I recently made a video about the 5 Qualities of a Great Dancer. Now I want to talk about the process of how to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
Grab a piece of paper and a pen and go through these exercises with me!
The trick to this improving as a dancer thing is you have to be willing to be a human experiment, be unapologetically ready to make mistakes, explore, get weird, get uncomfortable, and just play.
4 Areas of Skill Development
Skill: vocabulary, technique and execution
Cultural and historical understanding of the dance
Style and character
Connection to the music and your partners
The practical approach we’re going to take to improving is called “closing the gap,” getting from where you are now to where you want to be.
Why Most People Fail
They don’t know what they want and they don’t take the time to figure it out.
Here’s a quick example: if you never had to worry about work or making money ever again, what would you do with your time? Do you have an answer?
If you had ten minutes today to practice, do you know what you would practice?
You need answers to these questions, so let’s do an exercise.
Here’s The Exercise
Let’s take 5-10 minutes and do this.
In one column on a piece of paper I want you to write your current state and in another column I want you to write your goal state – where you want to be. We’re going to talk about this for each of the four categories.
As I ask you questions write down your gut reactions your first instincts and let’s see what comes from it.
1. Skills
What skills do I need to get where I want to be? To help you figure this out you can talk to a teacher someone you look up to, a believable trusted source. If you’re one of our students we can help you with this in our online course.
2. Cultural Understanding
What don’t I understand about the culture or history that might help me better understand what I’m doing? Again, talk to a trusted source, pioneers of the dance, grab a book or watch a documentary.
A quick note on history: don’t take anyone at their word. Humans are good at creating stories and poor interpretations. Collect as many data points as possible, look for common patterns then decide who and what you think is most believable. Synthesize it and come out with your own opinion.
3. Style and Character
When a song comes on, do you feel good? Confident? Strong in how you express yourself? If not, ask yourself why 3x? Each time you ask “Why?” you’ll peel back another layer. Explore those different layers of explanation that you come up with for yourself.
When I watch myself dance am I happy with my presence and how I carry myself?
What’s missing?
Where do I feel a lack of confidence? Keep in mind the way you dress will affect your mood your energy and confidence, so make sure you explore that too.
4. Connection With the Music and Your Partners
When I’m dancing or watching myself dance am I connecting with the music and my partner?
Are there parts of a song or types of music I’m uncomfortable with or don’t know how to move to? What are they?
Are there moments with a partner where I’m confused or uncomfortable? What are they? Why?
Once you know where you’re at and where you want to go, you can work on closing that gap.
Without any idea it’s hard to make progress.
What Does Closing the Gap Look Like?
When someone is learning to dance the gap between what feels good and what looks good is really big.
A quick story…
When I was learning to breakdance as a teenager I would go down into my basement, put on a song and dance in front of a big mirror on the wall.
I did whatever felt good and I remember doing some moves that felt really cool. I was recording myself and was really excited to watch it to see what it looked like.
I hit stop. Put it on the TV and pressed play. As I watched it I got such a terrible feeling. Everything I did felt so good in the moment, but when I saw what it looked it wasn’t what I expected at all. It kinda sucked.
And that’s the gap.
The gap you want to close: what feels good and what looks good.
With practice, what feels good will start getting closer and closer to what looks good, and that’s what makes an amazing dancer.
They’ve programed their bodies so well through practice that they don’t have to think anymore. Whatever they do, however they express themselves, whatever feels good, now looks good.
To Close the Gap Do These Two Things…
1. Expose yourself to the dance enough that you can develop a taste for what you like and what you think looks good – the feel, the vibe, the energy that you enjoy.
This is important because you’re mentally setting your goal state, the details around the dancer you want to become.
Once you start to understand your tastes and your values, you can start focusing on your movements. As yourself as you try each skill or movement:
Does it feel good?
Does it feel like me?
Does it look good?
Why or why not?
At first don’t dismiss things too quickly. It’s easy to think, ‘Oh I’m not good at this move,’or ‘I don’t really like it.’ If you do dismiss something definitely come back to it in the future to re-explore it.
2. Film yourself to analyze your dancing and close the gap between what feels good and what looks good
If you’re not getting feedback, you’re holding your progress back.
It’s that simple. Filming yourself is the most important piece of the feedback and improvement.
