fandomhigh | Intro to Dance, Wednesday Period 1

Entry tags:

dance

Intro to Dance, Wednesday Period 1

It was once again too early in the morning for this. But the moose had been immovable and so here they were again, bright and early, unlike the sun which hadn't even risen a full hour ago.

Disgraceful. That was what it was.

But she had class, which meant that even if she couldn't quite hit 'pep,' she still couldn't be a zombie for them.

After going through that morning's stretches (to the catchy beat of 90s Italian pop), Verity explained the day's lesson. "So much of dance is being able to move your body around to the music," she explained. "But sometime around puberty, most people forget how to just move. We become stiff and locked up, moving all of our body at once instead of individual parts. This is especially true with hips and, honestly, if you can't move your hips freely, you'll never be able to dance. So today, we're going to do some exercises to loosen you all right up."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Moving!

Astrid Magnussen

Gratuity Tucci

Kagura

Beaker

Have you ever thought about how your body moves? Or how you move your body? Well, now you get to!

Astrid was thinking a little less about how her body moved as she was stretching as she was thinking about how she would have never expected a dance class to be one of her favorites of a semester, and yet there they were. She just sort of liked being able to shut off her brain for a while and follow instructions, so the stretching was nice. Maybe she needed to look into some meditation or something...

Tip had to restrain a laugh when she heard the warm up music. Should she manage to catch Verity's eye, she was totally going to throw her a tiny thumbs up.

Verity winked back as she moved them into a series of leg stretches.

Yup, hula hoops. Verity passed out the brightly-colored hoops to everyone (with a smaller one for Beaker, not that she was one hundred percent sure that he had hips) and turned on some more modern pop. "So, for anyone who's never seen one of these before, this is a hula hoop. Hugely popular in the 50s, not so much anymore, but they're still pretty common, at least. The point is to get them spinning on your hips and waist - or arms and legs, but we're just focusing on hips and waist for now - and keep them up for as long as you can. The main trick to this is standing with one foot slightly in front of the other, and keeping your movements precise."

She demonstrated for about a minute or so, explaining the finer points of keeping it up on your hips for awhile.

"It helps if you can find a rhythm," she added. "Let the hoop sync up to the music and it'll be easier to keep it up, because you'll have something outside yourself helping you to keep time."

Tip . . . had never mastered the hula hood. She could spin it on her arm aplenty, but not so much with the standard, you know, hulaing, despite being able to move her hips perfectly fine, thanks.

So yeah, this exercise was one destined to frustrate the hell out of her.

"Widen your stance a little bit," Verity advised. "Not only does it make the motion easier, it keeps you from being a straight pole for the hoop to fall down."

Tip tried out the adjustment and promptly tried to hula herself off balance into the floor.

"Can we dance with swords next?" she asked. "I know how to use one of those. . . ."

"Pretty sure that using a sword and dancing with one are two different skills, too," Verity said. "And, sadly, my skillset is with the first, not the second." She nodded her head towards Kagura ~~if she was there~~. "She was talking about mixing fighting and music, which I do know about, that's not quite the same thing as sword dancing."

"It does sound like it'd be useful around here, though."

"It would have to be a class where everyone in it had a decent grasp of fighting already," Verity mused, her hoop still swirling on her hips. "Otherwise that's just asking for injuries."

There was that, wasn't there.

"Maybe it could be, like, a club or something?"

It was kind of weird that this place didn't really have those, now that she thought of it.

Huh, you know? It kinda was.

"I'm more surprised there isn't a class for it," Verity said. "Even just a general self-defense class. How to throw a punch that hurts your opponent more than it hurts you. Important places to aim when you're fighting an opponent. How not to shoot yourself or your friends when you pick up a gun. That kind of thing."

"They have those from time to time," Tip said. "At least a few since I got here, and that was awhile ago."

As a junior who'd been here since freshman year, Tip was practically ancient in Fandom terms.

"Still, for a place like this, it should be a requirement, not an elective," Verity snorted.

". . . I don't think we actually have any graduation requirements."

"I don't even know why I'm surprised about that," Verity sighed.

"I'm probably screwed if I want to try to go to a normal college."

Tip was only really just realizing that. Maybe there was a Boov school she could attend?

"There are the independent study courses you can take," Verity reminded. "And those always look good. And the old-fashioned 'spin your classes into something that sounds normal.'" She had a lot of practice with that one herself.

"I don't know if I want to try to catch up on more than two years of Common Core classes in a year and a half."

Boov school could be fun, right? Or maybe she'd go right into the workforce and do community college. That's what her mom did!

. . . Her mom was going to kill her if she didn't go to college.

"On the other hand, college is for specializing, right?" Verity asked. "Do you have to make up all of your classes? Or only the ones that form the basis of what you want to study?"

"I'm pretty sure modern practice is to have a rounded education before you specialize."

Also, she wasn't really sure what she would want to specialize in.

"I'm pretty sure modern practice was not taking into account this island when it was figuring out its pedagogy," Verity snorted.

"Yeah, but this island is basically a secret to most worlds, right?" Tip pointed out. "My world got invaded by aliens, but they still want you to learn, like, math."

"Exactly," Verity said with a grin. "Just different examples in word problems."

Once the hula hoops were cleared away, Verity changed the music again, this time going for something with a lot of drums.

"Belly dancing isn't ballroom, but it's an incredibly athletic and skillful genre of dance, spanning multiple continents," she explained. "Isolation of various parts of the body is an important aspect in any version of belly dance, with the dancers able to move certain parts of their body while keeping others perfectly still. This requires a great deal of control. Today, I'm going to show you how to do hip lifts, which turn into the basic belly dance shimmy once you start doing it fast enough."

She had them all take the basic belly dance posture position - feet aligned with hip bones, chest up, knees slightly bent, arms out and relaxed - and then walked them through the dance move.

"Bend your knees a little more," she said, demonstrating. "Then bring your left hip up by straightening your left leg. Straighten it up, it should feel like your hip is rising up to your rib cage. That's good. Then let it fall back down by bending your left leg. Now do it with the right side. Keep your heels flat one the floor, the only thing that should be moving are your knees and hips. Having trouble? Bend your knees deeper. Once you have the move down, try to do it in time to the music. If you're feeling comfortable, stop pausing in the middle when you switch legs and start to shimmy."

Tip's primary exposure to belly dancing was people calling it appropriative on the internet, so she was wishing there was at least a little more context for the multiple continents and traditions thing.

Also, who knew standing with your knees bent was so hard? Her thighs were going to murder her in her sleep tonight. . . .

Now you had a bellydancing Muppet, folks, so just...enjoy Beaker shimmying.

Wonder what kind of coffee she's drinking where bellydancing and hula hoops are appropriate 8am activities.

GLASSES!!!

DO YOU HAS THEM?

MY FACE CAN SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

\o/\o/\o/

I just got my new prescription glasses on Monday. Not at all the same as what you were dealing with, but CAN SEE PROPERLY AGAIN POWERS ACTIVATE!

Wooo!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Intro to Dance, Wednesday Period 1

Sign In 2

Re: Sign In 2

Re: Sign In 2

Re: Sign In 2

Re: Sign In 2

Stretch and Listen to the Lecture

Re: Stretch and Listen to the Lecture

Re: Stretch and Listen to the Lecture

Re: Stretch and Listen to the Lecture

Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Re: Activity 1: Hula Hoops

Activity 2: Belly Dance

Re: Activity 2: Belly Dance

Re: Activity 2: Belly Dance

Talk to Verity

OOC

Re: OOC

Re: OOC

Re: OOC

Re: OOC