Today, we decide that we should review these two pieces songs and focus on the details. I’m more familiar with the second song; therefore, teacher begins reviewing with the first one.

First, when I squat, I should let my knees turn to outside, which will make my movements more pretty. Then, when I turn around, I should be more quick and simple. The next part is hands. I should let my hands more soft, rather than stiff. The next important thing is that when I move my hip up, one of my arms should be straight, and the other one is bending.

What’s more, I’m always confused about touching my head. I will always mess up my hair. My teacher ask me do not worry about hair first; instead, I should don’t movements correctly. In this way, my hair style does not have to be messed up.

The most difficult part is turning head and count the correct beat. I sometimes can’t catch the beat. Therefore, I decide I will count 1,2,3,4 when I meet these parts. I try to fix the turning heard this problem, but I still can’t get that feeling.

In general, we review everything today, and I believe that as long as keep dancing, I can do it perfectly one day!

After stretching, we start to new the the part that we cut it off in the first song.

The first movement is the hardest movement that I have done so far. I just can’t get it and get the feeling of doing it. I ask teacher whether we can skip this part. However, she tells me that as long as I keep practicing, I can make it! Feeling tired, I don’t really want to keep doing this. Therefore, I didn’t really memorize these movements. I just follow what my teacher did. My teacher finds that I have some mood problem. She let me take a break first.

During break, I realize that I should not have this attitude to learn jazz dance. I should be more positive.

After break, I push myself to be vivid and learn to how to make these movements. It indeed worked at first, but later I really feel tired and keep yawning.

We continue learning the new song today. I found that I get the feeling of dancing, and my learning efficiency is improved!

Before the class officially started, teacher shows me a video of a dancer whose names is Jojo. She is famous for Jazz dance in Instagram. Her dance looks perfect that I keep screening when I watch the video. I can’t imagine what kind of people can achieve her level! Even my teacher admired Jojo. This pushes me to practice dancing harder.

Then, we start our class. Only one part is really hard for me and it’s also on the ground. It’s too quick. But we just practice again and again.

Unexpectedly, we finish this new song today! We can learn the part which we cut off in the first song! We even have time to review everything and focus on little details!

We finally start the new song! I’m really excited!

We pick a Korean song, which has strong beats. My teacher says that this dance is relatively an easy one compared with another one, which really increases my confidence.

The first movements are indeed easy. But they ask you to be more confident. It’s like you are the queen here.

Then, it asks more quick movements. I have to admit that jazz dance is really sexy. Behind these sexy movements are efforts and sweat.

One movement is on the ground. I repeat this movement so many times that my knee becomes red. Fortunately, my movements become much better.

Today, after stretching, teacher starts to teach me the rest of the song. At first, I thought it was not a lot, but in fact, we decide to cut a little part so that the second song can be finished during intensive.

One movement looks like that I’m blowing bubbles. But this part’s movement’s are really quick.

Another movement is to use my hand to cross my head, which is also really fast. Therefore, we slow down every movement in this part and repeat. In the end, we speed it up.

In fact, there are other many difficult movements, such as moving the tip up on my tiptoes.

At end, we didn’t realize that the class has already been over. However, we haven’t finished learning this part because it really takes some time for me to learn it. Therefore, we find that we should cut the final part so that we can have time to learn the new song.

Because we didn’t have classes on Monday and Tuesday, we have longer class today.

After stretching, teacher directly teaches me movements in the song because we don’t have enough time to learn more basic movements and I want to be able to dance two songs at the end of intensive.

The later part becomes quicker, which increases the difficulty. Some movements require me to lie on the ground and turn around. Therefore, I gradually start to sweat.

One movement is to squat on the ground and make movement. This asks me to strengthen my legs; otherwise, I always move to the left or right.

At end, when we finishing today’s task, we repeat practicing. The more I do, more familiar I become, and I remember all the movements at end! But it is really tired that I keep yawning.

We will finish the rest part, and we can begin the new song tomorrow!

Here is the link to what I learn today:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAxNjMzODc0MA==.html?sharekey=385a79d4b2d440913f015f1f4bac42ac7

As usual, we start with stretching today. I feel my muscle painful today. When I stretch my body at the beginning of class, I take a deep breath to face the coming painful feeling.

After stretching, teacher teaches me another basic jazz movement, which is about hip. I have to say that this movement looks really beautiful, but it’s also hard to achieve. You need to move your left hip up and fix the rest of your body, then change the left side to the right side, and repeat. It’s not so hard if I do it slowly, but when I speed up, it gets messy. More practices are needed.

