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.
- Controlling and strengthening feet required – an exercise she had taught me during our 1:1 privates. Good refresher and reminder.
- 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
- Repeating the movement on the same side (instead of switching from left to right or vice versa) – I really like this technique
- 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
- Leveraging control and strengthening to stretch out and slow down the shuffle
- 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.
- 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
- 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