Matt Chung

London House Dance Workshop Summary

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by

Matt Chung
in

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