Month: June 2017

Musicality is a very important aspect of being a dancer.
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It can be a vague concept, yet when understanding it and applying it, your dancing is bound to get better and better.

Musicality in Dance

What Is Musicality?

Sensitivity to, knowledge of, or talent for music. A musical person has the ability to perceive differences in aspects of music including pitch, rhythm and harmonies.

Source: Wikipedia

Basically, musicality is the ability to relate to a piece of music and be receptive to it and all its elements, while being able to connect to the music and interpret it through dance.

Why Is Musicality Relevant For A Dancer?

Developing a good sense of musicality definitely helps you become a more aware dancer. It takes you from being a good dancer to being someone people enjoy watching. Having that well-developed musical ability separates the amateurs from the pros.

So, how do you sharpen your ear to better develop your sense of musicality and start creating more inspired movement choices? Here’s how.

Fathom Music And What It’s Made Out Of

Music is the key to developing good musicality. You should be able to recognize all of the parts of a song.
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Listen carefully for these elements:

Pace: Is the pace constant? Is it fast, slow, or medium?

Rhythm: How is the rhythm structured?

Instruments: You don’t need to be a musician to be a musical dancer, but it helps you to understand more about musicality when you can distinguish the instruments. Listen to recognise the main instruments in the song (various drums, guitar, bass, piano, flute…). How does the use of the instruments vary?

Melody: How does the melody fluctuate in the song? What patterns in the melody might you find at different parts of the song?

Volume: Does the volume build or drop at any point?

Breaks: When do you hear breaks or pauses? Are there any discernable patterns or melody changes that lead up to or follow the break?

Mood: Is there a particular mood in the song and does this change?

Lyrics: Can you pick up the lyrics? If you don’t understand them, can you find out what they mean?

Source: http://zouktheworld.com

Try listening to a song and determine which are the key elements to you. Then, listen to the song again, but this time, pay attention to one element at a time and try to block out everything else.

Follow An 8-Count

An 8-count is the most basic way to break down the structure of music for choreographed dances, except for the waltz. If you’re new this, first learn how to identify where the count is by counting the beats that give rhythm to a song.

Go Freestyle

Freestyle dancing allows you to move however you want. Just be spontaneous. When you improvise, you have to grab on to certain elements of a song, at random, and interpret them. This exercise will help you feel free and follow your instinct when approaching music.

Dance classes can certainly help you discover your musicality. Different styles of dance will help you bring out different qualities of movement. At Bella Diva Dance in Denver, we offer a great variety of dance classes that can definitely help you unlock that potential. Come join us!

Most of us are well-aware of the benefits of dancing, although the majority of those benefits are related to physical fitness or overall well-being. Did you know that dancing makes you smarter, too?

Dancing Increases Cognitive Acuity

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC conducted a 21-year study on senior citizens who were 75 and older. The purpose of the study was to test the effects that certain recreational activities have on mental acuity in aging. While doing this, they discovered that some of the activities did have a pretty significant positive impact, while some others had no impact at all.

There was one important exception: the only physical activity to offer protection against dementia was frequent dancing.
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Reading – 35% reduced risk of dementia

Bicycling and swimming – 0%

Doing crossword puzzles at least four days a week – 47%

Playing golf – 0%

Dancing frequently – 76%.  That was the greatest risk reduction of any activity studied, cognitive or physical.

How Does Dancing Help The Brain?

The neural pathways in our brain are constantly being renewed on demand, meaning that if it doesn’t need to, then it won’t renew more pathways.

A neural pathway that serves to connect relatively distant areas of the brain or nervous system is a bundle of neurons, known collectively as white matter.

As we grow older, our brain cells die and neural synapses weaken. A neural pathway would be almost like the bridge that allows you to get to specific information in your brain, like names of people.
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If that neural connection fades away, we lose access to that information. The trick to avoiding that is to constantly create new neural pathways so that our brain has more than one route to get there.

If we exercise our cognitive processes, we increase our mental capacity.
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In order to improve mental acuity, we should, ideally, get involved in activities that require us to make quick, split-second, intelligent decisions. We go about our activities through two routes. The first is by habit, and the second is by intelligence, meaning that we make conscious, thought-out decisions.

