Learn Classical Modern Dance

1. Introduction to Modern Dance: Hello, my name is Miranda Abbott Whitman. I'm a dancer, choreographer and an author of a program called Dance equations. This 30 day course will take you through the foundation and fundamentals of vellum own style. It's a style of dance that I really love. It's a beautiful art form that helped me become the artist I am today for a professional dancer. Beautiful style, and you should try it if you're a young performer, It's definitely something that you should explore. And if you've never danced at all, is exceptional dance form for beginners as well. It's gentle and it's natural, and it's a great way to start off your dance career. Each lesson is about five to ten minutes long, depending on the exercise. I'll start by explaining in detail the exercise and then I finish. Each lesson is doing the movement all the way through with the music. So you can pause and stop and start wherever you need to in the explanation and then dance it through with me and the music when you're ready. Dance is a beautiful expression. It will change yourself in body, mind, and soul. If you've watched my video and you're ready to make the decision now is the time to take action now and I'll see you in the members area. 2. Limón Lesson 1 Introduction: Welcome, My name is Miranda Abbott Whitman. I'm a dancer and choreographer and welcome to the introductory course of modern dance via the limb own style. Modern dance has evolved with each subsequent generation of participating artists. Artistic content has morphed and shifted from one choreographer today another as have styles and techniques. Even elements of urban dance have become well-represented in the genre. However, in this course, we will focus on the basics of the lumen style, whose technique was informed by Humphreys ideas about the dynamics of body weight as the body rose and fell or remain suspended during the dance. Created by Jose Limon, this technique improves the dancers quality of movement and adds strength while developing dynamics and exciting movement qualities. Because of the loans unique use of space, weight and music is an excellent introduction to dance in general. It can be broken down into simple exercises that can be later enhance a challenge more seasoned dancers. Lamont technique improves one's coordination significantly. The style differs from other techniques, often by working off balance with multiple layers of movement and with the body in an inverted position that's making jumps, turns, and extensions more difficult. The class is broken down into three main sections. Floor work, center exercises, and across the floor. In this style, rather than focusing on positions, we focus on transitions. How to move from position a to position B to position C. This is done in several ways. One through succession, sequential flow, for example, starting movement from the shoulder followed by the elbow, wrist, and finally the fingers to using gravity, letting the body fall or suspend away from gravity, we call this rebound and recovery, like a ball bouncing that does not evenly go up and down. It has a fast drop than a more lengthy suspension. Number three, with opposition positions are not tense. The energy keeps flowing. For, with alignments staying connected to the high point, the body can move off and a way of alignment and back changing the high point of the position. For example, if I roll the spine or sequentially move the body to the side, the high point changes to my neck and my shoulder. And finally my ribcage. Let us go through some of the training basics. Number one, arm positions. In the limb own style. There are arm gestures that we use it you'll see quite often in this course. So the arms will come up the side of the body, up the head and extend out into a V position. The higher price, some of these gestures is that you're going to be doing that while doing other things. For example, I could be forward bend this way and have to come up. And I don't want one element to arrive before the other. I want everything to arrive at the same time. So the coordination can be challenging because we're moving from one to the other. So let's try something like that right now. Just forward. Bend, just the upper body over top and have the hands slowly come up from the very bottom and see if you can time the spine not reaching the top, before the arms and before the rise. It's really challenging. Let's try one more time. So drop the head over. Slowly, bring the hands up, connecting everything together, and then you arrive at the same moment. Good, try that to the side. Maybe we've got the rise, Let's just try the body. So take the body over to the side. We'll be doing gestures like this as well. But one sided head goes to the side. We're going to bring the arm up and try to start bringing the body up at the same time as the arm is moving so everything arrives at the same time. Try the other side, head over to the side, and then slowly bring the arm up. Excellent. So this is a gesture of the arms will be using quite a bit on the floor as we come forward or even in standing, in jumps will see similar gestures, but we might not come up to the center and open, but rather up the sides into that position. As I opened my hands to the side is technically more of a V. So place your hands up in that position. Feel the energy out the palms so don't try to stop or be tense. Like I described earlier, you want to have the movement flowing so you constantly feel the opposition and the flow through the arms. Look at my arms at the side. They're not directly sideways. There's slightly in front of the body. Hey, that's so that I can control and maintain the core. Through this course, we'll be doing move movements that go all around. So something like this. With an arm, you're going to need to be able to control in this sphere. Okay, so that's something to look out for. In this style. You can bring the arms up and open them out with the palms back. But it is also common to see the arms come up and just extend out with the fingertips. That is also a technique you can use, okay. You can also bring the arms up and you'll see it just above the head. And here is a nice place where you can really feel that alignment and opposition for the arms. You'll also be doing a lot with the body. So let's move to focus on some of the elements of the body. It is not always easy for us to move directly sideways and come back up. You'll have a tendency where you want to maybe shift into the foreground. But what we wanna do is always maintain our shoulders back. And so we truly know when we're moving to the side and coming back, and when we're truly moving forward and coming back. So let's give that a try just standing nice and basic. You can put your feet either parallel or like me in first position. All I want to see is that you roll forward and come back up finding that alignment and keeping the shoulders back to the side. You can also practice that sitting on the floor with your back against the wall and see if you can maintain a connection when you move that way. And now it will be really important when we get into something more full with body rules coming all the way around, you really want to know, where's your first half, second half coming down. You don't have these points of reference for you. Okay, let's look at some basics of the hips and feet. Here. If I'm in first position and I come forward, often the hips are still in the upright position. I'm not releasing. If we do something and release, then I will let you know. Alright. Let me talk a little bit about the feet. If you've never had taken dance before, you might not know how to point your feet. But really it's not that complicated. We pointed toes. The thing that does get complicated is that the alignment of the foot. So we don't want the heel to be lifted away from the ground in the back position, but towards the ground. Same thing if I'm looking at the foot from the front, I don't want the heel dropping to the ground. I want the heel lifting to the ground. It just makes it much nicer line if I were to look at the foot this way. It's not a very pretty line behind as if the leg looks straight even though I'm slightly we have the foot. So if I think about my straight point, it's actually not so much tilted in as I'm trying to tilt to that which takes a lot of muscles on the outside of the leg, which we'll be doing some exercises in the condition at the end to help you to strengthen this muscle on the side. So whenever you're pointing your foot, you're trying to lift the heel to the front or drop the heel to the back, end to the side. You're trying to feel that rotation all the way down to the foot. If you look at the cuda PA same thing. I didn't want my heel to drop back. I want my foot to look lifted. So those are some things that you might want to just explore in the body before we begin. I think you're ready to go. Let's Dance. 3. Limón Lesson 2 Arm Articulation: Welcome, I'm excited to start their journey until the Moon. Modern dance with you. The arms are really important part of this style. Why I love lemon style in particular, is the quality you develop within the arms and within the body. When I was a professional dancer, I think most people commented on my arms and my arm gestures of how smooth or soft things seem to be. And I attribute that to myeloma and training and my lemon teachers. So this exercise is always started class with, it's an exercise that was developed by Don across. Now, as with a lot of the exercises I'll be doing. And it's a beautiful start to your day. I enjoy doing this ahead of my yoga classes or other activities I do as well. It's just a great exercise and it is nice because we stretch and use the fingers in a way that we don't really use and other forms of contemporary dance. So with all that being said, let's get started and I'll show you the arm articulation exercise. She's going to start sitting in a comfortable cross-legged position. Usually there's one leg that you're more comfortable with being crossed. I like to do the opposite that I'm used to. So I'm stretching my hips in a different way or I change it from day to day when I'm practicing of the side that feels normal to have crossed in front to the side that doesn't and that way I just am balancing out my hips. So you can start with your hands on your knees or your hands at the side, sitting up nice and tall, feeling that through line we talked about in the introduction, we're nice and tall through the center, really feeling where that central line is the body and where we are when we move off that central lines. That's a really important, that feeling of feeling the floor and the connections to the heavens that opposition hands throughout the side. We start in the introduction, we bring the hands up and it's like they're just floating on top of the water. We're going to articulate the fingers moving from each 11 at a time, coming through, stretching until they're all the way out in front of you. I call this a lotus hand like a flower, stretching the fingertips wide, coming back one finger at a time. And then I push the hands out to the side, the start, same thing. Rotating the arms around, articulating the fingers, but I soften ends still feeling the pull outwards, but I'm softening away from that reach, bring the hands back out. And then I'm going to repeat that. Bring the hands out into come all the way up above the head, softening the elbows and coming back up. So it's the same pattern every time there's a slight variation on where I'm placing the arms. Hey, we're gonna take our right hand ties so we're going to scoop right hand is a little bit higher than the left. In, comes all the way up, soften the elbows up. And in other side. We'll do each part of that is kinda the, the first part of the exercise. Let's count that through just that part before we learn the next section so we can bring the arms up on the intro, 567812345678123456, 7812345678123456, moving through the counts. 