Below are the links to this movement’s videos:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAwNzY0MzgwMA==.html?sharekey=4833c620558f1a7ef5829f1c9e7bae662

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAxMjc3OTMyOA==.html?sharekey=d0246f9a9cbd37e02b27df8556dc02b25

Then we continue learn the previous song. One movement utilizes this hip basic movement, but it’s not really strenuous for me to do. In fact, the hard part is stroking my head. This movement asks you to be as quick as possible; however, it also requires you to show your hands’ strength. When I do this, I have to tighten my hands, and my hands have to touch my face and head. It takes me some time to practice this. But the later movements are easier. The key to do these later movements is your expression and body.

Most importantly, teacher says that we just need two more days, then we can finish this song! I’m so excited!

Here is the link to what I learn today:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAxMjkzOTI1Mg==.html?sharekey=9f467f237207a33d4cd4870acb99bd4a7

Based on what I learned yesterday, teacher decides to move on the next part of the song.

As always, we start with stretching our bodies, and then she helps me to review the basic movements we learned before, such as head, shoulders, and hip. I feel that I gradually become familiar with these movements. I get that cool feeling of dancing!

Then, I learned more basic movements about my neck and hip. The neck part reminds of Sinkiang women’s traditional dancing movements—swing their necks.

We move our necks to the front, back, right, and left sides without moving our bodies. The right and left sides are really hard for me. To solve this difficulty, my teacher puts her right and left hands beside my both ears, so there are something putting there that I can actually touch them. It is much better to do this movement in this way. Gradually, my teacher puts her hands down, but I find that I can still do this!

Next movement is about hip. The hip seems to be easier than neck. Below is the video link to this moment:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAwNjQyNTA4MA==.html?sharekey=7000e2a05b7fb96ad0aceba94d50e5b54

The main part of today’s study is continuing learning the song we learned before. In general, I think I can catch all these movements following the song except one little part about hip. I need to move my hip twice as quickly as possible, which is strenuous to do since moving hip once takes some strength and time. Therefore, after the class, I stay in the room to keep practicing, and I feel like it’s getting better.

Here is the link to the new part of the dance:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAwNjQyNTk5Ng==.html?spm=a2h0j.11185381.listitem_page1.5!3~A

This is what I learn so far:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAwNjQyNzI3Mg==.html?spm=a2h0j.11185381.listitem_page1.5!2~A

 

 

 

 

 

As always, we start with stretching our body. The stretching part is not hard for me to do. Then, we begin some other basic movements. The most difficult movement is about my chest. I need to push my chest to the front, then to the back. I always move my stomach with my check when I do this. However, this movement requires you to only move your chest. I try this movement a lot of times, but I still can’t do it perfectly. Teacher says that we can skip this right now. We can practice more tomorrow. Hope I can do this better!

Most importantly, an excited moment comes today! I start to learn a piece of dance! Although my teacher says that this is a relatively easy and soft one, I still find that it’s difficult to do it well. I can’t quickly raise my hip after I turn around. I need to practice more.

Here is the link to my dancing videos:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAwNTE5MjUyOA==.html?sharekey=62ac4fee7179932a45c25990e0ed8d299

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDAwNTE5MDg5Mg==.html?sharekey=88ae5ba35110c94f1635cb3e4efa3b348

More practice tomorrow!

As my independent study’s second day, I finally start to dance.

We begin by stretch our body. I follow my teacher to make movements. I have never thought that it is a kind of strenuous thing for me to stretch my body since I always think that I have a good flexibility. In these 30 minutes of stretching, I can say every part of body is stretched, including my head, arms, legs, feet.

Soon, sweat is dripped from my head and nose. Although it’s a kind of tired, I feel really excited because teacher will teach me some basic movements in jazz dance.

The first movement is about head. I put my head on right side and then left side. Each time I need to try my best to let my ear close to my shoulder. My whole body expect my head is a tree: it can not move. More importantly, my head needs to face the front every time, which will make me more like a dancer. Then, I lower my head and put my head back. In the end, I need to combine these movement to do in a order.

Moving on, we put our attention on the shoulder. I need to lower one side of shoulders, and move up the other one, so my shoulder will look like a diagonal. At the same time, my body cannot move. It sounds not difficult, but it indeed take some time to do this action perfectly.

The third and fourth movement is about waist and hip. These movements also require that the other part of your body need to not move.

Later, we practice these basic movements again and again since jazz dance are built on these movements. Fortunately, I can successfully do these movements at the end!