House dance, derived from the club music of New York and Chicago, is a dance that incorporates improvisation and complex, fast-paced footwork to the beat. This nearly entirely student-lead activity meets every Wednesday from 4:30-6:00 pm for seasons 1 and 2.
LO 2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
This year I wanted to try a new activity and my friend encouraged me to join House Dance since it was one of her passions. The first session was rather daunting since I have no background in dance. We went around the circle introducing ourselves and it made me feel better that there was an array of dance abilities, from none (like myself) to competitive ballroom dancers, to know that I’m not the only one with minimal to no experience.
Due to my lack of rhythm and footwork skills, I found it particularly challenging. House dance heavily relies on the beat of the music and weirdly enough, the star of the show are your feet! I was also afraid of falling behind and judgement from others since dancing is not my forte. Soon enough, I realised that the dance is so fast-paced and new to everyone, that people just concentrated on themselves. We were all too busy focusing on ourselves, trying to keep up to the beat. The people around me were still supportive and helping each other in times of need.
As challenging as the dance was, I enjoyed the learning process. The positivity and support just made the environment friendly. We spent an hour repetitively going over three basic moves for 10 seconds worth of dance. Since dancing is often considered as an art, which to me is often associated with leisure and calmness, I never expected it to be this physically tired. All these factors made me appreciate dance even more, seeing how much work goes into such a short performance time. Another takeaway from this session was that it made me realise that sometimes you just need to be carefree, ignore the people around you, trust your gut feeling and do your own thing.
By the end of this activity, I hope to be able to do a one minute rehearsed performance and possibly a 10 second freestyle at the end.
