What is Freestyling?
Freestyle dancing is a style of physical movement, freeing your movement by using all your body and just flow with the music , that isn’t choreographed or planned ahead of time. It occurs in many genres, including those where people dance with partners. By definition, this kind of dance is never the same from performance to performance, although it can be done formally and informally, sometimes using some sparse choreography as a very loose outline for the improvisation. People usually like it not only because it is fun and good exercise, but also because it is a form of confidence-boosting self-expression. This style has been around for thousands of years and is still changing, but people usually think of genres such as hip hop when they hear the term — these categories didn’t really start to develop until the late 1970s.
How can I learn and improve freestyle dance?
There is always a space to dance better. But what if all ideas are tested and you want to try new ways. Here are my tips for you to experiment in practice.
1.Learn as many dance styles as possible.
There are two stereotypes on that point:
- a dancer can be good only in one style;
- if I try a new style I must be good at that too.
The key is understanding your goal - to improve your freestyle or choreography, gain new techniques, upgrade specific skill etc. For example, I am a hip-hop dancer and I want to add more power in movements, so I can work on that with same practices or go to learn some popping techniques and add them. Each dance style has unique techniques and specifics that can help your freestyle to grow.
Also, different dance styles will give you a more broad view of dance.
You can approach dance from allot of different angles aтв a result new ideas can appear or you can overcome your old dance barriers.
2.Open yourself to new movements.
It’s important to remember that dance was created from an inspiration of feeling and of movement. Before dance existed, the inspiration for a dancer was not "a dance". But the beauty of movement around them and the feeling of music and emotion.
Sometimes it is very important to go back to this and search not for inspiration in basic dance movement but in other things of life. Taking inspiration from a movement itself or even something else will help our freestyle dance to form in new ways.
3.Making your weakness your strength.
For me, it was a game-changing moment when I realized this.
The fact is that all dancers face this problem - we use the same dance movements and over again when we freestyle or even create a choreography.
There is one nice practice that helps to handle it.
Try to reflect on your own movement while you dance because you notice that you do the same dance move, concept or combo. And use it like a trigger for a new movement. So the point is to create 5-7 variations out off the dance move that you keep repeating. In this way, you create wider dance vocabulary and are able to make a strength out of your weakness.
4. Use a dance character.
Character is an essence of your personality, feelings, ideas, and behavior.
When you express character in dance, you bring these aspects through your movement.
You can express at least two kings of character in dance:
- your personal one “an attitude”
- or another person’s character (like in acting).
If your own character is clear, so what about another person’s? The funny and enjoying part is that you can use any character you want - Cartoon, Tv, animals or even real personalities.
Taking such a character can force you to create moves that you could not when dancing like yourself. For example, take a puppet, robot, drunk man, monkey - whatever inspires you.
A character makes a dance more interesting, deeper, much more original and it’s pure fun!.
5. Add more …. (hands, head, legs etc.)
How to use more any of your body parts? One of the ways is to use real-life actions.
We use our hand naturally when we speak, so you can use gestures to translate whatever your body or mid trying to say. Or you can imagine some daily life acts like playing football, eating or driving a car. And this concept will help your body to express an idea with a needed body part.
6. Work on coordination.
First of all, a dance should feel natural and body parts should be the extension of one other.
If the focus lies in movement with the legs, find the motion of your arms, head, shoulders etc. that seems to move naturally with the movement of the legs.
Plus, as we all know, there at least 5 basic directions body parts can move in -Together - Opposites - One after another - One moves other - One triggers other.
So, mixing these directions with one another creates a very complex and advanced coordination of dance movements.
7. Don’t forget about grooves and flow.
Groove is a motion that comes from an authentic feeling. Staying in the groove means staying in the music.
Groovy dancer is the one who to express the pace and rhythms through feeling. Like in jazz music, dance groove was also created through a connection between the Bass and the Drum.
The most common description of it in hip-hop is as a repetitive motion to the rhythm of the music.
Flow is much more complicated and discussed topic. Some dancers say it is the transition from one place to another. Or the transition from one movement to another.
Flow can be used as another name for someone personal style as well.
But for me, “Flow” is a connection within the music too it provides to the harmony of the music and a dancer.
8. Change your practices.
Albert Einstein's famous line:
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."