12, right hand high, 567812345678, left side, 234567812345678. With this exercise, you want to really make sure you feel the direction above the heads. You're not somewhere out here. We really feel true reach above the head and a true reach side and not somewhere in-between. Want to focus on the energy line? Next part of the exercise will quickly lift our hands up and we start a shoulder articulation. The shoulder, the movement is going to come from the shoulder. We're going to see how far we can move that shoulder without letting it disturb the rest of the body and then the other side. How far can we move the shoulder without letting it disturb now we're going to let the shoulder affects the movement. So the shoulder initiates. I let my body reacts. And come back. The shoulder initiates and come back when I take my hands above the head. Same thing on this one. I'm starting with my left side just to change it up from starting with the right of the other section. But you can choose to start on right and right. If that makes more sense to me, I'm going to articulate my shoulder and come back. And the other side articulate my shoulder and come back. And then same thing. My shoulder is going to affect the movement a little bit more. And then effect. Okay. That part was counts goes 123456, 78123456781234567812345678. Third part of the exercise where you start to incorporate the body and a signature loan arms. We start nice and tall. We're gonna do two counts for it and to cancel, you can also do some for if you choose. But we're going to just keep it a little bit faster so we can do that and also fit in our arms with the music. So we roll forward off the spine feeling that high point change as I dropped my head, I feel the high point come to the back of the neck, lower down on my spine. And then I pull myself back up, coming one piece at a time, up onto that line. Okay. So I'm not bringing my head up first. I'm really ruling from the base of my spine all the way up to the top. Okay. We'll do that twice in front and then we'll take it to the side, rolling over to the side. So let's start with the right side first. We'll go back to that right side. You can choose whichever side you want to start with. Other side. Okay? And then we're gonna go and combine those two. We're going to go front to side to the right side, up, front to left side, and come up and then side to the front. Combining those gestures and side to the front. Then we're going to repeat that whole section with arms. One, 234, bringing the hands all the way up to the position, again, down, wrap the arms. The arms come right from the base. You want to start right at the bottom, bringing the hands up and smoothly opening about at the same time that the head reach. That's a hard coordination. A lot of people want to come up, bring the body, and then move the hands. But in limbo, and we're trying to connect and combine all those gestures. So when I come forward, I'm trying to smoothly bring up the body at the same time as I'm manipulating the hands and everything should arrive at the same moment there. Okay? The hands, like described in the introduction, me just say a little bit slightly forward, although we call them side, they're not exactly side, so they're a little bit forward. That way you can control the body. Same thing to the side. We're going to move, sorry, right side first. We're going to bring the hand down and up and everything arrives at the same time, other side. And then we combine those front to side. Coming up and front to side. On the app. Side. Front. Connecting the arms. Side to front. Connecting the arms. Okay, at the very end we're just going to add some full body rules because we'll be using those throughout the class. Full body roll. We go from the front all the way down, low, high point suspension, drop to the front and come back up. And same thing other way. High points suspension and dropped. In all of these warm-up exercises, we really want to use the body to help us find that drop and to help us find the suspension. Right. So it's not even when I come around, it's not 123456, 78, but it has a little bit of an impulse. So I'm coming down and 12345678, you can give it your own impulse. It doesn't have to be like mine, but you want to really feel that drop in suspension through the movement. Okay, So let's try it all to the music. 4. Limón Lesson 3 Bounces: All right, well, welcome back. Today we're going to look at bounces. Bounces are probably one of my favorites because it brings back a lot of memories. I transitioned from ballet to contemporary or modern dance. And I just couldn't let go. I just I was so used to being held in my ballet positions. I just didn't know how to drop and release and Ramon technique really helped me with that. In particular, my teacher, don across now, she would just, I have this memory of her just pushing my head. Personally. Drop like go breathe, drop like go breathe. So for you, you need to drop like go and breathe. This exercise will help you do it. So sitting up nice and tall, feet are just extended. Any length is comfortable depending on your hip flexibility. My hips are not very open, so I like to give myself just a little bit of distance here so I feel I can sit upright. If you have tight hips is going to be really hard to sit upright on the floor. And you might want to do some stretching, which we'll talk about in the last part, which is just a little body conditioning. It'll be so much easier as a technique to learn if you're able to sit upright, sitting on the floor so that as just like you're standing, you're able to feel that elongated line that that extension up to the sky. So we're going to start. You can place your hands on your knees are at the side. I like mine placing at the side. And even you can move your hands to wherever is comfortable in this exercise. It's more about finding that drop and that suspension than anything else. So we're gonna start here and we're just going to take bounces to the front position. We're gonna go 12322332345, roll-up six, roll-up seven, roll up, 81232, and 34, drop, roll up, roll up, roll up a bit. We're going to extend the feet in the split-second before we start the next part. Okay, So you have to extend those really quickly. Same thing, we're gonna do, our bounces, the exact same bounces we just did, but we're going to do them here. 1232233234, drop from 567812345 role that sixth row let-7 role, that's eight. My feet are in first position. You can also do it in parallel. I'd like to do it in first because I like to work the outside part of my leg that we talked about that's going to give me that nice heel lift. So I'm trying to get my baby toes down to the floor as best as I can without bending my knees. They don't have to go, don't force anything. This is a style that's not supposed to look forest or molded into any one position. After we have the legs forward, we're going to open the legs up to the second position and we're going to do the drops in this position for us. That's why it's nice to stretch beforehand. We're gonna go drop 234, let yourself go coming up, up, up and up and drop. And 23 and for drop and 67, same thing. We go to this side, 1234, drop, roll up, roll up and go. 1234, drop and roll up, roll up. And we're done. The first time. We're going to add in arms. So here we go legs and come back and into that position to do it again right away using the arms, those signature Lamont arms are going to come up and open. Okay. So we have 1232233234 and with the arms 6781232345678123456781234, swing six and the 78123456781, 2345678 to the side, 123456 difference here we look up and up to change sides 1234 up and we rebound, rebound just to those and we finished in the center. Okay, now we're ready to do it with the music. Excellent, and now we'll do it with the arms. 5. Limón Lesson 4 Fours on the Floor: All right. Hello. Hello. Welcome back. Today we're going to do spinal successions and I'm also going to do a shoulder isolation exercise. Let's jump right into it. I think this one, it'll be a fun one for you. Let's bring our legs together. In this exercise, we really work on combining movements. And so it starts off slow and they get faster. So we learn all the elements slowly and then we hit all those elements read at once. Okay, So we're going to start with the legs like this. These are the spinal successions. We wrap our arms around her legs and we took our head in. On four counts. We go 1234, back, 234, we repeat 12341234. We're gonna do the same thing, but now we're going to start to move elements of it faster. We're going to go up on three and inner one and then reverse that up on one and back in on three. So we go 123, all those elements together getting back in, in one count again, 1231. Now we reverse that. And 12341234, hitting everything on 11, we're gonna do these ones four times 11. Then we have a couple of counts to reset. We can stretch your hips a little bit and come up for the second part of the exercise, but we won't stop in-between for this one. So here we go to this side, it's going to be nice and slow and the ba, so we can really work on that articulation from the shoulder and that extension without being tense like we talked about. So here we are with stay up nice and tall. We have 1234 from the shoulder, slow shoulder initiates the movement 34. It's still reaching out, dropping 1234. And even though it's such a subtle motion, you want to make it linger. Linger, linger, right? You don't want to be dead to come back here and then just be waiting. Your audience is going to get bored. So you want to learn how these subtle gestures, I'm going to float, float, float, float other side. You take it for accounts. For, accounts, for accounts and your float, float, float, float. Then it gets a little bit easier because we're going to do it in two is a very comfortable tempo. So we go 12 from the shoulder one to bring it back up, one to the center, one to side. Two from the shoulder, stretch down and up, stay on the side, feel that spiral back to counts. Then on one camp, one, camp one count n, one count, one count. Throw the arm and up and up the hard part, getting all of that in the whole thing in on two counts. And 1212, we're gonna do this 14 times. And all those elements in nice and fast with that breath. Okay, here we go with the music. 