It’s been fun working out this salsa choreography with decadance – thanks for your attention!
Hope that with these videos you’ll get a chance to learn all your steps before this Wednesday’s rehearsal:
Men’s 2nd shine, step explanation
Lady’s solos, step explanation
Men’s slow mo to ending, step explanation
Men’s slow mo to ending, with music
Lady’s slow mo to ending, step explanation
Hi Deca Peeps!
Here’s some videos to use as review / clarification. See you soon!
Lady’s beginning shine (steps)
Lady’s beginning shine (music)
Men’s 1st partner section (steps)
Men’s 1st partner section (music)
Men’s 1st partner section (arms)
Lady’s 1st partner section (steps)
Lady’s 1st partner section (music)
Lady’s front line fosse taps (steps)
Lady’s front line fosse taps (with music)
Men’s front line fosse taps (steps)
Men’s front line fosse taps (with music)
Back row lifts (steps and music)
Most people who know me were surprised to hear that I had signed up for a 10 day silent meditation retreat. 10 days with no talking, mostly sitting, learning to meditate. This did not sound like the Anna they knew!
Which is, in fact, why I found the retreat so appealing. In my day to day life, I spend a lot of my time interacting with people, jumping around, and being “on”. This chance to rest my body and go “internal” sounded so wonderful, in fact, that as soon as I decided to do it, I looked immediately for the course that was happening as soon as possible.
So here’s the short version of why I recommend a Vipassana meditation retreat to everyone:
Get over addictions and bad habits of thought, emotions, and action. The particular kind of meditation that is taught at these centers is particularly good for helping you to see why you do what you do, and even better, to learn how to break bad habits. Whether your “addiction” is eating too much chocolate cake, breaking free from fears of failure, or doing dangerous drugs, this kind of meditation, if truly practiced, could be good for fundamentally changing your habits of action and reaction.
There are Vipassana retreat centers all of the world, including 3 in California. However, those were already booked up so I ended up signing up for the course in the Northwest center (about halfway between Seattle and Portland). The grounds of the retreat center were rural and full of bunnies, deer, and sweet misty mornings. I felt so blessed to have inadvertently chosen such a beautiful, magical setting in which to unwind!
In these retreat centers, the people you meet with are all volunteers. They are all people who have gone through the meditation course themselves, and have returned to volunteer and help other people have the same experience. They cook and serve the meals, and help out with anything the meditators might need during the course. There are two “teachers” who are there to help answer any questions you have about meditation technique during the course (you are encouraged to speak if you have any questions about how to meditate). I was amazed and touched by the kindness and courtesy of these volunteers who spent their week making our time as meditators as pure as possible.
There were moments when the course seemed slightly “cultish”, mostly when they asked for donations and reminded people to meditate every day and come back to the course each year. However, considering that the entire experience is offered for free (you may make a donation after you have participated, if you wish), I can hardly blame them for asking for donations. As well, considering the benefit that I think this course can have in many people’s lives, the slightly proselytizing feel wasn’t too surprising.
In short, I would highly recommend booking out the time in your life to take this challenging, surprising, and educational break from your life. There is no experience quite like it, and whatever you get out of the experience, it will certainly be a different and rewarding time.
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ZUMBA IN THE SUN
Three Times Only:
Support Global Fund for Women, Environmental Defense, and The Boys and Girls Club of Penisula
Sooo… even though the class is “Latin Jazz” I thought it would be fun to branch out a little and do some American style Tango. Usually this is danced with a partner, so we had to get a little creative as far as choreography for a solo.
Here are the steps slowly:
And here they are with the counts:
We had some discussions in class about different kinds of tango music. Everyone things of tango as being just “strong, passionate, or fiery” but it can also be very “sweet, romantic, even sad”. When dancing the steps of a choreography, a great dancer will listen to exactly what the music is saying, and bring that character into the way they move. This is one of the more advanced aspects of ballroom dance competition. The competitors don’t know in advance what song is going to be played, and they need to go out on the floor and dance their routine to whatever music is played. The truly great dancers can change the way they do their steps to match whatever music is played.
