Over the course of the semester, I have learned about different types of dances including hip hop, dance hall, and contemporary, Bhangra, street jazz, Latin, zumba and more. In the beginning, I believed that I danced well and dance was easy to do but once I figured out how much effort, practice, coordination, and preparation for a dance, I thought differently. Dance is all about expressing your emotions by using your body, having fun, gaining strength in my muscles and developing a balance not only for dance purposes but for my inner self. I learned that dance is more complex than I believe.
There were elements I should consider in my movements like posture, timing, poise, musicality and expression, presentation, power, foot and leg action, and a lot more criteria that need to be required in a dance number. I found that in a group dance, collaboration, cooperation, initiative, and teamwork needs to be contributed as a group. Without it, the dance will look like a mess as none of the moves are synchronized, dance members will be bumping into each other, emphasis will be on different movements and they group will look disorganized, individual techniques will be used to execute the dance and it will look very unprofessional. More personal technique is to exaggerate my movements and be energetic when dancing. I learned a lot of valuable skills in this dance class as well as communication and group work among peers.
I liked how we had a lot of guest dance instructors to teach us different styles of dance. It really opened my insight about dance. I remember Alyssa teaching us how to dance to street jazz and I found her moves fit into the lyrics like “give me a kiss” was when we blew a kiss to the audience. I really liked how she tried to incorporate movements that were lyrically intended. When we went to the Toronto Dance Theatre, I realized how diverse the styles are in dance. I found that I really liked how different each style of dance is. I loved participating and learning new dances because I’m able to understand and dance different types of dance and also become healthier by dancing. I really loved doing group dances because it got a chance for me to understand my classmates a lot more. For the flash mob, I really felt like we finally connected and worked together as a group because I believed the Bhangra show was disastrous because no one was working together, everyone skipped classes, they didn’t take it seriously but in the flash mob, everyone worked together to practice the dancing, put our full ability into the movement and we successfully entertained our crowd. I’d like to focus a lot more on dancing instead of warm-ups and workouts. Although dancing requires a lot of working out, I believe that our ISU should have focused on dancing as it is a dance class. I thought the ISU was going to be choreographing your own dance or learning a dance on YouTube and performing the dance to the class where we can be critiqued on dance criteria.
When I found out that we’re doing a warm-up for a big portion of the dance ISU, I felt disappointed because I really wanted to show my dancing creativity and culture to the class that they haven’t seen. I found that since we were limited to equipment like, getting hooked up to the internet to watch dance videos, we were unable to really extend our knowledge in dance which was unfortunate. I believed I did pretty well over the course. I didn’t want to slack in the course to be honest. I felt like I was influenced by other classmates and I guess I should have stopped it when I knew. I really like to dance and the dances overall were a lot of fun so I believed I did reasonably well in the course. As long as I enjoy it and put my best ability into my dancing, I believe that I accomplished what I needed to do in the course: to enjoy and have fun dancing. I believe I should have taken the dance class more seriously and performed well during workouts because participation is still part of my mark. I also believe that I should arrive to class on time and wear appropriate attire when dancing because I know I was lazy to change on certain days and it’s very unhygienic. Overall I enjoyed the course and hopefully in the future I’ll be able to use these dance skills in the future. ?
