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Monthly Archive for August, 2007

So You Think You Can Dance Recap - NOO!

Published
by
Anthony Persaud
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in article
. 4 Comments

Lauren Gottlieb - So You Think You Can DanceI just can’t believe it! My two favorite dancers out of the bunch got voted off. I was thinking I would at least have one of my favorites in the finals (well, maybe Sabra) but man - Pasha and Lauren! Feels like a nightmare and a bad “Laguna Beach” episode. I’m assuming you’ve been keeping up with the show, otherwise this will be over your head.

Now, “So You Think You Can Dance” is not really about America’s best dancer - its America’s favorite dancer. While Lauren was amazing and beautiful, I’m assuming what happened was that technically she wasn’t as masterful as Lacey or Sabra. Now Lacey is highly technically skilled, but come on! Her cousin Benji won last year’s competition! Fine. Sabra.. she hasn’t really connected with the audience yet. So Lauren had it tough - that’ s understandable - however, I think she brought a mix of both technical and flavorful dancing - especially in her personality. Even on complicated turns and patterns during some performances - she always smiled as she was having fun. Man, I’m happy to have that picture on that blog - Lauren, if you’re ever in San Diego… (whisper) call me! :-)
Pasha Kovalev - So You Think You Can Dance Now, for the biggest disappointment in my opinion. Pasha I thought was the BEST dancer hands down. I just kept yelling ‘What? What!!? You have got to be kidding me!!!’ to my TV screen. It reminded of the time when the results came in on how President Bush got re-elected.

Now, to be truthful, Danny is technically more skilled and his jumps are amazing. However, he has no personality! He’s too serious. Not fun to watch. Reminds me of reasons why I never joined ballroom clubs - people took themselves sometimes a little too seriously, to the point the fun part of dancing was removed. And Neil….. Neil, Neil, Neil - come on people! He does not come close - I think he just got lucky. I mean, he’s great at flips and tricks, but personality. He only started shining at the very end. Pasha was on top of his game from the very first dance.

Pasha brought an excitement back to performances. He made every dance his own, always acting, making faces - amazingly entertaining to watch. Whether it was jazz, hip hop, Broadway, salsa, or that freakishly weird 80’s routine… it was just so entertaining that made you want to dance. That type of effect is not found in many dancers. Sad to see him go, but I guess America has decided.

So, I guess my biggest bias is that I base dancers on how they make me feel. (Warm and fuzzy?). Personality. I think 50% of any performance is personality. Showing the audience how much more fun it is to dance it than watch it. So, I lost my bets this season (again).

But I wonder for those who do watch the show, who do you think should win this year?

The famous Salsa Hell dance graph

Published
by
Anthony Persaud
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in article and salsa technicals
. 11 Comments

Now, I’ve been so busy with my real life (work), that I haven’t been able to even go out dancing! Yes, I know its blasphemy around this site. However, looking over some old files, I found a great treasure that I’d like to share.

Salsa Partnering Learning Curve

I first saw this graph from when I used to read articles from Eddie The Salsa Freak (salsaweb.com). I think this graph is an accurate representation of what leads (men) and ladies (follows) tend to generally follow in terms of learning salsa dancing for the first time.

This usually explains the disconnect when a couple starts learning how to dance - and why some girlfriends get frustrated with their boyfriends because they are not learning ‘fast enough’ compared to other men. I’ve had experience in those situations, which of course, is when I step in and give my speech on how we all start the same way. We all go through what I like to call ‘Salsa Hell‘ - which in this graph is labeled ‘Beginner’s Hell’. (You might want to check out why leading is harder than following article about your brain and salsa.

Think back and wonder if there was a point in your learning when all of a sudden everything becomes clear, and you (amazingly) start learning patterns faster and begin to listen/feel the music in a totally different fashion. I think the yellow marker for beginners is usually the point when they can hear the beat in the music like a perfect played note in a quiet room. Once they pass that obstacle, their feet movements are removed from their mind and can focus on patterns (which are mainly hand positions).
I wonder how many of you might agree (or disagree) that you have followed this graph when you were learning salsa? I look forward to your comments.