6. Limón Lesson 5 Circular Stretches in Second: Hello and welcome back. Today is going to be a little bit of an easier Feel. Good day. We're going to do some stretches in second position. Okay, so to start, we're going to open the legs wide to the side and you can choose how wide you want to go and how you're feeling. Like I said though, working on the floor is a lot easier when the hips get a little bit more open. I struggled with that for a long time and my dancing, it led to a lot of injuries. So I really encourage you to make sure you have a nice stretching regiment so that you can take care of your body. And this is a nice stretch. And second that I like to do, and I put it in my classes because it also has this pick me up in the center. So a lot of this center work that we'll be doing with the swings. Like I said, we don't swing out the pelvis. Well, now I want to practice that lift in the body. And so I'm gonna do that here in the second position. So none of our stretches through the center are gonna be extended out until the end when we just get to lie out. And I'm going to let you do whatever kind of stretch you want at the very, very end. Okay, So here we go. Legs nice and wide, standing up nice and tall. And we'll start with the exercise. The arm goes over 12345 78, return the body and scoop up the abdomen over the leg. 12345678 in the center, 2345678, other side, 2345678, back to this side. 2345678. Nice long stretch. I like to add another little extra reach to come up 2345678. Then we come back. I'm not going to do the whole thing. I'll explain that a little bit faster. So we go 123456781234567812345678888. To come back up, then we're going to repeat the whole thing on 41234 twist 1234, center 1234, other side, 234 to the side, 234 come up to reverse. So the other side for, for, for, for, for, for, then on two counts. Two counts. Two counts. Two counts, two counts, two counts, reversing tu, tu, tu, tu, tu, tu, nice and simple repeats on the one that's, we're going to see a little bit of a variation. So on the one count, we're going to just move more through each position. We have 12345678. We're gonna do a little rebound. Are up our arm that's above our head is going to come and fall to the side and other one is going to lifting a little suspension, making an S shape, suspend and then come back the other way. And this one will also repeat four times. So we have that nice feeling of rebound in-between. Then just to finish the music, there's a little bit left. You can take a stretch, just bring the head forward. You don't want to go too far. Just be gentle on the hips where it only partway through the class. So we don't want to push to our extreme. You can flex the feet are point the feet, circle the feet as you wish. Wiggle the hips also feels good to loosen up the joints and take a little stretch and we'll finish there. Alright, here we go. 7. Limón Lesson 6 Swings in Second: So today I'm sitting on the floor because we're doing more of the floor exercises. N I'm in second because we're going to do swings and second, I liked swindling. Second, it gives you the momentum that you need for your jumps later on in class. And it's a little fun exercise where we toss ourselves around a little bit. So without further ado, here we go. Sitting nice and the second position, toes are pointed. We're going to take the body and we're going to start it over the side. We're gonna do it nice, plain and simple, without any arms in the beginning, just body. So try to keep that shoulder back to feel the true side. Then we have that same drop that letting go that we had in the bounces, except that energy is directed forward and then to the side. So we have drop, suspend, drop, suspend, drop, suspend. Drop, suspend. Yes. We're gonna do for them side-to-side and then renewed for adding in the arm drop with the arm lifts drop and lift. Europe. Even in the suspension, my head stays side. It's just a little suspension before we continue on. The next one's a little bit more challenging. We're going to twist the body so that we get into the fourth position on the floor. So here we are to the side. We're going to swing. I'm gonna do this one slow. We're going to come to the fourth position. So my leg one is forward and one is backward. And I'm going to allow my elbow to lie flat. I'm going to come into the arch position to come back as a quick drop, but we don't want to come up to come center. We want to reach the toes. I like to imagine there's two strings on my toes pulling me, reaching me back out to that diagonal. Here I am in the arch. My toes reach to bring me back. My head comes to the side position. I'm going to continue the swing though we did earlier. Down my rebound there in the center and then swing all the way to the other side. So that's going to look like this a little bit faster. It's gonna be Swing and suspend, swing, suspend, suing. Suspend and swing. Suspect. The next part going a little bit further with that swinging ribbon, you're going to really need that rebound. So here you are back. You get a drop in the center and that drop knees to lift you all the way up on your feet, on your hand and a slight arch. I come down nice and smooth, rebound in the center and do the other way. It is a lot easier if you use that rebound. If you do it too, even in slow, you're going to lag coming up. Your lats are going to have to work a lot harder to get up there. So you want to use that rebound as much as you can. Let's give it a try. So here you are to the side. You're going to rebound and lift, dance down, lift, drop, lift, up, and lift. And that's where the exercise finishes. Let's try it to the music. 8. Limón Lesson 7 Swings Lying Side & Rise Varriation: All right. A little bit more working on the floor. I love rolling around on the floor. It's lots of fun and feels good to stretch and dance that way. So here we go. We're gonna do some leg swings on the side, a little bit of a feel good, stretch in a twist. And then I'm also going to do a variation that sometimes is added onto this exercise with some additional side swings. Okay, So further ado, let's start on the floor. This one starts lying on the floor. We're going to go onto our right side, extend the right hand above the head. Have your legs bent in a comfortable position. And then we're gonna take our top leg and we're going to back into an attitude. So it's a nice, sweet exercise will later do when we're standing. But this one we know about a balance there, just gotta be here. So it's a nice comfortable one. The legs, hands back and we do for swings forward and back we go 1232 and 34 and Nice and easy, That's it. Then we add the arm, a nice twist that feels good. One 2322334 and the arm is dropping and lifting. We'd take a stretch bringing that leg across and I look the opposite direction to my foot holding 1234. Then I'm going to roll on my back. And I'm gonna do the same thing on the second side, facing the back leg lifts. And I have start with four swings, 1234 and with the arm 23 and floor, I bring the leg across to the stretch 34 and then I roll on my back and I do the other side. I'm going to teach you this second exercise that we're gonna do right away so that we can dance them back to back. The other exercise we're gonna do here, line back on the ground. We're going to start with lifting up off the ground in an arch. And we're going to lift up one to toss, come down and look at my hands. They turned in. I slide them down and then back out to the side and a T position drop. We want to really let go. Up, up, down, down, up, up, down. And then we're going to take it into a curve, curve and we're going to lift up, drop to the side. There's my rebound sliding down and lift, drop down, curve, curve, lift, drop down. And last one. Here we go with music. 9. Limón Lesson 8 Standing Bounces with High Release: Alright, welcome back. Today we're going to do bounces with release. Okay? This is a nice parallel exercise, so give a chance to just rest of legs in a parallel position. But in parallel we don't work with the legs all the way stuck together. It's really hard to balance. So we're going to just have a little space, but it's also not some sort of power stance. We're not opening the legs super wide. Nice comfortable parallel position. So we can see our second toe is facing forward. And we're going to start this one, the lean, a little bit of a different impulse to bring us into the foreword, Ben. So I'll show you to the side for a moment. I come to this side. I'm going to lean forward from the hips, coming out like so. Not very far. It's this diagonal position just to tilt the hips. And then I'm going to initiate the movement from my head, curving over. From here, I'm going to add in a hissing sound where I and that's just to release the muscles. I'm still, I'm not fully extended though. I'm still keeping this nice lift in the abdomen as I'm forward, but I'm trying to release the shoulder area with the hiss. Then all I'm gonna do is the bounce. On the 4th, I lift up for the suspension. I can drop all the way down on that one and come up to the rise. Okay. Again, those hands staying slightly forward. So let's look at the counts for that. Okay. I'm going leaning 1234 curve that curve, curve, curve and we hit 2345, bounce, bounce up and drop. We come all the way up to stand. And then we're gonna take it to the side, same thing to the side. We do the tilt, then the curve, and then a bounce 234 drop to come up. And you can choose if you really like to do this arm, you can always add that in. I'm just going to come up this time and they exercise and just feel that nice vertical line and come down. I take the same thing to the other side. We go forward. 234, curve, curve, curve, curve. We have 1234 drop coming up. Apprise. You can always add a plea in and soften the legs to the side. Same thing over. Okay. So a couple of options there. If you want, you can do it several different ways. You can come forward from the release and you can keep the legs straight and come up or you can choose to drop the head. And then when we do this suspension, you can choose to drop the knees and come up. And I'm going to leave that up to you. You can decide whether or not you want to just release without the drop or released with the drop. Okay, here we go. Let's give it a try with some music. 10. Limón Lesson 9 Tendus Side: Welcome again. Thank you for joining me in this dance lesson. Today we're going to do some tom do. Placing the feet in first position. These are gonna be Tom decides which a little bit of rotation to the other side. What we're trying to achieve in is it just a smooth transition for the feet? So it's not just atan2 exercise, but what we want to do is see if we can move on the floor, stay connected from one foot gesture to the next or just trying to go for being smooth. It's a short exercise and we're going to stop and start the music each time. And we'll do a little progression of each movement. We're going to start with just the fees, maintenance, nice and simple. And we'll put the hands on our shoulders so that we're working our back muscles a little bit if that's uncomfortable. You can also place the hands on the hips. But we'll start with the arms and the shoulder here we are in first position. The foot for this to gotcha is going to start extended before the movie music starts. So the food is there. We're ready to go in on the one. Okay, So we're out the musical style. We go 12. On the third play, we go through a fifth. A loose fifth is not a tight fit. A loose fifth position, smoothly coming to the other side and extend out to the side. We repeat the same thing. This is now the second side in, in and smooth, smooth transition in, in, smooth, smooth transition in, in and smooth, smooth transition. And it's literally, it's bad short. So it's a nice quick exercise. But what we're going to start to do is add in all those elements. So first thing we'll add in is an arm. This will place the arms down. Legs starts out to the side. We have 12. There's a slight rebound as I go through the fifth position. I'm going to take my hand up and around, but I need to get there at the same time as my foot. Let's see that again. We're here, we have the leg out. We go in in and drop out. This one falls as this one starts to come. So I have N in, down and in, in, drop out. Smooth, smooth, smooth transition. Why don't we try that one is little more complicated in the first try with me one time, we'll go a little bit slower. We'll go 5678. We have 1234123412341234. Nice and smooth, excellent. Adding in another element. So we've had the chon do the churn, and the arm, and now we need to add the body. So here we are. We have leg starting out to the side 12. We're gonna drop the body down, smooth transition out to the side, 12 down and out. 12, down and out. See, even I tumble over. It's a hard one. What you want to make sure to do is not get the foot caught on the floor. That can be challenging. And you want to keep your focus so that you find from the front to the back. Let's try that one again, a little bit slower. 