How I got ‘better’ at arms and
how I made a game of it for my students!
By Kashani of Mas Uda Dancers
As promised last time, here’s a confession about my hands/arms in dance – I was REALLY bad for a long time!
Two things eventually helped me.
One was a photo of me taken during a performance. I was doing some nice sway/sways, following the movement with my arms, but WHAT’S that THING hanging at the end of my arm??? Can it be ---- a floppy hand???? Well, yes, it was most definitely a floppy hand. I made a mental note to myself that I must DO something about my hands – add energy to them!!
The second thing that helped me with my hands, once I realized that they were a weak point for me, happened when I was at Oasis Dance Camp on Vashon Island. Cassandra was teaching and she divided the group into smaller groups and gave each group a specific area to work on. I knew I was doomed when the group I was in was assigned ‘hands & arms’. What would I do? Well, she put the music on and each dancer worked with JUST the item assigned and as I focused on my hands and arms I found myself doing lots of things that I’d seen other dancers do. Not only that, but since I was ONLY allowed to use my hands/arms, the movements I did with them took on much more emphasis – I WATCHED them and CONCENTRATED on making the look nice. They had to convey all the feeling of the music, since they were the ONLY thing I could use. This exercise made me realize that I had plenty of moves in my repertoire that use hands and arms and I COULD just stop, strike a pose and do hands or arms without losing my connection to the music. As a matter of fact, having JUST my hands and arms engaged sometimes FURTHERS the connection to the music.
So – the game? Well, I have my handy dandy index cards, of course! I take a stack of cards, enough for each of my students, with a few extras and I write different parts of the body on them. My list includes: arms/hands, torso, hips, ribs/shoulders/head, Feet (patterns of footwork) (NO body embellishments), and, of course, a ‘your choice’ card! Individual teachers – you can switch some of these around and recombine them in different ways. I also include fingers on some of the hands/arms cards.
Students pick a card blindly and I put on a piece of music (usually I try to take something out of my CD case without looking at what it is, so that’s it’s really a surprise for all of us. Then we each dance ‘our card’ for however long the piece of music lasts.
Naturally, after we’re done, we share what we learned. There are always dancers who are surprised at how much they could do with one area of their body, once they were FORCED to concentrate on it. This enhances their dancing skills.
If you have any questions or comments you can contact me via http://www.mas-uda.com/ and put Teaching Tips in the subject line. I do ask you to please not add my e-mail to any distributions lists. If you’re not e-mail accessible, please send any comments or questions to me at: Kashani, c/o J. Berube, 5840 Stellar Lane SE, Lacey, WA 98513-4758. I hope this column will turn into a wonderful opportunity for teachers to compare notes and for students to think of new ways to approach learning.