The more self-aware you are, the sooner you can edit your movement, avoid bad habits, and close the gap.
One of our online students asked, “I need help breaking down what the vision of a good dancer is – can you help me?”
I want to talk about this because I don’t hear much discussion about this or teachers talking about it in their classes.
So, here are five characteristics that make up a good dancer and for each one I’m going to give you some questions to help you reflect on your own development.
Grab a piece of paper and a pen!
Note: I talk a lot about salsa and social dancing here on Dance Dojo, but in my opinion these characteristics apply to all forms of dance.
1. Skill: Your Vocabulary, Technique and Execution
This is what most people think about when they think of a good dancer. It’s what you do and how you do it.
One way to think about it is are you able to make the hard stuff look easy and make the easy stuff look so cool it looks hard?
Eventually you’ll reach the point where whatever you do that feels good also looks good you don’t have to think anymore, you just express yourself and it’s impressive .
Reflection questions
What skills am I missing to dance the way I want?
What’s the bottleneck? What’s holding me back from improving the most right now? Identify that and get to work.
Watch: How to Practice and Improve 10x Faster
Watch: How to practice Salsa Without a Partner
2. Cultural Understanding: The Stories Behind the Dance
This refers to your understanding of the significance of the movements you’re doing and the stories behind them. Only then, can make an educated decision on how you’ll interpret and express them.
Questions for reflection
Do I understand the history of the music I’m dancing to?
Do I know the creators and the stories behind the moves I’m doing?
Do the moves have a specific intention? If so how can I express or honor that?
Once you understand how a move is meant to be done historically, think of how you can flip it and make it your own, adding your own personality and style to it.
The goal here is to reduce your ignorance, increase your cultural intelligence and increase your ability of educated self-expression.
3. Style and Character: Exploring Your Tastes and Developing Presence
This is all about realizing and understanding how you like to move to music and feel within the context of the dance you’re doing.
You can be whoever you want. You don’t have to be the same character that you are every day on the street, at work or at home. You can be anyone who you want.
A perfect example is performing on stage. Beyonce is Beyonce every day of the year, but when she gets on stage she’s Sasha Fierce.
For me, when I was an early teenager and I was break dancing there were no studios and teachers to learn from, so I had to find information wherever I could on the internet, a video and then take that knowledge and try to figure things out myself by exploring deeply within myself. I think that’s what’s missing today especially in the social dance world.
A lot of people now just go to studios and classes and copy teachers without thinking on their own, without going inside themselves to ask questions or get creative.
Deeply exploring the stuff you learn from class is how you’ll learn how you like to move, how you react to music. Really going inside and discovering that for yourself will help you develop your own style and personality for dance.
Your style and character are defined by a lot of different choices:
how you like to dress
how you carry yourself
your energy: is it high, is it low, is it confident, calm, tranquil or timid? Maybe your funky maybe you’re really funny. In a partner dance, do you smell good? It’s about the moves you do and how you do them, the energy that you bring to that partner or the people you’re interacting with.
Everyone is in a constant evolution but you’ll realize you’re maturing when you get clear on your tastes, what you like, what you don’t like and why. You start getting more comfortable expressing yourself.
The ultimate test of style and character is this…
Imagine you’re in a theater a giant screen up on stage and you can only see the silhouette of the person behind it if you were dancing there where people know it’s you if you put Michael Jackson behind the screen oh they’ll know.
Questions for reflection
Am I just copying my teachers or am I going inside to explore myself, how I like to move, my energy, my personality?
The goal is to discover your tastes, your strengths and your unique way of expressing them.
4. Connection: The Musical and Human Interaction
A simple way I like to think about it is the feeling that you leave someone with or the feeling that someone leaves with you.
There’s three important pieces to this:
Connection to self and being comfortable with yourself. This goes back to the three previous characteristics. Are you comfortable and confident in what you know, who you are and how you like to move?
Connection to the music: your awareness and interpretation of it. aAre you letting the music inspire and guide the fun you’re having with yourself? With your partners?
Connecting with a partner: are you able to take your personal skills, style and way of interpreting the music and mix in a partner? This covers everything from the moves you choose to do, and more importantly, the moves you choose not to do (to match your partner’s skill level and style), as well as the dynamic and interaction you bring to your partner, your level of energy, and your empathy towards them.