If the music is more sweet and romantic, they can dance their routine more “sweetly”:
They can take the same steps and express a more “fiery or passionate” style:
Actually – I think I was too worried about dancing off camera to really get as fiery as I should! But hopefully this will help clarify how it is that ballroom dancers are expressive and musical within a “routine of steps”.
See y’all in class!
Howdy Zumba dancers – hope you’ve been enjoying our salsa steps to “Rumbagitation” from the group Fatal Mambo. Apparently they are a group of salsa musicians from the south of France, which is why they sing their salsa in French. It’s got great rhythm, reminding me a lot of the Afro-Haitian music as well as traditional salsa.
Here are the steps we’ve been using:
And here it is with music:
See you in class!
When the Google culinary team asked me to add some dancing to their Oktoberfest celebration, I didn’t realize it was going to live on, and on.
I choreographed a few short dances (polka, zweifacher, and landler) for the Google Oktoberfest party, and they were so much fun (and such crowd pleasers) that decadance decided to pick them up as well.
They recently performed the polka with even more couples dressed up in German costume, and a re-done version of the landler for 4 couples.
Shouts out to Deb and Merry for the re-choreography of the landler, and thanks to everyone who leant their costumes to decadance so they could re-do Oktoberfest in style.
Shouts out to Jason Chuang for some pretty kick ass photos.
I must admit that the first time I listened to Abney Park’s “Post Apolcalypse Punk” I was not particularly inspired to choreograph to it.
I think I generally pick songs that have not only breaks and interesting musical riffs, but some kind of build or storyline. P.A. Punk sadly is rather flat through the duration of the song – the harmonic progression is really repetitive, as are many of the lyrics, and there is no larger build or storyline.
However, it does have some very nice breaks and hits, and a lot of good energy. So when Kristin suggested the song for a “Modern Steampunk Quadrille” I was happy to go with it.
It is an interesting song to dance to, as the rhythm is quite fast and could be matched up with polka, Schottische, or a variety of freestyle modern movements.
The eight dancers that Kristin and Kimber had recruited to dance / act in their “Perpetual Steampunk” video blog had all just finished learning a “traditional victorian quadrille” dance. I had a total of 1 hour and 40 minutes to teach them the entire modern quadrille – it was quite a rush!
I was impressed at how quickly the dancers learned, and gradually fell in more with the style of movement I was hoping for. There was head banging, jumping, arm pumping, bellydance hip rolls, sexy swivels, and lots and chasses. It was fun to remake “traditional” victorian figures (such as rights and lefts, ladys and gents star, lancers, or anglo-saxon square), into “modern” figures by changing the footwork, styling, and arm movement.
The video blog was filmed this past weekend and next weekend, I wish them luck to get everything they need to do on time! I look forward as well to seeing the results of what the director chose to capture of the dance I choreographed. It’s a new and very cool interaction to have. I am used to choreographing for stage, in which case you cannot completely control what the audience looks at (only try to suggest). With film, the director / cameramen can control much more completely what the audience sees. It was fun to choreograph a dance with this in mind, creating a storyboard as much as a choreography. There were sections of the dance that I wanted only a toe tapping, or only a close up on one dancer’s face with their eyebrow going in time to the music. It’s a treat to get to choreograph details like that, which generally would never show from stage.
Of course, I am not the director or cameraman, and I have no ultimate control over how the dance is filmed, or what angle / details are kept in the final edit. It was a pleasure collaborating with the director, and I look forward to seeing what comes out the other side!
Thanks for all the steampunk comments, great to hear from everyone – anyone else got good steampunk projects they are working on?
If you were to imagine an alternate universe, would you be able to determine what the dance forms would look like in that universe?
Imagine, say, that something strange and apocalyptic happened during the turn of the century, so that the whole of society spun away from democracy and technological progress. Instead it stayed in a state of psuedo-Victorian “grey age”. This is the vision of many “steampunk” afficianados, who adopt a combination of love of historical items (from top hats to blunderbusses), do-it-yourself crafts projects (such as creating elaborate costumes, googles, props, guns, etc), and a modern sexy vibe that includes punk, lingerie as outerwear, and burning man creativity.