Intelligence is what we use when we don’t already know what to do.

-Jean Piaget

Learning something new helps with this process – not just dancing, but any new activity. However, what seems to make dancing more beneficial is that it integrates several brain functions at the same time: emotional, musical, kinesthetic, and rational. Take a dance class and challenge your brain. The harder the dance, the better. That way you’re creating a need for new neural pathways and improving your cognitive health.

In dance, there are two very important things: understanding music, and understanding how your body moves in response to music. It is never too late to learn how to be more aware of your body.

Dance Better By Being Aware of Your Body

Surgeons work with their hands; that’s why they take such good care of them. It takes them years to perfect their craft and make sure they move their hands correctly during surgery. As a dancer, your work tool is your own body. This is why it is very important to understand it and become familiar with it; get to know its needs, limitations, and abilities.
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This will allow you to control it more confidently and naturally. Regardless of how new or not new you might be at dancing, to get moving, you first need to understand what it is that you’re moving.
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What is Body Awareness?

Being aware of your own body basically means having a good understanding and feeling of your own body.

body awareness: a dance element that comprises focus on body shapes, body base, body part, locomotor, and non-locomotor movements.

Developing Better Body Awareness

Becoming familiar with all body parts requires a lot of focus. Muscle memory is a side effect of muscle awareness. As you develop more awareness of your body, it will become easier to remember moves and positions. It is common that, as dancers, we go through a class without putting much thought into the individual parts of our body that are being recruited for a specific routine. It is ideal to dedicate time and energy to this self-discovery process.

Concentrate on Individual Parts

Make a list of the fundamental body parts used for dancing – for example, shoulders, wrists, fingers, thighs, toes, core, etc. As you read the list, try to move the specific body part you’re reading. Although this might sound all too easy, it works mainly on your focus (muscle memory, remember?). There are three key things to work on:

Focus

This refers to where your face is directed while you dance. Having a good focal point allows for better balance, especially if you’re turning or spinning.
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Posture

Posture and body language are completely related. How you stand says a lot about you, and that directly translates into the dance, whether you intend to or not.

Angles

Dancing is all about creating pictures with your body. Choreography usually requires clean lines. Looking at yourself in the mirror to make sure you’re hitting every line properly is a great body awareness exercise.

Yoga For Body Awareness

Another tool that can help you become more aware of your body is yoga. It can help bring awareness back to unconscious muscles while also strengthening them. Stop by one of our yoga classes and get moving!

Not long ago, it seemed like all the world could talk to us about was body negativity. We were bombarded with images of idealized bodies all the time, by all kinds of media. It still happens; however, it seems that, luckily, we’ve entered an era where things are starting to turn around and conversations about body positivity are starting more frequently.

Body Positivity & Self Worth

Over the past decade, body positivity has become a movement, and it has gained a lot of attention.

According to a recent report by the American Psychological Association, American women’s (and men’s) dissatisfaction with the skin they’re in began to decline in the early 2000s, following an unfortunate peak in the 1990s.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/

What Does Body Positive Mean?

It’s the understanding that your worth has nothing to do with what you look like; both things are independent of each other. Body positivity is self-acceptance and self-love. This concept is related to body image. Body image is how a person sees themselves, so, body positivity is related to a positive self-image.

[According to the data crunchers at Whisper, 35.1% define body positivity as “being okay with flaws;” 29.3% define it as “loving yourself;” 21.1% define it as “being confident;” and 14.5% of users define it as “appreciating your body.”]

How Can We Embrace Body Positivity?

Loving yourself is not only about feeling OK with who you are and what you look like; it’s also about taking care of yourself. One way you can be body positive by looking after your own body and providing what it needs to stay healthy and also by encouraging others to do the same.

Body Positivity and Dance

Dancing has a lot to do with body awareness. The more comfortable you are with your body, the freer you will feel to move and create beautiful shapes while dancing. Dancing is also closely related to feeling. You can express whatever you’re feeling at any given moment through dance, so dancing can be a great promoter of body positivity. Come dance with us at Bella Diva Dance! Checkout our classes, get moving, and watch yourself become more body positive.