Neo swing dance~2 yr freestyle progress~Make the Swing Great Again by Deladap & Wolfgang Lohr

Описание: Dear dance diary,

Note to self: holding the iPod while dancing isn’t a good look. Also when one light up shoe dies and the charger isn’t in your bag, let it go. Stop wasting time going to the car and looking in your bag 3 more times. Just let it go and keep dancing. Waste of time. Anyway, I decided to post this even though the video I just posted a few days ago is the same song. But I had forgotten about this one during all the holiday fuss and travels so after seeing it again I’m putting it up anyway. The song is so good I could dance to it a million times! So I’m trying to do that thing where you travel a lot with certain steps so it looks like you’re gliding across the floor but in this video I’m still too bouncy and I don’t get very far😂 How does JSM turn the Charleston into this magical illusion of footwork that he is going all over the place so smoothly? It takes everything in me to get the running man half a step away from where i was and I am not a magical illusion of traveling footwork! Im a jumping bull in a china shop. And again, my arms? Can I get them to cooperate for more than 12 counts? No. I’ll get there. Until then I hope they dont look as cringy to others as they do to me. I also have to give a shoutout to Kirtley because without her help getting the weight off my body I dont think my progress would be where it is now. I can move so much faster! Also Catherine, she teaches me how to value and recognize what I am good at which has really helped me feel more grounded and confident to keep going with this new style of dance. On that same note to Bobby Dawg-his comments have been so inspiring and have no doubt helped me push through insecurities I have about freestyle. Freestyle is always scary and I trained my whole life to perfect choreography where every move was deliberate or big group numbers where an inch of one arm in the wrong place will throw off the picture of 50 arms in unison OR one finger out of alignment will turn a pirouette into a tornado! You get the picture…sure we did freestyle exercises in tap class and improved after your group does the combo in jazz or hiphop but I had little experience where freestyle WAS the dance. And the times freestyle was a part of my class or performance I was always TERRIFIED. Its like truly baring your soul and whats inside with no support of pre planned moves to hide behind! When I first started this journey I had not realized what I know now about neo swing dancers: no two look alike or dance the same. One of my frustrations at the beginning of this journey was that I didn’t look like the person I was learning from on the screen-I looked like me! It took time to see that when I dance like me and not try to execute a step like somebody else it actually looks BETTER and I notice an actual style that is developing that DOES resemble neo swing. Bobby Dawg thanks for pointing out Im not just flailing around out here and something is actually coming together in what I’m doing! Much appreciated! Without the help of these 3 whether they know it or not, I wouldn’t be posting this video today! Well, I would but I’d be way behind in progress. I’m grateful for them and many others I haven’t got time in this entry to thank but I will someday! Overall I feel great and this time last year I would have never dreamed of being this far along and in the best health I’ve been in for a long time. So I guess thats it for me today, I’m tempted to rant about the arts being decimated in the name of safety, health and science but I won’t. I’ll stew about it today and dance it off tonight. Until next time!

Kelli💕