123412, down and out, 12 down and one to down and out, one to n down and letting the head drop and come back up. Okay, here we go. Let's try all of those with the music. Okay, We're going to stop and start between each one. 11. Limón Lesson 10 Degagé Side and Pasé series: Alright, welcome back. So today we're going to learn a poxy and negotiate exercise. Last class, we learned a simple The gotcha exercise, just learning how to move the leg and incorporating that with the term. Today we're going to learn an exercise that follows a very typical pattern that we use in dance, where we go 8421. So starting with eight, the gaza is moving down to four, 21. We're also going to do the same pattern for the past, say, Series doing 8421. It's a pattern that we use in ballet and other forms of contemporary dance. Let's learn the feet first, and then we're going to learn the arms and body. So if you want, you can place the hands on your hips or if you prefer to engage your back muscles a little bit more, you can place your arms on your shoulders. That's your choice. For this one, I'll place my hands on my hips, starting with the way we're gonna do this in first position. Only. If you want. As you get better at this material, you can decide to do this exercise from a fifth or changing from fifths as your choice. But for the sake of simplicity, we're gonna do it just from first, since there is a lot of body motion and arm gestures to coordinate minute. So let me walk you through the first exercise. Starting with your right foot. We're going to do eight to Gij's to the side, we have 12345678 and then to the other side, 12345678. Nice, even music and calves. We're going to then break it down. Only half is made to gotchas for O one. 234, other side, 234, now only 21212, only one. But this time we'll do four times so that we finish nice and even with the music, Let's try that just a little bit more combined. Well, I count with our feet. We have 0123456781234567812341234121, 21111. Okay. Same pattern with the passe series. If you want, plays the hands on the shoulders to engage the back a little bit more or just keep them on the hips. Pathway series. Also starting in first position. You can also change and have the foot going front and back once you know the material. So freedom first position, same pattern. We have 12345678, other side, 234567812, 34 are 12341 to one to pass a one plus one plus one plus one. And you should feel the burn in the back of the legs. Like to talk about in the introduction, the shape of the legs, right? When I'm working, I'm trying to open and extend the front flattening out the front of the muscle, squeezing in the back the whole time trying to feel that circular motion down my leg. And same with the foot and passe. I don't want the policy to lose that circular momentum forward. So my heel, I need to be trying to keep my heel forward, not cutting back like that where it's we call that a sickle, the physician. And you can see in the line, it doesn't look very nice, right? If you were on stage, you can see how this line with the heel forward, it looks a lot more lifted, whereas this looks a little bit saggy, right? So you don't want to sag the heel back, we want to feel the rotation coming down. My teachers always use to describe it as like a barbershop pole or like a candy cane that spiral momentum down the legs that you feel the whole time. So now that we know that the gouache and the passe, Let's look at the arms. Let's look at the arms separately. I'll be in first, starting with the degauss. Yea, when my leg is sliding out to the side, I have my arms go like so 12345678. The hard part on this is that you're not doing eight counts, exactly like the foot. You're doing eight counts from up to back to the start position. So it means you really got to think about your coordination in this. And just like in the mole mon style, we want to be nice and smooth. It's not about getting sharply to the position. Are coming down. It's about this gradual smooth transition up. Remember with the arms like we talked about in the intro, arms, even though we say side aren't directly side, not always. Maybe in choreography, if that was the look you're going for. But in training we want to engage the stomach muscles, which means that from this side my arm is always slightly in front of me. So if you see the seam of your shirt, then that's good. We don't want to be here. We will lose the ability to lose our muscles. And what happens is that is once we start getting the head and all the body rules involved, it's gonna be really challenging to not lose ourselves in space, we need to be contained in the center. So let's try the arms. We're going to do eight counts and down eight counts on the other side for four to two and for the ones as well, which will get quickly. So let's give that a try. Not with the music yet. I will just do it with the counts. So we have 123456781234567812340123401234123 for so you have to overlap it. For the passi series, we're gonna do something a little bit easier. We're going to use both arms at the same time. And when we get to the faster ones, we're just going to hold the arms up. So for the positive series, the arms look like so. And you can do it with me. 12345678123456781234, 56781234. And then the positive series we hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. Then the hard part. We're going to add the body on top of that. So take the body forward, hanging. We're not going to extend at the hips. The hips are still gonna be upright. We're going to take the body forward, hanging. So our center point is now somewhere in our upper back, as you can see, like on suspending like a puppet from that point to all go too far so that we're still engaging your stomach muscles and can successfully use the legs. But my head is hanging forwards. Okay, so we start there, but now we have the Corp incorporate the body and the arms. So here we go. First position, body comes forward. We have 123 with a high release, 45678, again, 123456. And you should do it with me so that it's easier when we move quickly on the 4123412341234. And to make it easier for you, we'll just hold up, hold, hold, hold, hold for the single ones. Okay, Let's combine it. I'm going to move it a little bit slower than our music. Then when we do it with the music, will pump up the rhythm a little bit more. Let's just take it a little slow so you can do it with me. And we'll try to combine the arms, legs, and then at the end, the body feed him first. Standing nice and tall, shoulders back, engage the muscles from behind. And you still have to look good. Here we go. Ready, starting with the right foot, we have 0123456781, 23456781234123412121111 for the past a series oh, 1234567812345678012340123 for 01234. Hold the arms up. Ready with the body so you have to be ready to go. You got to be ready to go right at that point that after the four, you're gonna drop the body and be ready to go to do the whole passes series incorporating the body. Let's do it together. Ready? We start down. We have 123 with the high release, 45678123456781234, 12341234. All the high release for the last four will hold the high release. Then finish with a nice cliche. Now is finished as if you were on stage. Let's give it a try with the music. 12. Limón Lesson 11 Tendu & Degagé Combination with Lung Series: Welcome back. I hope you practice those two Gij's because we're about to do a few more Tanya's into Gaza is this time instead of just going sideways, we're going to work on quo, which means we're doing the cross position, front, side, and back as well. We're also going to take our way a little bit off-center and come back to center. Okay. We're gonna do it in two parts. The first, we're going to keep simple with the mandu, without body, but with a little bit of arms. And the second time we're going to do it with the gouache, full body and arms. And if you want, rise irrelevant, that's your choice. So let me talk you through the exercise starting with the gouache forward, we're going to use arms here. We're going to do gotcha, one, lower down. We're going to let the arms go relax. As I flex my foot, I'm trying to lift my toes up on my foot. I point the foot, I bring it in. I'm going to do one to undo back to front, To undo back on the next one. I'm going to change that to the lunge. So I come up, I'm going to lunge on count three. I come back close in first position, plea a and backup. And it's going to be the same pattern all the way around on quad. So I have same foot, right foot. I'm going 1234, 56 this time I'm crossing over. So I'm trying to keep that opposition in the hip. But like mostly Ramon is more about the movement anyway. So if I slightly move my hip, It's okay. I do want you to try as much as I can feel that opposition in the hip that way. It's also working my interior muscles of my leg. So let's take that again. After you flex the foot, you're going to reach the leg out. The tonsils are gonna go across and open across and open this second one, the story, this last one turns into the lunge. I reach my hands. I lunge to the side. I come back up. And I plea a and stretch. Same pattern to the back, nice and easy. Points and lower the back can be hard to do the flex foot, It's going to lift only a little bit, but that's okay. So I go back as I lift my foot, my arms go down, point and close to undo, undo, undo. Same thing at reach for the lunch. Come back up and close with a plea and stretch to the side. I reach lower flex lower point, gouache, you guys sorry Tom. John, do I reach and lunch and come back up and play and stretch. Before we changed sides we're going to do for player a is moving off the center. So we're going to reach, redo it with the arms. Come up and close, reach. And up and close, reach. And up and close reach. Play. You're ready for the other side. You don't have to start right away. But we're learning slow. So take a moment, shake it out. If your muscles are getting sore, we don't want any stiffness. We never want to feel like we're gripping anything. We're using our muscles but we're trying to lift. There's an opposition between the fall and rebound that we explained in the beginning. We want to just feel that that always exists as a possibility that we're feeling this opposition through the body. That at any moment we can drop that opposition and come back up to that line. Okay, so here we are nice and elevated through the body. Let's just take the other side nice and slow. I'll just count you through it. So we have a one, 234567812 lunge on 3456. You have lots of time to move between the music. One, it doesn't matter if it's exact point and cross, and cross and cross. We go up for the lunge on 345678 to the back, 1234567812 lunge N3, 4567 to the side, 123456781234567 to the side, we go with the play in-between and up and close, reach. And up and close. Reach. Up and close ended again. Create an app and close you might have a bit of counts in the music left. If you want, you can come up and just take a rise. Trying to challenge yourself a little bit in the rise position. Like I said before, careful on the rise, that same circular motion through the legs needs to apply. So when I rise up, my arms slightly forward helps me