DANCE TIP: Floorwork Improvisation Structure -- Floorwork is a little daunting for many dancers. It can be extremely athletic and need a ton of strength and it can be done really badly, leaving the viewer with the impression that the dancer is just squirming around or is getting trashy in public with the invisible man. I am going to skip over the huge topics of etiquette advisories, safety issues, history, propwork and, and appropriateness to the venue for this post and go straight for a single technical issue: improvisation. If you are unfamiliar with the term floorwork in the context of belly dance, what it is is a segment of the dance where the dancer actually literally sits or lays on the floor and dances around. [cough] If you are wearing an $800 designer costume in a dirty restaurant you may omit this segment. There HAS been an upswing in interest in floorwork over the last bunch of years, though, so here goes. Improvisation is incredibly easy for floor dancing. WHATEVER steps you use, there is an organizing principle that removes confusion immediately: there are 5 Positions for Floor Improv and you can only go up or down one number from each position: 1 One knee down 2 Both knees down 3 Seated 4 On side 5 Prone or Supine There are numerous steps that transition between positions, but they still go through the positions. For example: Berber Walk or Desert Crawl or Painful Egyptian Knee Thumps (what *I* call them) is a traveling step on the floor. Not particularly good for your knees for several reasons including potential knee/floor impact, and putting too much weight/pressure on the knee joint when the knee is in an extreme position. It still looks good with a sword on your head so you may want to do it some time. This is what it is: On the floor with one knee down and one leg bent in front of you with about a 90 degree angle to the knee and the sole down, shift your weight forward towards the front leg. When you are about to fall forward onto the knee, flip the forward foot top down and use the top of the back foot pressed against the floor as a braking mechanism so the front knee doesnt hit the floor hard. Slide the legs together so you are kneeling on both knees, then bring the other leg forward until you are once more on one knee with the other leg bent in front of you. You have taken one step. Wow. Harder to describe that I would have thought. If you try it I suggest you wear knee pads until you can handle the controlling-the-drop-with-the-back-foot thing. My POINT was that you are going back and forth from position one to position two to position one to position two until you cant stand it and have to go to position three. A lot of steps use the transition between positions or occur during the transition, like vertical hip 8s while going from position 2 to position 3 or vice versa. Even if you dont know much about floorwork you can improvise it using some general rules 1 One knee down - you can do pretty much anything you can do standing up (including turning) except real travel 2 Both knees down - you can do pretty much anything you can do standing up minus travel and minus vertical hip things 3 Seated - you can do pretty much anything you can do standing up minus travel and minus hip things 4 On side - here you usually have 1 arm holding you up off the ground, either at full arm reach or with the elbow on ground. Lower leg can be bent at the knee for a better balance base, or not. I found some woman doing this for an ab workout on YouTube:youtube/watch?v=yiHzDoDDMoQ and with this you can do things like torso undulations, shimmies, arm work, vertical or horizontal 8s in the hips.... whatever you CAN do. But not all that at the same time. 5 Prone or Supine - you can inch worm along, do undulations and abdominal work. Just keep your ankles crossed or at very minimum keep your feet together or you look like you are giving birth (supine) or like a walrus on a rock (prone) It is pretty much impossible to go from 5 to 2 without going through 4 and 3, so whatever you are doing you KNOW where you have to go next. Identify where you are and you know you can only go one up or down through the list of positions. The less choices you know you have, the easier it is to improvise. There are a ton of floorwork-specific steps and combos, but that is enough for one tip. Last few comments to people that may be dealing with body damage: I was a seriously aggressive skier as a kid and I do have body damage. My knees dont particularly like position 3 but you/I still have to go through there... so I just dont stay there long. Figure out where you are strong and stay there more than other positions. And... if you are past your standing-up-easily-from-being-on-the-floor days, one trick is to actually scissor yourself up by remembering to press down with the top of the back foot when standing up. Ive also found a bunch of interesting momentum ascents that let me just pop up by taking advantage of mechanics and momentum, so watch for those when watching street dance forms and gymnastics. I do expect that eventually in another 20 years or so Ill just have to end with floorwork and let them shut the curtain, or crawl up the leg of the nearest seated patron, though. Did I say your mileage may vary?
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:42:04 +0000
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