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Nov. 4th, 2024 03:44 amThis weekend was DART: Dancing America Rapper Tournament! Yesterday was the competition, with a whole mess of teams rotating through four different pubs in Inman Sq, and then today was a lovely afternoon workshop to practice some skills together.
(What is rapper dance, you might ask? Unrelated to Eminem, it's a form of English ritual dancing done by a team of 5-6 people connected in a circle by holding flexible steel "swords". By keeping tension on the swords and weaving in and out of each other, the group can perform different tricks and patterns. This video from 2010 does a nice job of showing the idea.)
Rapper is one of my absolute favourite dance forms, even though I have never been on a proper team. I do it in short bursts every chance I get --a week at English Pinewoods here, three days at ESCape there, a one day workshop then or then, informal sets being thrown together in the back of a Pinecones party or "crapper" --that's "crew rapper" with whoever's around.
Someday eventually I will be on a proper team, able to practice regularly and actually slowly get good at it all, but in my bits-and-pieces lifestyle I have found that I am actually at the point of "strong beginner". I certainly don't know what i'm doing, but I am gradually learning the names of some of the most common figures and able to snap into them as necessary.
One of the most interesting pieces of metacognition to gel for me today was recognizing how important it is to focus on facing and turning direction when watching someone else. Rapper is numbered around the little group (with different numbers frequently doing quite different motions within a move), and I was quite proud of myself during one of the samples taught in the workshop that I correctly caught the way my number in the demo moved before it was explained. There are plenty of times when one person's job is just to stay as still as possible and let the set flow around them. When you're all connected, it can be critical to know when to turn left or right or just stay in palce.
It's also, as always, interesting to be in a space doing something that I am decidedly not expert at. I am typically so used to being so good at things, especially in the dance world. Getting to be a part of rapper workshops puts me back on the early squares of learning --although again, I'm a strong enough beginner that I'm no longer learning the complete basics. I can fake my way through the stepping, and I know how to hold the swords and tension my wrists.
So it was really really fun to get to do some of that today, just like it was fun to do some of that this summer and it will be fun to do some of it in the future. We keep half-joking about doing post-bells rapper practice and I think we are getting closer and closer to the day where I say fuck it and buy the swords and make that no-longer-be-a-joke.
~Sor
MOOP!
(What is rapper dance, you might ask? Unrelated to Eminem, it's a form of English ritual dancing done by a team of 5-6 people connected in a circle by holding flexible steel "swords". By keeping tension on the swords and weaving in and out of each other, the group can perform different tricks and patterns. This video from 2010 does a nice job of showing the idea.)
Rapper is one of my absolute favourite dance forms, even though I have never been on a proper team. I do it in short bursts every chance I get --a week at English Pinewoods here, three days at ESCape there, a one day workshop then or then, informal sets being thrown together in the back of a Pinecones party or "crapper" --that's "crew rapper" with whoever's around.
Someday eventually I will be on a proper team, able to practice regularly and actually slowly get good at it all, but in my bits-and-pieces lifestyle I have found that I am actually at the point of "strong beginner". I certainly don't know what i'm doing, but I am gradually learning the names of some of the most common figures and able to snap into them as necessary.
One of the most interesting pieces of metacognition to gel for me today was recognizing how important it is to focus on facing and turning direction when watching someone else. Rapper is numbered around the little group (with different numbers frequently doing quite different motions within a move), and I was quite proud of myself during one of the samples taught in the workshop that I correctly caught the way my number in the demo moved before it was explained. There are plenty of times when one person's job is just to stay as still as possible and let the set flow around them. When you're all connected, it can be critical to know when to turn left or right or just stay in palce.
It's also, as always, interesting to be in a space doing something that I am decidedly not expert at. I am typically so used to being so good at things, especially in the dance world. Getting to be a part of rapper workshops puts me back on the early squares of learning --although again, I'm a strong enough beginner that I'm no longer learning the complete basics. I can fake my way through the stepping, and I know how to hold the swords and tension my wrists.
So it was really really fun to get to do some of that today, just like it was fun to do some of that this summer and it will be fun to do some of it in the future. We keep half-joking about doing post-bells rapper practice and I think we are getting closer and closer to the day where I say fuck it and buy the swords and make that no-longer-be-a-joke.
~Sor
MOOP!