contain my muscles here as they come up. Same thing, you don't want your ankles falling back and sickling. My ankles need to come forward and to feel that circular motion all the way up the leg circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, circle, as you know, falling back in the ankles. See how as soon as they fall back in the ankles, I dropped my body. I have to feel like my head's always lifting, lifting, lifting sometimes when people rise, the rise and they'll keep their body down and they only rise in the lower half. And we don't wanna do that. We don't want to look squashed. So when we rise up, we want to feel that everything lifts as a unit all the way up so that we can hold, okay, and you can try arise at the end. So let's take this first part without body, without a gotcha. Just simple time do with the music. All right. Hi. Great. I hope that you'd had a good time doing that one. We're gonna make it a little bit harder by adding embody. And now the arms and feet in a little bit different way with the digoxin. So let's take the same pattern. Won't do the whole thing. I think we'd be able to do it right away with the music, but I want to walk you through some of the differences. Okay? So here we are starting in first position. The arms go one. This is the same tube, but we add a body 345. Here's the DOJ. We're going to add the arms, six, 78. This is the same. It turns into the lunge 12345678. If you'd like to add the rise in there as well, you can see from the lunge, lunge, but you might want to come up to a slight rise and lower. Just works a little bit more of the legs and just challenges herself to come up through the movement. The hard part of lamin is that we don't often stop and then come to the rise is all connected so you want to move. So that means if you're slightly on or off the rhythm, It's okay. It's more important to feel the fall and suspension. And sometimes that means you There's this a little bit more suspension. That's okay and quite exciting frankly. So let's look at it, what it looks like to the side, because we're going to incorporate the dugata is still with that twist and the dropping of the arms. Okay, So we have Peter and first we have 12 with the body and out with the arms. We reach up and fall and come back up and in. Okay, so that's the thing we're going to add in even a little bit more body. In the lunge. We're going to add the body coming forward. So now you see the pattern. Let's make it a little bit more challenging because I think you're able to do it. So let's bring our feet in first. Let's look at those to front and side again, adding another body on top of it. So we're gonna go one to drop the body like you saw up, incorporate the arms into the lunge. Adding the body now on the lunge, reach the arms, add the body, come back up and add the rise if you want. Laura, having the body at an end with the rise is a lot to workout in your body. So you can try it either the first version I showed you without the body, or if you want to go right away and try it with the body, that's your choice. Same pattern to the back. So we go 12 but we had the high lift, high lift. We reach swing the arms through the DOJ into the lunch with the high lift if you choose. Again, if you wanna do it without that high lift, you can and focus on coming up to the rise. Or you can try to add an all-in with the high lift coming up to the rise and play a same pattern to the side. 12345678123456, 78. We'll do the same thing in-between, where we have the four plays in between. And then we'll do it the other side. Okay, so let's take the whole thing a little bit more challenging with the music. Yes. Good. Okay. You'll notice the first time I did the exercise with the drop in-between and the second time I did it with the drop. So that's something you can do as well. That's a fun one to practice. I hope you do it at home. 13. Limón Lesson 12 Plié Series: All right, welcome back. Today we're going to learn the PA series takes a lot of strength in the legs because we were going from standing all the way down to very low grandly a it's a very slow ground-based. So make sure you've done an adequate warm-up of your knees and your ankle joints and your hip joints, you're ready to go. I'm going to teach you the lesson today. Starting in first position, this whole exercise happens in first position. If you choose. Eventually once you get this exercise and in your body and you know it very well, you might want to add different positions. You could do it in fourth, you could do it in 5th. But for simplicity sake, we're gonna do it in first. And in fact, we often do it in first to start out because you incorporate the body and there's a lot of balancing That's occurs in this exercise. We're going to start in first position. We're going to do to Demi, please. This exercise is on a three or six. So we have 1234561234561, 2345612356. You can kinda move through the council little bit, so don't be too particular, because what we're really trying to achieve in the Lamont style is this fluid through the movement. So what happens when I'm all the way down at the bottom is there is a flip and my body goes from this upright position, boom, all the way down. But what I'm not doing that position, I'm not sticking my bump out in that position. So what makes it possible for me to go from one to the other without falling over, is that I maintain my pelvis. Show it from the side as I'm going down, I feel that nice up through line through the body. I'm coming down on the flip. My head goes forward, but I'm lifted in my abdomen. My hips are upright so that when I come up, I can really feel myself pull in onto that line and find my alignment again. Okay. And that happens to the side and as well the back. But from here down, There's no flip. Okay, So here I am. Feed him first. Let's try that one again. So we have 012323 down, 23123 coming up. Lower down. Lift the rise. And if you want, you can even add a high lift your choice cliche. And we do the same thing to the side. So we go 123456123456, only one on this time coming up. We find that rise. Then we lift and play to go to the back. One always starts with two dummy PAs. Down, down, down, up. I draw my heels and I lift my chest. My arms come up slow, find the rise and cliche and stretch. We're not gonna go back to the side on this one. We're going to start right away to the front. So we can go to the other side and the back. It'd be the same. 123456 are 123, drop the heels. Six, we come up and rise, lift the arms, and lower with the plea to the side. And bump, bump, bump, bump. We come up and down with the lifts and lower. And then we just do the same thing to the back again. 23 yeah. Bottom. The bad item by arms, move, fluids, the movement. Bentley. Sometimes it's nice to just take a rise at the end. If you choose to, you can always hold and just balance to make sure you're on your feet. Alright, let's try this one with the music. 14. Limón Lesson 13 Body Swings in Second: And finally off the floor or I'm staying off the floor. You've seen me off before a little bit. Alright. Welcome back. It's nice to have you today. We're going to do some swings in second, like we did on the floor, but now we're gonna do them standing. So if you remember that exercise, this one is going to seem a little bit familiar. Okay, we're going to start in a nice big second position. And the first part is we're just going to do the body and no arms. So we're going to start to the side just like we did when we're sitting, starting with the body over to the side and then we're gonna swing side to side. So we have dropped and lifts, drop and lift, drop and lift. And four times then we add the arm just like you did on the floor and drop drop, lift and drop and lift. When we do that a second time, we're going to slightly come off balance, extending the leg down and extend, drop, extend, drop, extend, drop, extend. And then for the last one we're going to add a gallop. We're gonna go gallop in the center. Lift. Gallup picked me up in the body. Breath, extend. Breath, extend. And that's it. Okay. Okay. Start getting our legs ready for the jumps. It's not too high. Don't try to go too high. This little middle because we haven't done a lot of preps for our jumps yet. This little middle part is a little pick me up. It's more about the spirit of the body, the lift and fluids of the body. Okay, here we go. Let's do it with the music. 15. Limón Lesson 14 Rebounds in Three Parts: Greetings. I'm so excited for today's lesson because today we're doing rebounds. This is a very signature Lamont exercise. And I think it's a beautiful exercise of learning how to use the spirals and the body. Okay, so we're going to jump right into it. But today is gonna be a count 15 piece of music. So if you're not used to working in anything but fours and threes, this might be a little bit challenging for you. Basically in a 15 in this routine, we're going to count it as an H and a seven counted like so 123456781234567123456781234567. So it's going to feel very even and then very uneven on the second part. Thanks to leave. We're gonna do it in parts. So we're going to build into the more complicated stuff as we go. Starting with the feet parallel as well, we need to do some churning. So if you need to put socks on and you're more comfortable with socks and you can do that as well. So comfortable parallel position to start, we're going to start with a very simple drop forward, 12344 counts to come up. We have four counts to drop side because I'm starting on the right side. You're welcome. Start on right or left, 1234. Then we're gonna go into the seven which are going to be a full body roll, 1234567. The body roll was started the opposite side that we just did the drop two. So again, I'll repeat on the right. We have 12345678123456. Seven. Again, I'll repeat that so you can try it one more time with me. 123456781234567. Let's try to either side. 123456781234567. The drop is going to be extremely important in this one. You can't get that drop in that Let go to the floor. You're always going to feel a kind of up and out of floor and you're not gonna be able to move quickly enough to get that full rotation. In the second part of this exercise, we're going to include the arm and the rise. So we have 12345. Arm comes in six, rise comes in 781234567. Keep the second part is simple. We have 123456781234567. So you get that nice. 34. I want to feel that suspension and drop. After that. We're going to add in the turn. So we have 1234, 56781234567. Turn in the arm. You can do it. Okay. Let's try just the right side again. We have 12345678. Here you go. You can do it. Think of it. I'm going to do it slow motion for you. Think of it as a half turn to the side and half turn to come around the arch. It'd be a lot easier to break it down. Again. I'll show you that as you come up to the rise, you have half turn over to the side, half-term around, drop and come up, try it a little faster. Right side, 12345678123456, left side, 123456781234567 is harder to do counting, so I'm sure you'll be fine. Okay. Ready? We're going to try all those parts without arm, with arm, with full arms and turn to the music. 