of course: to dance.

  • Tuesday House Dance Training Recap (May 13, 2025)

    Who attended?

    Elena, Aubrey, Jimmy, Alex

    What went well?

    I really liked this exercise I came up with, where each person chooses a rhythm in their own mind, danced their rhythm, then ever other person in the group attempts to guess their rhythm. This was fun, challenging, and engaging. Perhaps next time increase difficulty by adding music?

    What did I learn?

    The warm up exercise — where we each take turns in taking a single foundation and adding a variation — seems to cause all of us to drop out of sync. And I don’t think this has to do with the (lack of) technical skills of people in the group because from my perspective, everyone is seasoned (even more experienced than me).

    That the prompt of “continuous flow” seems to significantly shift my dance in a positive direction during my rounds. This reminder tends to be given by Elena, who was there the first time Jake had prompted me and we all witnessed a radical change in my movement during my cypher round.

    Feedback

    • Elena asked if we could integrate the upper body and lower body (instead of two separate circuits) workouts

    Some action items

    • Upgrade the rhythm software to toggle or disable the metronome
    • Upgrade the rhythm software to do 8 counts, where two different 4 counts combined
    • Want to have more self exploration time
    • Think about doing repetitions instead of only time – multiple folks tend to like to hit the target. On one hand, yes, give the people what they want. And second, curious if folks can continue challenging themselves. Perhaps we can have both?

  • An analytical mind in the context of dance – friend or foe? Perhaps both?

    These days, I’m learning how to work with this vessel, my body. I’m constantly weighing the balance between acceptance and change and generally speaking, I sometimes tend to over-index on changing myself (in spirit of growth). In spirit of leveraging the way I am wired, I’m practicing leveraging my analytical mind in the context of dance. Often, we’re told as dancers to “shut off the mind” because thinking too much during dance can in fact impede your ability to move. This is true in many contexts and situations.

    But how can I honor the part of my brain that is analytical? This has been on my mind lately especially after my 1:1 dance lesson with Jevan, who nonchalantly said “What if [having an analytical mind] can be your superpower [in dance]?”

    Identifying rhythmic challenges during dance class

    One of the many benefits of attending dance class is that they can sometimes reveal and help you become aware of weaknesses, or opportunities for growth. And last week, during Jevan’s class that I attend ritually, I noticed that I was struggling just a tad with identifying rhythmic patterns that were a bit more complex than the typical “1 and 2 and 3 and 4”. For instance, when he shouted (something along the lines of) “4 and 2 3”. At the same time, I struggled to clap the rhythm while dancing at the same time.

    Writing a software program to practice identifying rhythmic patterns

    Following the class, the next morning, I had the thought to do some ear training (similar to how when I took singing and guitar lessons for years, I’d practice singing major and minor scales) by writing my own little piece of software.

    The command line program essentially generates a random rhythm and repeatedly plays the rhythm with kick drums and high hats. I for now initially constrained the program to only play 8 notes — 1 bars where each note is an eighth note — which means there’s a total of 256 rhythmic patterns. This constraint seems sufficient (for now) to train my ears since doubling the number of bars — from 1 to 2 bars, a total of 16 notes — would increase the total number of rhythmic patterns to 65,536.

    Implementation details

    I define an 8-bit map and then generate all the possible computations. Then during each invocation, a random rhythmic pattern is chosen. For each bit in the bit-map, if the bit is flipped, a sound will be played. The type of sound depends. If the bit’s position sits either any of the whole notes (i.e. “1 2 3 4”), then a kick drum sound plays. In contrast, if the bit’s position is on any of the “and” (

    Anyways, for 8 counts, there’s a 8-bit map, each bit representing an 8th note. if a bit — possible value is zero or one — is set (i.e: one), then a sound will be played. On the 1 2 3 4, sound of a kick drum. On any of the “and” a high hat.

    1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0

    This rhythm, converts to words, equates to:

    “ONE … TWO and … and FOUR”

    Of course this is ear training but I am incorporating this into my practice. It’s a tool. It’s not meant to replace listening to music. But I am finding that being able to identify the rhythm with the program seems to improve my ability to identify rhythmic patterns of certain instruments in real music tracks.

    One other addition I made to the program. Since it can be challenging to identify when the bar starts — since I initially only played a kick drum and high hat — the program always play a metronome sound, a “click”, on the one. Eventually, I made relax this and remove it.

  • Juste Debout: 1 month of training for 1 minute of dancing

    Juste Debout: 1 month of training for 1 minute of dancing

    Tomorrow, I compete as a dancer in the infamous international street style dance competition — Juste Debout — and for the past 1 month, my 2 vs 2 partner (Aubrey) and I been consistently training together. Every week her and carved out 1.5 hours, time spent in a studio practicing. And now, all this comes to a crescendo in about 24 hours, when we take the stage in London and dance for a grand total of 60 seconds.

    This past month has been quite a journey. High highs. Low lows.

    And along the way, I felt a bit stuck with my dance, hitting an invisible plateau. Despite moving my body more, I ironically felt more disconnected with my dance, I felt a bit more performative, a bit more robotic.

    Thankfully, I rode out this anxiety and frustration and ultimately, the universe had my back. During this period of disconnection with myself, I happened to have one off dance private with Jevan. And during our 60 minute lesson, he fundamentally shifted the way I approach my dance. Up until that point, my focus and intention was, in this order:

    1) Demonstrate I can dance the fundamental and foundational moves in this style we call house dance and

    2) Sprinkle some of my own personality into the movement.

    However, he had me invert the two, prioritizing dance first and that unlocked something in me and I’m now back to enjoying dance a bit more. My dance rounds — when looking back at the footage — have much more of me in it. There’s more clarity. More conviction.

    But I digress.

    Over the past month, I documented our training journey and below are four short clips of each week.

    Training Week 1

    Training Week 2

    Training week 3

    Training week 4