If this alternate “steampunk” universe were to exist, with it’s own separate path of history, what would the dancing look like? Would they still dance partner dances (such as quadrilles and mazurkas from the 1890s)? Or would they have had their own dance revolutions and have brand new styles not seen in this universe?
All of this comes to mind as I have been commissioned to choreography a modern quadrille for the short film being created here in San Francisco, Perpetual Steam Punk.
I will be creating the dance for the end of the film, which is set in the alternate steampunk universe in our current decade. The directors have asked for a combination of traditional quadrille steps with modern movement.
Which brings to mind the question, can you solve for what a society’s dance forms will look like, if you know enough about their culture? And which things in the culture determine what the dance form will look like?
I have never really had a chance to think about it before, but with many years of studying dances from around the world, I wonder if you took the following things into account, if you could determine what the dancing will look like:
1. 
What the culture values (order vs. independence, strength vs. elegance, academic intelligence vs. joyful spirit). If you look at cultures that value order, they tend to have dances with elaborate, ordered interlacing of the dancers in floor patterns. Cultures that instead value individuality and creative spirit tend to have more individual creative body movement, flexible use of the body, and less rigid posture.
2. Religious standards about touching. Religious idealogy frequently sets boundaries to the kind of body movement accepted in a culture, both how one dancer moves their body, and how dancers touch and interact.
3. Hygiene. Not sure if this is actually true, but it would seem possible that areas of the world that have extensive medicine and infrastructure for clean water / showering / etc. tend to have more close contact dancing. Dances from less infrastructure areas might have less close contact dancing.
4. Status of women in the culture. Are women valued for their hard work, strong bodies and minds? Or are women valued as decorative and delicate objects to be possessed by the men? You can tell a lot about the way the way women’s dancing will look by how they are valued in the culture. Are women allowed to make their own choices about who and when to marry / partner with? Or are these choices forced upon them? The power dynamics of the culture will also give insight to whether’s women’s dancing will be an appealing show for a male audience, a celebration of personal power, or an individualist show of strength.
5. Status of men in the culture. Are men valued for their kindness, or their brawn? For their self-discipline, or their flexibility? I think men’s styles of dancing around the world vary a lot less than women’s. Perhaps this is because men are frequently showcasing their skills for women’s approval and tend to showcase the same things: physical strength, agility, and endurance. But you do see some variation, which perhaps leads to the difference between Irish Step Dancing vs. African warrior dancing.
6. Existence / ease of birth control. I think many dance forms from prior centuries kept the men and women separate because dance = hanky panky = unwanted children = societal problems. The simple solution – keep the men and women separate as much as possible. Certainly the kind of close dancing you now see in clubs would have lead to many problems before the advent of modern birth control! I believe the existence / availaility of birth control can tell you a lot about the way cultural dance forms will look, and the kind of partnering you see.
I am still thinking of various factors that might influence how dance evolves in a particular culture. What do you think makes an impact? The clothing style? 
Musical instruments? Types of footgear worn? Religious / story telling traditions? Performance traditions?
I am excited to try to take the alternate history of San Francisco steampunk, and try to create a dance style that matches wha might have been. In a universe like our own, but with changes to the technology and history, would we dance as we do today?
Check out more about Steampunk Dancing with Richard Powers.
Leave your thoughts below…
Every Friday at 5 pm I teach a Zumba class (latin cardio dance mix) at Google.
I was super proud of these 5 ladies who were brave enough to perform a cumbia from class onstage at GoogleMela! As part of this International Cultural Festival they were representing Columbia / Venezuela – the home of cumbia.
Particular thanks to Susan for dealing (repeatedly) with costumes, as well as Debby and Katie for making up a partner dance part when I never gave you one! Thank you to Minya for dancing in multiple numbers and helping keep the group together, and a particular thank you to Zhongli for being so brave to perform.
See you all in class!
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