16. Limón Lesson 15 Slow Twos: Hello and welcome back. Today we have slow 2s, which are actually usually combined with slow twos, threes. Okay? But we're going to just break it down into slope through slow 2s, and we'll do fast threes in the next lesson. Okay, so here we go. And slow two's will put our feet together. And just like the name, we're gonna do our emotions on two counts. You can also count it as a four, if that helps you move a little bit more smoothly, but we go like so we have 12121212, the foot to the side or 122 to three to four to five to six to seven, 28. So we do it to the back. Now I added a rise and the second that I didn't do in the front, but that's totally optional. You can do that however you want. If you want to rise right away when you come back and just add in one more arise and plea to make it the eight counts. And I forgot that the first time. Okay. So let's go to the back. The back goes one to two to three rise. If you want to come back to plea to rise and lower, we're going to go to the side again, 222 in the center, coming back and will rise and plus j. And then we do the whole thing on the second side. So we'll go to the front side, back and side. Some things to remember on this is when you rise, you don't want to leave your body back. You want to take your body up with you. So sometimes when you see people rise, they rise in their ankles but not their body. You really want to make sure that when you rise up, you're taking your body with you and down. And in fact, even though the rise happens in the feet, is the body that helps you do it. This exercise, we're trying to be super smooth through all the transition from one to the other. There's not that same rebound received. This is all about control because when we get to fast threes, that's, we're going to see this turn into the rebound. And we're going to show the difference between the two. That's for the next lesson. So let's, this lesson focused on the smoothness of our movements. Here we go. Let's try it to the music. Yes. 17. Limón Lesson 16 Fast Threes: Alright, like I promised, we're going to take the two 3's and turn it into the fast slow twos and threes. But yes, for two to 3333, this one's on a three. So here we go. We're going to start in first position. It's basically the same exercise. We're going to toss ourselves around just a little bit more. So we're gonna give it that rebound the slow 2's had remembering from the last lesson, we did one to two, to three, to four to five to six to 7282. Now we're going to change that to a three. So the dynamic of the movement is going to be very different. We're gonna go 1232233234252367238. Hey, an option for you as well is if you want to, you don't just have to lift the body up, but you can take it a step further going one to two to three to the high arch and backup and down to the side. Same thing. When we go to the side, you can keep it simple. 123223, sorry, with the body one to three to three to the center and side and up and center. Up and center if you want, or you can try to do the rotation where we bring the body all the way over to the second side. So that will look like so 12322332342352362378. Okay. I might do a mix up of a vote, however, that just to make it fancy to the back, if you decide to add in the body, it looks like so 12322332342323623. You can add in an arch it anywhere you like. 12322, 32342356. Sure. Adding that arch. Okay, So here we're gonna go. I'm gonna try and do all my body. If I lose my balance, sometimes I like to come up to the center and the exercise, that's fine. This style of dance is all about testing your limits and tossing yourself off balance. It's okay if you go a little bit too far, right? We want to test those limits. That's what we're trying to do to give our dance that dynamic that it needs. Okay, here we go. With the music. 18. Limón Lesson 17 Parallel Swing Combination: All right, Today we're going to learn the parallel swings are going to start to move through the space and also incorporate a lot more of the body. We're going to learn it, burst just the arms and the legs before we add the body. So I'll do it twice to the music. Okay, This one, we're going to start facing the diagonal. So I'm going to come to the side because we're going to move from side to side. So if you've chosen a room in your house to do this in, you want to find the center place. And then we're going to move a little bit over to our stage left. Okay? So here we are. We're also going to face the diagonal in this exercise. The arms, we're going to incorporate a new position. So we've done our base, our Lamont arms, often. This gesture that we've learned where we've also done a lot of swinging with the arms. This is the first time where you see the flag of the Army and it's used in some of them owns choreography. So we're going to bring the arms up and a slight flagged position coming up. Okay, so the arms, we bring that up over the head in the intro, we're going to drop the hands. We go down and up and swing them behind you, end up they open up overhead swing and coming up and swing. We open to the front. We do three here in Place. Three swings coming all the way up to the rise. And then we're gonna do a shiny turn, turn to come over, set ourselves up to the second side. It's okay if you take a little couple of extra steps. We bring the hands up to begin and we do it on the second side, we have a swing and flag, the hands swing and flag. And around, open to the front, we move into the turnout position. Now. Three here we have 123 into the churn. Bring the hands back up. Nice and simple. That's it. Let's try me counting it and then we'll try it with the music. So hands up, we start in the rise. We have 012322334, open up 567 and to the front row One 23. Find that suspension third time. And to the other side we go one, flag the hands, two. Open, 34 to the front. Plea. Plea a third time's a charm, and Shani to the other side. Okay, let's try that with the music. Excellent. Now we're going to add in the body, which is what makes this exercise a little bit more challenging. Let's take it from the corner again. We'll deal with the counts with the body. We come forward 123, still flagging the arms come up to 23, the body comes over same items where we open and reverse open, come to the front. So we're adding that swing forward in the center. We're going to go just once plane. We're gonna go once to the side, you're going the third one to where you were. And then with the Shani turn, we're going to add the full body roll. So we did it in the warm-up, the full body roll coming side, front, arch, all the way down, up. So combine that from this position, from where you were position, you're going Shani churn, coming all the way up and we'll do that on both sides. Let's take the second side. Here you are up. You have 1232233456781, center. One where you're going, one where you work and full body roll up. A little bit disorienting at times. But that's the beautiful part about limonene, is that combine spins, turns, upper body arms altogether. It's great for your coordination. Let's do it with the music. 19. Limón Lesson 18 Swings in Attitude With Gallop Variation: All right. Are you ready to lift those legs up? We didn't do some swings, swings and attitude. And we're gonna do a virgin with a step and with a gallop. Okay. Attitude position is when we have our leg bent to the back, you can have it low, waking up higher, That's completely up to you. But what we wanna do in the attitude position is we don't want to have the knee dropped down. We want to have the knee lifted. And like I talked about in the intro, we want to have that heel trying to move down as the toes move up to have this nice upward line in the shape. We don't want it to drop like that. We want it nice lift in the attitude, same in the front. When we lift, you can go, you can do this as low as you want or as high as you want, but you don't want it to affect the body. You don't want to have height and then you're all over the place. So it's better just to keep it in a place that's manageable. In the front here we are. We have our knee lifted and same thing. We don't want to stick with the foot. We want to try to lift that heel up so we have this nice line in shape than the leg. But everything else, I think you'll manage just fine. So here we go. Let me teach you the exercise. You'll need to move back and your space just a little bit so that you have room to move forward. We're starting and will have their arms up and position. And we're gonna get ready with a lag behind us. We're going to swing 123 and step 123 and step 123 and step 123 and step, we can reset if there's time in the music, will come back and we'll do a variation with Gallup. Really nice and simple. One side of the step. We add i gala. So starting with the leg behind again so that we can swing it forward first. Arms and position. We have 0123 and gallop and 123 end at Gallup and 123 ended Gallup. Hey, you can try it a couple of times, but I'm ready to do it with the music and I'd like to do it with you. 20. Limón Lesson 19 Developé Series: All right, Welcome back. Today is a little bit of a challenging exercise, is not always easy to lift those legs. But we're gonna do a simple adage, which is not a nice slow exercise. And we're going to be lifting our legs. We're not going to live them high because there's body gestures on top of it. It's really challenging. 90 or below. 9090 is straight up from the hip. Or you can even go slightly below, especially when you're just learning this, you might want to take it a little bit lower and focus on the body gestures side over top because it's not common in most forms of dance that we would do an adage and Ben side over it. So that's what we're gonna do today. So I'm going to walk you through this exercise. Again, certain inverse, nice and simple. You'll notice my first is not very big either. I'm not trying to make the biggest first possible, like I might in a ballet class where I'm really working that turnout because we're doing so much on and off the body. We need to be able to feel our speed secure underneath us. And so a nice comfortable versus wise. Alright, the counts go, we're going to start with the right leg. It comes up 123. We play in developing a 456. We lift up and come forward. 56. That's what the legs are doing. But we're going to add in a body, we're going to add it right away because it's a nice exercise with it. Feeds started first. We're going to develop pay the leg. 12, three forward, bend over it. 56, coming up high, release in the rise and fall forward. 56 gets a little tricky to the side as well. 123, you need to bend to the side, 23, released to the other side. And 456 to the back. 123. You have to arch on top of a high lift to the back, which is challenging, curving, lifting up through the abdomen and lift the leg. And then again, we'll go to the side with the high release. So we do twice to the side. Then we start the left side from where we are. And we do the same pattern on quad. So we go 123456, high release 23456, same thing to the side this time. Other leg. Same thing to the back. Same thing to the side to finish. Then at the end there's just a little bit extra music and you can move through the music at your own or follow my accounts. It's up to you. I'm just going to do a plea to three. Rise to three to three. Raj, just to find my balance and then stay here. And if you're here, and if you want, you can just play with your balance on one foot. You can see if you can move the body and stay balanced. You can see what you can do with that foot and just be playful until the end of the music and then always finishing nice. Okay, here we go with the music. 