INITIAL: I want to join the house dance activity at school in Season 2 to further explore different types of dances, and I want to improve my dancing in general. I’ve gained a lot more confidence through Culturama, and I hope to apply some of the skills I’ve learnt, such as being able to coordinate my whole body better.
However, I still think the struggle with this activity I think will be the coordination and the speed of the moves. In Culturama, the traditional dance I did was energetic but it wasn’t relatively fast. But I am quite sure that I can overcome this easily with lots of practice! I am also not too afraid of making mistakes because when I did during Culturama, I managed to build on it and learn. But I am looking forward to joining this and being able to explore any type of dance which is completely different! (L02)
FINAL: In this activity I’ve learnt a new style of dancing; house (and a bit of locking). We’ve also learnt a bit on how to improvise/freestyle which is applying what we learnt and combining different moves. Improvising was the most challenging for me because you not only have to plan the moves ahead, but also listen to the beat of the music (e.g. the bass) and adjust accordingly. I often find when I am under pressure my movements tend to become quite stiff, and finding my ‘flow’ wasn’t easy. I feel like the more I’ve done it the more relaxed I become, and I think this comes a bit more naturally with experience. Some skills was surprisingly easier to develop than others. For example, house involved more footwork than hand movements, and required a bit less coordination than locking, which was more hand movements but also leg coordination. This meant that I was moving all the time around the room and it did get a bit confusing and tiring at times because I wasn’t used to it.
By practicing every session and going through the moves we have done in the past, I was able to learn new moves and also improve on my old ones. Before I joined this activity I had no idea what “house” or “locking” was and had absolutely no knowledge of them but after this season I’ve learnt a lot about this genre of dance. (L02, L04)
