For my creative project, I decided to make my own dance. Since 8th grade, I’ve been interested in break dancing and began taking lessons. When I was a senior in high school, I began taking interest in hip-hop. Many people don’t really know the difference between hip-hop and break dance. Break dancing involves more moves on the floor or in the air; basically moves that require more physical strength and ability. Hip-Hop focuses more on the dancing aspect rather than impressive physical moves. There are many styles of hip-hop dance such as popping, locking, waving, and housing.
My interest and enjoyment in these types of dance influenced me to want to make my own choreography utilizing these forms of dance. With this, of course, came many difficulties and obstacles. I wanted to make my own mash-up of the songs I was going to dance to. In order to do that, I first had to decide which songs I wanted to use and then I had to decide how long I wanted each segment of the songs to be. I didn’t even have good programs for creating mash-ups so the best I could use was Windows Movie Maker. I had a first draft of my mash-up with the songs “Closer” by Ne-yo, “Push the Feeling On Remix 2008” by Nightcrawlers, “Shots” by LMFAO, “Pon de Floor” by Major Lazer, and “Move if you Wanna” by Mims. I had a lot of trouble creating good transitions between each song segment because going from one song straight to the other sounded to abrupt. So what I did was I took the warping sound from “Pon de Floor” and used it as a couple of my transitions.
In my first draft of my mash-up I realized I could not fulfill the moves I wanted in one of the segments so I decided to take that song out. I was also dissatisfied with the ending segment as well as the beginning. Clearly, I still had some revisions to make. In my second and final mash-up I made Closer by Ne-yo (the first song) shorter, took out Shots by LMFAO, and added Like A G6 by Far East Movement as the ending segment. Since I already gained experience in making mash-ups from my first draft, I was able to revise it much faster with more precision. I was more satisfied with this mash-up in terms of transitions as well as its ending.
Then came the difficult part of actually choreographing to the music. I cleared out the space on my living room carpet back home and slowly but steadily made progress in my choreography. As I was making the mash-up I already began picturing how I would dance to each song but what happens in your mind ends up quite differently when done in real life. I started off slow doing a couple moves at a time and then practicing them over until I got them down. Some sections were easier than other to create moves to. There were some parts where I was simply stuck and unsatisfied with whatever dancing I did. This was no surprise as this was my first time creating my own dance. For some sections, I had specific move sequences planned out. Then I decided that for other sections, I would just dance a certain type of style rather than use specific moves. Therefore my dance was sort of like a mixture between choreography and free-style but the free-style. Other difficulties I faced were fatigue. I was out of breath after just dancing for ten minutes and I had to take many breaks to catch my breath. Overall I spent a little over a weekend practicing and making choreography to this dance.
Then came the big day where I had to present. I wasn’t too nervous though because I’ve dance in front of crowds before (ask the class, they know what I’m talking about). What I was worried about was whether or not the class would like what I made. That’s one of my main motives when I dance, to entertain others. Not only does dancing on its own bring me enjoyment, but the enjoyment people get from watching me dance makes it all the more worthwhile. From my experience, I knew that I was bound to make mistakes or dance a little differently in certain parts. A performer must always be ready for improvisation in case things don’t turn out as planned. This somewhat applied to when I performed because I slipped when I tried to spin on my knee. I saved myself by going into another dance move that brought me back up. Also, I decided to change and add some moves about an hour before performing such as the floor slide. I should have practiced the floor slide more because it was pretty sloppy. Other than that, I think my performance went well judging by the crowd’s response.
I am really glad that we got to do a project like this because I was waiting for an opportunity to finally create my own dance. I’m always on the train listening to music and imagining how I would dance to it. This project finally drove me to do something. I think that I’m going to continue doing this every once in a while. I even created my own you tube channel to post my dancing online for other to see and comment.
Here’s the link to a recorded version of my performance:
