Quote:
Originally posted by Ronde!
Anyone else find they have more than one distinct "style"? |
There are plenty of dancers that have different styles when they do different dances, but I can't think of many people who have more than one style of doing Modern Jive. (I used to think I did, but I was just doing the same moves, in the same way, with the same leads, etc to different music. I might interpret parts of the music differently, but overall I was dancing in my one style.)
I have tended to watch people a lot more since starting this thread. There tends to be 5 styles around in London:
Ceroc style - Big leads, bouncy movement, always fully extended, ladies always overturning. It is not quite staccatto, but there is an emphasis on each beat.
Smooth - Smaller leads, no bounce, and more variation in the distance. The movement is more continuous, with two or three steps flowing into each other
Lindy - Jive moves done with a Lindy style - eg posture, a twist-twist for the ladies
Latin - Lots of hip action, and the occasional bit of salsa, merangue or even tango thrown in. A lot more attitude.
Hip-hop/funk - More contemporary individual movement from the man and the lady.
Of course these are generalisations, and a few people have their own unique styles. There are teachers I know who are very good at explaining each of these styles. What I haven't seen yet is anyone explaining what stays the same, and what changes, between each style. That (to me) would be the start of developing a range of styles for individual dancers.
I haven't included 'passion', or 'enjoyment', or 'smiling', etc. These are important enough to be discussed separately from style or technique. But they have one big difference - they can't be taught. You can learn technique. You can learn style (ie incorporate parts of someone else's style into your own.) But no matter how good the teacher or the student - you can't be taught to have fun.
David