My last dance diary entry - Dance Saturday

10/06/19 Dance diary

Themes: combinations and corner work

We firstly started off the lesson by doing a warm up that was led by one of the students in the class. We did a cardio vascular exercise where we ran around the room and touched the ground and jumped up in between three jogs. We also did side skips in a circle, alternating between facing the front and facing the back. As well as this, we also did jumps around in a circle, ensuring that we were gaining height, travelling, and pointing our toes. After increasing our heart rate and getting ourselves warm, we did some stretches. We particularly focused on our front straddle by doing exercises such as lunges with our back heel down. We also increased the stretch in our lunges by taking it down to the floor and using our opposite arm to leg, we grabbed our back foot and held it for a few seconds. I personally found that this really increased the stretch in my hamstrings, which tend to get tight. Since we focused more on our front straddle, we also did a side straddle stretch where we went as far as we could go, into those splits. I went down quite far, but I would still like to go down a little further, so that I’m touching the ground. I’m hoping to achieve this by doing into that straddle stretch every other day. After doing some bicep stretches and shoulder rolls, we then continued rehearsing our combinations that we did in pairs. Already, in comparison to the last time we did these combinations, I was a lot more confident in what I was doing, and I executed my turns a lot better. I find that I tend to lean back slightly when I turn so I’ve been trying to correct that by leaning forward a little more and I can already see improvements. I do need to however, ensure that I’m stretching my back leg when I’m leaping because even when I think I am, I’m not achieving a full straight split. We filmed these combinations and then went into learning another combination as a class. This consisted of a jump, some jazz placements, and a fan kick at the end. I struggled to fit everything in because one moment we were facing the back then we were facing the front. However, with a bit more practice, I’m sure that I'll become more confident with doing this combination. We finished the lesson with practicing our jazz turns. I was more confident with doing the turns on my right-hand side than I was with doing them on my left side, but I still could have been a little neater by staying lower and keeping in the same position. On my left-hand side though, I felt as though I didn’t know where I was going, and it overall just felt a lot weaker. I think that I need to practice more turns on my left side in order to improve on this.

Strengths: Even though I’m still not fully down to the floor, I went down further than I thought into my straddle splits. I also managed to remember more of my combination that I did with my partner.

Weaknesses: I could still improve on my jazz turns and make them a little neater by keeping on the same level as I do them. I also found that I was not moving in a straight diagonal line, so I also need to improve on my spotting by focusing on a point each time I'm turning.

Target(s) for next lesson: I’m going to rehearse the combination that we learnt as a class, so that I can improve on it next lesson and remember what movement comes next. I’m also going to practice my jazz turns on my left side so that I improve them on that side as well as my right side.

What have you improved on in dance? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!

See you next time,

Bye,

XOX, Juliette

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