The dance journal

The dance journal – how to get better at getting better

 

If you’re trying to improve, a dance journal is going to be one of  your best friends.

 

I feel like a lot of people take notes/keep video summaries after private lessons, group classes at events, etc. This is great! But a lot of times you’ll forget these or not use them simply because the information isn’t relevant to you.

 

Keeping track of your own process, what works well for you and why, what feels good in your body, and what you’re working on, is going to make all this information useful to you as an individual.  

 

Here’s a minimal way of doing this.

First, you need a list of 5 or so things to work on and rank them by priority. The top priority is what you think will help you toward your overall dance goals the most. It’s entirely okay to be wrong about this, keeping track over time will help you figure this out.

 

Each time you dance, make a bulleted list of those things you’ve worked on in your phone. Write a single sentence summary of how it felt/how you thought about it, or a ‘didn’t get to this today’ if you couldn’t spend much mental effort on it. That’s it. It doesn’t matter how successful you were, just that you were mindful and present in your body at all for at least one of those things and you were able to comment on it.

The ‘each time you dance’ could be partner practice, a peer critique, a social dance, or your own solo practice.

If you can’t think about the first thing on your list, and it just isn’t gelling at all on this day, skip it and move on to the next thing.

You don’t need to cripple yourself thinking about this stuff and it doesn’t have to be perfect. All you need is some kind of awareness. Spending 10% of your total brain power during your dances just knowing that you aren’t using the floor how you want to is, in fact, very useful.

This is the ‘program minimum’ concept for helping yourself progress with a dance journal.

 

Now, for the ‘maximal’ progress idea.

Have two lists of priorities to work on, one for when you’re dancing with other humans and one for when you’re dancing by yourself.

Even one minute per day of solo practice will be helpful. This could be things like walks and triples in place listening to music and staying on time, walking backward down the stairs or doing a helpful drill like cover & pull in between slow reps of basic patterns, shadow dancing to different genres of music, etc.

Do the same thing with a bulleted list even if you just practice for that single minute per day. “Slow walks 1 minute… felt good when I thought about squishing grapes on the floor under my feet.” That’s literally enough to be helpful.

 

-You put the mindful time in

-You know what you thought about

-You have a mental image that you know is helpful and is worth trying next time

 

When you’re dancing with other people, you can keep up with that separate list. Same as the minimum idea – but if you can, make a quick note of what a future project might be. “Next time I want to try and think about this in a different way.”Or, better yet "this is working for me - do not change this right now."

This creates continuity for yourself in terms of being productive and understanding yourself better.

 

On top of these two lists, try to get videos of yourself dancing as often as you can. Even if you don’t have any competition/presentation/aesthetic goals, you should still have the visual feedback for yourself of ‘am I doing this thing or not.’

 

Finally, keep a physical journal as well. If something is coming back up relatively often in your notes, it has earned the right to get written down on paper. This is a great place for diagrams, stick figures, or sketches of any weird visualizations that might help you get things to work for yourself. There is going to be some ODD stuff in here, and that’s part of the fun. A long time pro recently told me that just by how well my dance was progressing, he could tell that I was looking in the right places for “some weeeeeird answers.” The trippy visuals and silly cues are helpful, if you can make them repeatable and understand why they’re working for you. For a follower, the difference between having a swishy dinosaur tail (thanks, Pete) and getting continually punched in the uterus (thanks, Hailee) can make a startling amount of difference when it comes to directional intent from the low center. Which one works better for you? Your journal can help with that.

 

*****

Merry New Year, everybody. As always, love your dance and be good to each other this year!  

 

If you want a private or semi private lesson with me either locally or at an event, or are interested in video critiques, hit me up on social media :)