21. Limón Lesson 20 Body is Orchestra: The next exercise is probably one of my favorite limo and exercises. It's a classic exercise and it wouldn't be alone class without it. It's called body is orchestra. The idea that the legs, the arms, and the body create an orchestra. So it's each section of the orchestra. So we have the percussion, which are the legs. We have the strings, which are the arms. We have the body, which are the wind instruments, were trying to embody those three elements and quality of those elements together. So we're going to start and break it down piece by piece. First, starting with the rhythm or timber, with our legs. Okay? This one is going to travel from across the floor, diagonal and two diagonal. Now, in a class you'd have many dancers dancing with you, probably three at a time, moving across the space, letting everyone have their turn, then walking up the other side of the studio and starting the corner. Obviously, it's just us today. So you get the benefit of just moving across the diagonal. You can reset and then start when you want on the second side. But the walking up the side really isn't part of the exercise, will just be dancing from diagonal. Diagonal. This is a short diagonal, so you probably fit about two body is orchestras within that space. Let's start from the corner. Walk through the body is orchestra, the legs. This is going to be on a six count. Okay. So we're starting on the right side. We have 12, we step side 34 and we step forward again, 56. So we have 123456. Let's look at that again. Right-side upstage leg is starting. We dropped down on the ones we really feel that drop we have 123456 are ready for that drop on the 123456. Moves through a little bit, counting at that six. Here we go. Starting the corner, 12 3456123456. Then you can walk up to the other side. Find your corner. And we'll do it this side. The hard part is now we have to reverse it. You get really good at reversing things from side to side the more you practice dads in this way. So we're going to start with our left leg are upstage like again, you can see how it's symmetrical. Right? Say upstage like starts, we have 123456. I'll walk you through that again. Find your corner. Upstage leg. One, two steps. I have 34 and forward 56123456. Let's walk that through a little bit faster. 123456123456. You want those legs to be the rhythm of the piece. Okay? When we do it with the music, I, we're just going to do each part altogether. Okay, So let's learn each section and then we're just gonna do it once with the music, doing all the variations along that crisscross. Now the arms. I'll teach you here so you can see them. And then we'll add it to the diagonal. We have the first part, we have 12. They come up above the head, three for the elbows drop down. 56. The arms come all the way behind you as much as you can. So we really want to feel that drop on the first one, right? 123456. And now we want the quality of this also to be different than the life. Like we said, the arms are going to be the string instruments. So even though the counts are 12345 six, we want to blend them together. So you're going 123456123456123456. Why don't you try those arms with me trying to blend them together. Ready? One, 23456123456, right, left, right, left, right, left. On the left side. Obviously you're doing left, right, left, right, left, right. Hey, let's do get slow on the left side so you can learn those arms. 1234. 561234561234561234561234560123456. The body, once we incorporate the body, is going to come forward with the arms 12 side to the side that you drop the hands 34 and forward again on the 56. So we have 12345612345623456. Try it on the left, 12 left and right for where to one to left, right forward. Nice and smooth. And we want the body to be the wind instruments. We wanted the body to have breath as it moves. It doesn't have to be sharp. We're not going for a sharp quality. We're going for a nice, smooth quality side to side. Let's take it to the corner and let's try all those variations without the music, and we'll take it a little bit slower, just a hidden your bearings. Hey, it can be a little confusing once you search it, incorporate the body where the diagonal is and that's okay. So plain. Starting with just the feet, 123456123456, resets way if your account 456123456123456, other side back to the beginning. You find your count to three with the arms 12345612, 3456. Resets, take your time. 23456 over 123456123456. Reset. A little bit harder. Here we go. 123456123456, adding in the body. And the churn, 12345623456123456. Okay. Once you do the body identity surprise in there, I added in the turn. Okay, so we're gonna do three parts. Just the just the legs. Legs and arms. Legs, party turn. Why not? Okay. That's when it really becomes beautiful and full to also becomes really challenging. Okay, Let's try all those three with the music. Alright. We're gonna do that one more time. But we're going to break down the churn section into two parts as well. So we're gonna do the arms and body, and then the arms and churn for the next time with the music. Okay, so preparing the circle and we'll try it again with the music. 22. Limón Lesson 21 Piqué Series: Right now we come back with the PKA series. Today we're gonna do the PKAs with just the legs, with the arm, with the body, and then the jumps. Later on in one of our combinations, we do a pKa with a turn. So we'll focus on the other elements today. Starting at the back of the studio. This exercise move side to side, coming all the way forward. And then we'll just reset and come around to add in another element. Okay, peaking, we step across, we're going to lift our right leg first. Doesn't matter if you want to start on your left first, but I'm starting on my right, taking my left leg across. Okay. I slip across PKA, step, step, step, step, PKA, step, step PKA. And then it doesn't matter whatever side you want to reset, to. Walk around. Reset, and then we'll add an element. So the next time we add an element, we're adding the arm and all it is is taking the arm up and over the head and up and over the head. Let's just practice that. Just the arm. So you pick a step, step, PKA, step, step, step, step, step, step. What we want to see is not a stiff arm, right? The goal of the moon and this training is to really make a fluid dancer, right with that successional movement or that fall and suspend. So it's not this even arm coming up. We really want to make sure the arm has a breadth to it. So it goes step, step, step, step over, step, step over step subs. We see the quick, slow, quick slow. We want when we add the body, we want to give that body the same element to that quicksort. We don't want these Steph arms or what? I say, hamburger fingers, right? You want to be just having this nice fluid hands moving up and giving your dances beautiful soft quality. Okay, let's try the PKAs with the arms. Pka, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step. Another important thing to look out for. There's a lot of times when you're learning dance, you look at the floor, right? It's okay to bring the focus down every once in awhile. But you don't wanna dance looking at the floor, look what it looks like. Even though I'm doing the same element, there's just something that's missing from it. So be careful through all the combinations are moving across the space that you check in with yourself every once in awhile and say, Oh my gosh, am I concentrating too much? Am I looking at the floor? Try to keep your focus up. Let's try that one again. Focusing on the focus. Occasionally I looked down, but I tried to keep my face up as much as I can to my audience. Walking around to reset. Then we'll add in the body. So a lean to the side, PKA, setting, walking around. And then adding in the jump. Like I said, we're gonna do the turn in an exercise. So today we'll do the jump. If you want, you can add the body in with the jump as well. So when you add in the body, you're going to take the body over on the landing, not the jump. You still want to have that nice highlight on the jump. You can take the body side, adding in another quality to the landing. Alright, let's try this one with the music. 23. Limón Lesson 22 Triplets: Welcome back. Today it's triplet day. We're gonna do triplets before we do a triplet combination. But triplets are used a lot in contemporary dance and particularly Ramon dance. So it's good to find a music. There are three times signatures because you've probably noticed by now a lot of what we do is in threes and sixes will be doing stuff as well in 15s and nines. So really like to change up the time signature, but a three or a six works well for this. Triplets are moving across the floor exercise. We're going to start in the corner and move across and we'll do a couple of variations. Let's take it to the corner so I can teach you the exercise. We're going to do these triplets turned out you can start in the corner in first position. We have 123123123. You can continue right through the space. Prepare yourself on the other corner. Let's start again. Upstage leg. So in that case, this is my left leg. I'm starting the triplets, 123123123. If you have a larger diagonal, you can triplet as much as you want, okay? With the triplet, it's like a balanced say if you've done ballet, we have a drop on the one. And we step up, up on the two. Drop up, up, up, up, up. That's the basic triplet. But you don't necessarily have to do a triplet that way. It's really any three count. If I'm doing one side to side, like I said, like a balancing, I might go side up, downside, downside up down, or side down, down, keep it low. Keep it low, or up, up, up. I could also do that. So it was really just a three-times your job. But the basic triplet is a down, up, up, down, up, up, down, up, up. Okay, So again from the corner, Let's give it a try. Without the music. Will have 123123123 to the other side. Left leg, 123123123. And now, let's just add an attorney to have something a little bit different. So we'll do one plane triplet. Then as we drop will go down stage turning to the second triplet, down, up, up. You might fit about three. And we'll go to the other side, starting with the upstage leg, 123 turn 234123 compared to the other side. Okay, so we'll do it a bunch of times that the music on each diagonal, and then we'll add in that turn. Okay, let's try it with the music. 