Are you taking suggestions from her? Is she taking suggestions from? If you if you make a mistake how are you responding? Are you laughing it off? Is there a light-hearted playful energy? These are the important things with partner connection.
The most important thing to remember is this…
People won’t remember exactly what you say and do but they will remember remember how you make them feel.
That goes for your partners as well as the people watching you.
Amazing dancers take you through the highs and lows of a song, using everything they know to express how they feel inside, often surprising you and themselves in the process while creating a completely unique and amazing experience.
It’s unique because they’ve discovered who they are, how they like to move, and how they like to interpret the music. Only by doing the deep exploration for themselves are they able to then share it with the world.
Questions for reflection
When I hear music am I able to just let go and dance?
Am I comfortable expressing myself to the music that I hear?
What is easy or hard when interacting with a partner?
Where am I strong?
Where am I struggling, and why? and lastly number five
5. Fun is the Key
Yes, training and improving can be difficult, and not always fun, but if the majority of the time you’re not enjoying yourself it could be a clue that your efforts are not coming from the right place.
When you watch an amazing dancer get lost in a song you feel their sense of joy and you get captivated in the moment with them. You feel what they feel because their expression is coming from such a pure place.
So remember why you started all this in the first place, to express yourself from the inside out and have fun.
That’s my quick take on the five characteristics that make a great dancer. I hope these thoughts and questions can help you in your own growth!
What’s Next?
Watch/read: The Process of Becoming a Great Dancer
When you’re looking to acquire new salsa skills, whatever they might be, we recommend that you practice on time.
The issue is that you can play a slow salsa song and it still might be too fast for you, especially if you’re a new dancer or somebody who is trying something very challenging, like intricate partner work.
If you decide to count out loud it still mind end up being too fast. Trust us.
If you’re working on something hard, sometimes you need to go super slow.
So you can try counting “Quick-quick-sloooow.”
And if that’s still too fast, try counting “Quick-quick-STOP,” and literally stop your movement to give yourself time to think before you act.
Why Counting Out Loud Is So Important
If neither of you are counting and there’s no song playing it’s easy to get confused. Both of you can do exactly the right steps but at different times and, as you know, that won’t feel right. Sometimes what’s going wrong is simply your timing.
Counting out loud gives your partner a metronome, the same metronome that you’re using, so they’re not confused and you can both dance on time.
If both of you are confident you’re dancing on the same time, then that’s one less thing to worry about. One less mistake you can make.
Recording yourself dancing is a great way for you to be able to spot areas of weakness and things you’d like to work on.
Cultivating self awareness is key to improving faster.
Film Yourself to Fix Bad Habits
When we’re dancing everything happens so fast. It’s all a blur and we’re not aware of our body sometimes, so when you have video recording of it you’re able to play it back and spot those things that you would otherwise miss while you’re dancing.
For example, the first time I ever saw myself on video it was horrifying, but also a very good experience at the same time. It was horrifying because I thought I was a superstar but it turned out I had some really weird habits.
I was bopping my head like crazy, I was doing some weird flicky foot thing and my immediate reaction was thinking ‘Oh my god….’ That was my ego talking and I wanted to come up with all these excuses as to why I was doing it, “Oh yeah, I was so tired, I just got off work…” or whatever the excuses might have been.
But put your ego aside and just look at what the video recording tells you and go from there.
It’s a process that we all go through.
Once you’re able to identify a couple of things like, “Hey, this arm movement doesn’t really suit me,” you just clean it up.
The whole goal is to become more aware of things you do, so you can adjust them if you want to.
If you don’t film yourself, you’re going to develop some bad habits and that are going to be hard to get rid of later.
Film Yourself to See Your Progress
Record a video when you start, or right now, and then once a month or every few months to see your progress. Looking back at how far you’ve come is super motivating. It will keep you going.
It’s tempting to delete the videos, but you’ll be so glad you kept them so you can look at them later. We actually enjoy seeing videos, even if it’s just a few years ago, of us doing silly things. It’s just part of the process, so enjoy the ride, and accept where you’re at.
Accept what the video tells you and then work on that stuff. Believe me, you will progress.
If you don’t record yourself dancing it’s going to take you much longer to improve. And, trust us, you’ll wish you did it sooner so you can look back at how far you’ve come.