Salsa Dancing : Your Brain on Dancing

Published
by
Anthony Persaud
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in articles and salsa technicals
. 2 Comments

Salsa Technicals : Your Brain on Salsa I found this article very interesting…. it explains why at the beginning of learning salsa, its difficult to multi task your motor skills. This is also scientific proof of why learning to follow is much easier than learning to lead… Learning to follow requires the use of the sense of touch (which according to the published research - the brain can easily handle because it is directly connected to the motor processing part of the brain). However leading requires the images of the actions (planning and forming motor actions) be kept in the leads head followed my multiple motor skill actions - which the brain cannot easily do at the same time. (it has to keep track of how the leads feet are placed, timing of music, planning the next move, how the move should look, the follows feet, the hands to lead the move…etc). It says that the reason we are able to do this is because by forcing our brain to perform all these activities repeatedly, it ends up turning all these different tasks into just one. So as an example, crossbody lead - instead of thinking, ok, step forward, step side, open up, lead the lady across, and come back together on 7 and basic step… we just think - cross-body lead (so we don’t have to “plan” for a cross-body lead just let our muscles execute it) and our brain is then free to do ‘other’ things such as adding styling and flavor.

Article: http://whyfiles.org/shorties/220square_circle/
(And not for the faint of heart, here are the papers:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/dar12/Publications/Publications_06_w.htm )

“The experiment, published in the November/December Journal of Experimental Psychology, proved that the limitation is neither in the muscles nor in the part of nervous system that communicates directly with them, Rosenbaum says. “Instead, we have come to the idea that the source of the limitation is conceptual, it’s not in the execution.” When asked to draw a square and circle, “you need to keep those two forms in mind, and that’s hard for us to do.”

Touch input goes to a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex, which is directly connected to the motor cortex, Rosenbaum explains. And apparently these two areas are happy to trace squares and circles without help (or hindrance!) from the brain’s intellectual center, the prefrontal cortex, which makes plans and carries them out.

So how, for example, do musicians do two things at once? “It turns out that very, very few people can carry out two differently timed activities totally independently,” says Rosenbaum. “If you sing while playing guitar, over time, you learn to think of them as a single task.”

Thinking Outside the Box-step

Published
by
Dano
11 months ago
in dancer post
. 6 Comments

Salsa Outside the Box If you want to become a better salsa dancer, learn a different dance. That’s right, I said it. Learn something else. Why? Because it might just give you a new perspective on dancing in general, and that may just benefit your Salsa in more ways than you might expect.

I love Salsa…but I admit that it was not my first love. That title belongs to swing…Lindy Hop to be more specific. But that’s ok, because had it not been for my love of one particular dance style, I would never have ventured to others, including Salsa. My experience has taught me that you can always learn something new and apply it to something you already know. The benefits of doing this can lead to increased kinesthetic knowledge of how your own body can move, dance innovation by applying elements of one dance style to another, and improved dance technique. My disclaimer is that not everyone takes away the same thing(s) from each style of dance, so I will share a few examples of what I have learned along the way:

Continue reading ‘Thinking Outside the Box-step’

Salsa : Beyond the Roots - New York Times

Published
by
Anthony Persaud
11 months, 1 week ago
in article and el cantante movie
. 3 Comments

I would like to send a thanks to Jan for sending me this link to this article. It talks specifically on the comparison of the salsa scenes portrayed in ‘El Cantante‘ the movie compared to the salsa scenes of today. You can find the article here: Salsa Spins Beyond its Roots.

One of my favorite quotes from the article is when Ms. Torres states: that salsa “...remained a dance of the street, not taught but absorbed“. This reminds me of how must of us learn salsa. While we take lots of salsa lessons here and there, we usually just learn by either asking or watching other dancers at the club. I would have to agree that most of the patterns I end up learning are from observation than anything else. I can look at someone doing a pattern, and decompose it into its ‘fundamental’ elements - and then add my own style to make it my own. It is not a special inherent ability, every dancer develops it in the long run.

Another anecdote that is mentioned in an interview with Mr. Eddie Torres, is why he decided to start teaching dancers to break ‘on 2′.

“There’s something in the rhythm section in a Latin dance called the tumbao,” he said. “It’s a time pattern that the conga player plays, and you’ll hear an accent, and it’s always on the second beat. This is why Tito Puente said breaking on two is natural, there’s a feeling in that beat that you gravitate to.”

and specifically on how today’s dancers are very different than the days before:

“Young salsa dancers are becoming Olympians, athletes in the dance, so they’re not thinking of drinking and doing drugs, like we did years ago.”

..which statement resonates with some of the things we say about how salsa was back in the old days. If you listen to the podcast, you hear us joke around about salsa artists/dancers being alcoholics, doing drugs and going to jail. Well, while it might seem harsh, it was just a known fact - that is the way things were in New York City in that era. Think of it as the current social relation that people have with ‘Hip-Hop’ and ‘Gangsters’, except that back then it was ‘Salsa’.

While I will not continue to paraphrase the article, I do suggest that you read it because it is very well written with some very good points and interviews. I am just happy that salsa is getting more exposure, now with the new Hector Lavoe Movie (and here and here) and this article being in the New York Times - we are starting to take salsa one step further. (pun intended)