Dance Smarter, Not Harder: Mastering Your West Coast Swing Skills!

Описание: How I'm improving my West Coast Swing skills with intentional training - by doing less, instead of trying to do more.

Isolating one or two skills only – so that you increase repetition and can provide feedback on what works with those skills and what doesn’t.

In this video, we’re not focused on fancy moves, complex patterns or performing to an audience or judges as if we’re simulating a spotlight competition dance.
Instead, we have two primary focuses.
1. The first is our communication through our connection.
This is difficult to see visually, which is why it’s so important to train. Amanda and I for the most part during this dance are dancing with a very light connection.
That means Amanda is very easy to lead with small impulses… and it also means if she decides to add or change anything in our dance, I can feel that through a slight change in the strength of the connection.
It also allows me to focus on Amanda’s weight changes. Where she is settled into her anchor or while she is still in motion.
For new dancers we can often observe a leader pulling their follower out of an anchor before they’re truly settled. So focus on connection and weight distribution is a great skill to train.
2. The second is musicality.
As a leader we can often be so overwhelmed by the challenge of variety that we lose ourselves in the music. We become pattern driven, chasing the next pattern and the next. This often becomes overwhelming and our mental capacity is reached and consumed by what we’re doing next.
When we over think, it’s impossible to allow room for our partner or the music. The dance itself then suffers as a result.
By removing the busyness of patterns or competition we have a new capacity to be ‘in the moment’ – enjoying the music and our partners movement.

This super simple dance then becomes a moment of shared partnership to the music. That was our goal, and we can take away important learning moments from it.

The results of training like this become more obvious, as you return to your usual dancing. I’ve noticed my overall dance capability improve. That includes: Partner focus, musicality, breath and pause, connection and responsiveness and personal movement.
These are the fundamental skills in West Coast Swing.

Let me know how you train with your dance partners. I’d love to hear them.

I'm dancing with Amanda @xcessivedancer on Instagram.
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Follow Amanda on Instagram   / xcessivedancer  

Visit my website https://stevefitz.com/