The challenge today was to find a song that has a dance routine, and to learn and add our own twists (Pun intended) to said dance.
Our group (Myself, Aubrie, Katie M, Midge, and Joey) was very lucky in that we all agreed on a song very quickly. we chose Slam Jam (Aubrie’s amazing idea).
Because Slam Jam has a hip-hop dance routine, it was very fast paced and required precise coordination between the dancers. So to start off we all watched a demonstration of the dance on YouTube, we then focused on the first 15 seconds or so of the dance video, having it play on repeat while we did it over and over trying to memorize and perfect it, and when we felt like we were all ready we would add in a couple more moves and repeat. I loved doing it over and over again not only because I think it helps us all get on the same rhythm, and work out problems in a non-confusing way, but I also think it helps us bond and become a singular unit rather then a group of people (deep, I know). but sometimes we would need to just stop and talk about what’s going wrong and what we’re supposed to do.
We found a part of the pre-choreographed routine that would make a good stopping point, and learned up till that point. Then we turned off the video! Not having an example to watch was quite a bit more difficult, and made us kinda realize that we needed more information and practice on timing, so we tried this thing called “counts” which are basically the amount of seconds to count in between and or during moves. Personally I was not super in to counts as first, but after we tried them I thought they were very helpful. And with that, we were done with the pre-choreographed part of our routine.
To add our own personal touch, we decided to end our dance by having everyone one at a time do a little solo freestyle (like a dance off). after everyone else had gone we had our late joiner (Addison) do his freestyle ending in a pose for us all to gather around and join to end our dance with a legendary squad pose. On point.
I’ll end this writing with a proverb that I think describes this challenge very well: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.