HOW TO PRACTICE AT HOME
PART 2 – sAMBA
Today, we’re starting with our tips about how to practice at home and the first dance will be Samba. Being the first Latin American dances, it seemed like a good place to start our training sessions with. In this post you’ll find a general idea of how to plan your Samba practice, some photos and links to our IGTV, where you can have a look at videos of some of the exercises. You can mix up the practice to your own level and needs, switch suggested exercises with your own and increase/reduce the duration of your practice session.
We hope you’ll find this post useful 🙂 No let’s get to it!
“MIX IT UP TO YOUR OWN NEEDS AND LEVEL. LET’S DANCE!”
DURATION OF PRACTICE: 90 min
The practice session excludes the initial general warm up and the stretching that should always be a part of your practice routine. We’ll tell you more about this in future posts, for now just keep in mind that you should never dance without warming up first, even if it’s in your living room.
EXERCISE 1- CENTRAL BALANCE/BOUNCE
HOW TO DANCE IT:
– from neutral, closed feet. Rise on LF, step forward with RF into central balance position. Keep heels well off the floor
– transfer the body weight to RF, staying in elevation. Once your weight is completely over RF, lower your heel and bend your R knee. Rise and lower on R leg, using the full extension of ankle and knee repeat by stepping back with LF, same sequence
FULL EXERCISE:
Using slow Samba music, dance each movement as so:
To train stepping forward/back equally on both feet and include side movements, which are essential for sideways moving Samba figures, try this sequence:
2 x | Stepping fwd RF/bwd LF |
2x | Stepping side RF/side RF |
2x | Stepping bwd RF/fwd RF |
2x | Stepping side RF/side LF |
After trying the slow version, dance the same movements, but this time using regular Samba rhythm
& | Rise on standing leg |
1 | Step fwd & lower |
& | Rise on standing leg |
2 | Lower on standing leg |
& | Rise and repeat the sequence |
DURATION OF EXERCISE:
2min slow version/ 2min normal speed
CLICK ON THE IGTV IMAGE ON THE RIGHT TO SEE ALL THE EXERCISES
EXERCISE 2- STATIONARY ACTIONS
HOW TO DANCE IT:
4 | SAMBA WHISK |
4 | STATIONARY SAMBA WALKS |
4 | VOLTAS TO R |
4 | VOLTAS TO L |
In the previous exercise we’ve trained the bounce actions and central balance positions. Apply the same rules here- every fwd/bwd/side step needs to be danced with straight knees in the central balance phase. Usually, the figures with 1a2 counts are down on number count and up on & count.
Concentrate on knee/ankle extension, foot actions and posture.
Try it with super slow music first, then dance to normal speed.
DURATION OF EXERCISE:
2min slow version/ 2min normal speed
CLICK ON THE IGTV IMAGE ON THE LEFT TO SEE ALL THE EXERCISES!
EXERCISE 3- TRAVELLING FIGURES
HOW TO DANCE IT:
2 CRUZADOS WALKS/1 CRUZADOS LOCK/2 FWD RUNS
Here we’re introducing travelling actions- the most difficult thing to practice when you have very limited space. It really doesn’t matter how big or small your room is, turn these figures as much or little as you need to dance it through.
Pay attention to leg/foot positions- when dancing these figures with a lot of turn, it’s easy to end up with feet turned in and untidy back leg extension/turn out.
Try it with super slow music first, then dance to normal speed.
DURATION OF EXERCISE:
2min slow version/ 2min normal speed
CLICK ON THE IGTV IMAGE ON THE RIGHT TO SEE ALL THE EXERCISES!
EXERCISE 4- CHOREOGRAPHY PRACTICE
Now to the most difficult aspect of practicing at home- training your competition routine. Be ready for some bloopers as you first try this- it feels very strange and it’s easy to get disoriented as space is completely wrong for this kind of practice.
HOW TO DANCE IT:
Split your choreography into sections where each section is 8 bars of music. To give yourself some structure, practice each section for 5 min without music, 5 min with slow music and 5 minutes with normal speed.
This will give you roughly 15min to dance through each section. Don’t worry about directions, turn the routine so you can fit it into whatever space you have.
Concentrate instead on specific aspects of your dancing- what do you want to improve? As we’ve done all of the previous exercises with the goal to improve leg/foot actions of your Samba, you could try and apply it to your routine as well.
DURATION:
if you want to keep to 90min practice plan, then this gives you about 60min for this section- meaning you can practice 4 parts of your routine.
Don’t worry about not training all of your Samba- the next time you come back to practicing this dance, start with the sections you didn’t get to during previous training session.
EXERCISE 5- DANCE THROUGH
Good job, just one more thing to do before you’re done! Put on some slightly slower music and dance through your whole Samba routine. Dance with the muscle tone, energy, expression that you would use during a competition- nothing but the amount of travelling you do should change!
Dance twice for 90 seconds with 2min break between executions. Pay attention to how the parts you’ve practiced during the previous section are working and where you find the most difficulty- this way you can correct it during your next practice session or ask your teacher about it during the next online lesson.
There you go- you’re done!
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Keep dancing peeps, competitions will be here in no time!
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