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Damien
21st-July-2005, 01:46 PM
Sparkles posed the question what other forms of exercise can you undertake to help dance? The question and most of the discussion has been centred on physical fitness and posture.

In a similar vein I wondered what kind of activities can be undertaken to improve rhythm and coordination. Personally these are more a problem for me than fitness. I guess for some a good sense of rhythm and coordination comes naturally, for others we have to work on it a bit more. Outside of more dancing what other beneficial activities would help?

Tessalicious
21st-July-2005, 02:38 PM
Sparkles posed the question what other forms of exercise can you undertake to help dance? The question and most of the discussion has been centred on physical fitness and posture.

In a similar vein I wondered what kind of activities can be undertaken to improve rhythm and coordination. Personally these are more a problem for me than fitness. I guess for some a good sense of rhythm and coordination comes naturally, for others we have to work on it a bit more. Outside of more dancing what other beneficial activities would help?Of course different people find different parts of dancing challenging - thats what gives it the variety we love. But as with strength and stamina, obstacles like problems with rhythm or co-ordination can be overcome by practicing to develop the skill.

So, for example, if you want to improve your awareness of rhythm so that you are more able to dance in time without having to concentrate on this so much, a good exercise is this: when you're listening to music (preferably of the type particularly interested in ie danceable music), tap along to the beat in your head or with your foot (maybe not your foot if you're driving though*) and see if you can identify the strong and weak beats. Once you feel happy with doing that, imagine yourself fitting basic dance moves to those beats, first in half time (taking twice as long as usual for each movement) and then at normal time. With both parts of this exercise, half of the battle is knowing, without having to be told, that your timing is off, and the other half is being able to fix it quickly and smoothly - both of which are best practiced alone to remove the aspect of nerves.
*this is otherwise known as jazz braking and ain't easy, but if you get good at it can be handy as the other drivers quickly clear you a nice big space on the road...

As for improving co-ordination, I'm guessing the 'rub your tummy with your right hand and pat your head with your left' works a treat.

killingtime
21st-July-2005, 02:53 PM
I've been trying to play those dance mat games (like Dance Dance Revolution) where you have to hit the right direction when the arrow goes into a target area. I'm not sure it helps but it is reasonably good fun and since starting ceroc dancing I seem to have gotten better at the game as well :).