24. Limón Lesson 23 Triplet Combinations: All right, welcome back. And like I promised today, we're gonna be doing a triplet combination. So the same 123123 rhythm, but this time we're going to change directions. We're going to do the down, down, down and up, up, up like we did before. Okay, let's take it to the corner to learn this one. This one is also going to move from corner to corner, but not just forward. So we're going to move a little bit forward, backwards side-to-side. And we're going to incorporate the PK series that we did earlier. Okay. So starting from the corner, I like to either rise or prepare my leg. I'm going to use okay. From the second side, we're gonna go right into the second side from the first side. So that's just gonna be arrived and go. So you need to know and remember that you're starting on your upstage leg, right? It can be hard when you're looking at dance through the camera because it's reversed from the side that I'm doing it. But if you remember your upstage and you're down stage, it doesn't really matter what side you started on. If you choose to start on the left side to mirror imaged me or the right is fine. Make sure you're starting with your upstage leg every time you do this one. So here we go. We have down, up, up, there's the turn up, up just like we did in the previous exercise. But now we're going to reach to the sky and we're going to go up, up, up over our head and come low right away with the body down, down, down. Let's give that a try. Okay, just counting it through this only the first part of the exercise. So we have starting in first or prepare your foot. 123, turn 23, up to three, down to three. From here, we're going to do a triplet traveling underneath her arm. It's like we're tucking underneath as we go to the side. So we're going to bring her arm up and we're going 123. Okay. As I step through, the one count of a foot is the same as the arm. And to make sure you remember, we're traveling this way from the corner, it's going to be this arm, the direction we're traveling, and this foot that we step on. Okay, so now that we're moving from working at complicated, so let's just remember our directions. We have the upstage like that starts 123. We turn to three, this side leg that starts to step up, up, up to the other side of the same leg. Down, down, down. So we're ready for that leg out to the side, my case, the right leg to step under 23, we're going to move right away into a ground Batman from there. So after you finished the underneath the arm section, try to find your first position quickly. You're gonna do a grumble. Grumble at mall to a lunch, and just suspend the moment pulling through, passe almost like a bow and arrow anise to spend 23. My pKa, I'm going to do facing upstage. It's going to happen on the one. You want to really catch that PKA on the one. So I'm stepping across. Now that I'm facing back, I step across, I go pKa, 23, PKA with the term like we learned to three. Then we're going to do a turn. Very classic churn in attitude. You can add the body if you want. Going towards the side, we just were another little richie ray as we come, we turn and we ready to do on this other side, it's very quick. Okay. So from the other side, Let's take it starting with the upstage foot. Let's do it slow. 123, turn 23, up, up, up, down, down, down under the arm graph. Bad. Mom. Grom that month to lunge and pull 23. You want to get this leg to come across peaky on the 1123123. Remember your turn goes back where you came from. You start turn PKA. And you'll be ready to start again. We're now going to do it again on that side, rolling it twice as I think we'll all be very out of breath. Okay, let's try it and you just talking through it so that we can figure out our directions again, slow, It's harder to do the ground, but Maslow's a little wobbly. But this is just for our brains to figure it out. Starting with your upstage like 123, turn 23, up, up, up, down, down, down under the arm, grow back. That monitor lunge and pull 23 PKA 123123 churn where you just were Get ready to the other side to go 12322, up to three, down 23 under 23. Ron Batman, Batman to lunge, pull to go, pee, hair cross, and pKa, turn where you just were and head back. Okay, that makes sense. We'll try it with music. That's a hard one to finish on, but fast and fun. 25. Limón Lesson 24 Grand Battement Across the Floor: Alright, this is the product class that starts to get more dynamic and I love it as we move through the space, we're gonna get moving. We're gonna do grow combat model, which is our big beating, our kicks of the legs. We don't want to get very high. It's not about height, it's more about moving through the space. But we want to give it that dynamic, that punch, so it's not a slow gesture, so nice quick kick. It's also a kick that comes through a devil paid. It just is a brush up in the air, like we did in the triplet combination. This one again starts in the corner and we're just going to hold the hands here for the first part. And then we're going to add in the swing. Let's just learn it with the hands out, holding the hands, palms are up, elbows are a little bit curved. We're going to start by stepping on our downstate foot because we're going to kick our upstage foot. First step, kick, run, run, or really more of a walk, step cake, but it's a little bit faster. Step kicked to the side. Step kicked to the side, up. And we'll change the arms for the kick to the back. Let's try that one again. Remember, we're stepping on our downsides leg because we need to kick our upstage like first. So we're going step, kick, step, kick, step, grandma. Step, grandma to the back, will change your arms. Step back. Then same as before. We're going to come down and we'll set up to the second side. So we're going to step this time are downstairs leg because they're upsurge leg is the first one to kick. We have step kick, step, kick to the side, to the side, to the back, and to the back, other side. Now with a little bit of a swing of the arm isn't as fun. Certainly in the llama and style. So my foot is ready. Kicking me upstage, foot, step, kick, swing the arms, step, kicks, swim the arms to the side, to the side, to the back, end to the back. Other side. 567, go step, kick, step, kick to the side, to the side, to the back, end to the back. Catch your breath and do it all over again. Here we go with the music. 26. Limón Lesson 25 Preparations for Jumps: All right. I hope you've had a chance to practice some of the material that we've worked on today, we move on to jumping. We have preparations for jumps. Really important for prepping for jumps is that we take care of our joints. It's not always ideal places in the house to jump on, but try and jump on the softest for possible. If it's not a super soft floor or if it's hard like this floor, then you want to make sure that you really take soft landings and you're probably not going to jump as high up, but that's okay. It's still excellent training. Just take care of your body. We're going to start with rises. And then the second part will be doing jumps. So go straight into it. For the rise exercise, we have 1234 rise, 5678123456781234, 567812345678. And we'll go into our jumps. Jumps are going to start in first and go and second we have 1234567812345678, super simple exercise, eight jumps and verse, eight jumps. And second, Let's go to try with music if you want to. You can also add in your arms to the rise, just coming up through the center and open, that's your choice. Here we go. 27. Limón Lesson 26 Jumps Across the Floor: We get into more and more of my favorite stuff. I was always a jumper when I was a dancer. I love jumping through the space. I like how it feels like for my body to me moving with that much power and energy. So we're gonna start with our jumps. This one's going to be simple before we move to a jump combination, there's going to be a step hop, run, run, run, run. Thankfully, it's called exactly what it is. Well, let's go to the corner and we'll learn the exercise. Step hop run, run. We're going to go pop run runs that pop r1, r1. That's it. To the other side. We'll start with our upstage leg. Step, hop, run, run, run, run. Nothing too fancy to begin with. Then we'll add in some arms, step, hop, run, run, step hop, run, run to the other side. Step hop, run, run step pop, r1, r1. Okay, nice and simple. But let's talk about a few of the dynamics of stepping and hopping to the space. Number one, remember we're pointing our feeds through each step and each jump. It looks really bad to see a dancer with a flexible coming forward and less than choreography. Maybe it's a comedy, but it has certainly a different look when you go like this, as when you go like this, right? So the step-up run, run, step hop run, run. Opposed to step hop run, run. We also want to make those landings nice and nice and soft. The jumps nice and high. The foot action helps us get height. It also helps us land safely and softly. So you want to practice like we did in our jump warm-ups is pushing the foot, landing soft. Okay. After we do the two variations with the foot and what we call cuda PA, the neck of the foot, cuda PA. That position is just pointed foot, not sickled, pointed foot coming in behind the ankle. Both sides. Pointed foot behind the ankle. It's okay if it goes a little bit higher, but it's not for this exercise is not all the way up to a rich array. So you want to try that cuda paid position. After we do the tooth cuda PA will do a step hop with the leg extended back in arabesque. And just the same. It's gonna go plane without the arms. Walking up onto the second side, starting with the upstage fun. Then we'll incorporate it with arms. Up to the second side. Those will be the four step hot room runs that we do today. Ready, Let's do it with the music. 28. Limón Lesson 27 Jump Combination: Alright, now we're back for the highlight of the class, the jump combination. This is where we put it all together. Alright, so hopefully you had a little sip of water. You count your breath a little bit from the last one. Here we go. So it's going to start with the step hop run, run in the same pattern that we did the grommet mom, I'm not going to jump it just yet. I'm going to walk it through nice and slow. Okay, so we have our step hop, run, run, step hop, run, run. To the side. We're going to hop in the second position with arms curved coming from underneath. Run, run, step, hop, run, run, two jumps to the corner, step, hop, step, hop. The second one carries instead of forward the Run run, the next one is going to carry it backwards, r1, r1 to go underneath her arm. Like our triplets are combining some of those elements we already learned, but making them a little bit more dynamic and a nice big jump to the corner all the way to the floor. Let's just review that much. We have upstage legs starts, step, hop, run, run, step hop, run, run to the side. To this side. Step, hop. Second step, hop goes back on itself. Underneath the arm. Big jump up and down. We're just going to suspend back. And then we're going to run into ugly say with a double attitude, Stag jump. Okay, and you'll just jump right off the stage. Okay, Let's review that a little bit faster. Starting with the upstage leg, we have step hop run, runs that pop to the side, step, hop, step, hop, forward, forward, going backwards, under, big jump to the floor, up. And if you want on the stag jump. So it's fun, you can add a touch of the body if you want. As we run off the stage, second side, let's take a look at it. On the second side, we have step hop, step, hop to the side. Same pattern. Forward, forward me go back under the arm, up, down, sustained. Jet day and double stag. Okay. Let's look at some of the parts that might be a little bit more complicated from the runs backward after your second jump. Running back, or what is that gem going to the corner? What you're doing is you're sliding out the leg. If I were to face this way on the diagonal. Okay, so wherever, which way you're going. Imagine I'm flat on the diagonal. That upstage leg is going to brush to do a jump. You're brushing to jump. You're moving underneath the arm. Let's try that one more time. Brushing to jump underneath the arm. Then it's that same leg that's going to brush up to take you into a jump that falls all the way to the floor? I brushed it like taking me to the jump, fall to the floor. Any kind of suspension you want, you can get fancy. I don't care. One of my teachers used to say variations are accepted. So variations are accepted. Had fun with it, suspended and through the space. Nice big jump. Let's try it. Once. I'll just go through it, nice and slow, subtle counts, and then we'll try it with the music. So step hop, step hop. To the side, to the side. Leg, back. Keep running back this leg underneath. Big jump. Suspend. Gente, double stag, other side. Step, hop. Step, hop. To sign up, going backwards under suspicion. Devastate all the way off the stage. Okay, Let's give it a try with the music. 29. Limón Lesson 28 Cool Down, Forward Bends & Improvisation: I am so pleased that you have this opportunity to dance with me, and now it's time to cool down. Our body. Worked very hard is not an easy style to learn, but it's a good one. Let's cool down the body. For cool down, we're going to make it a little less structured. I'm gonna do a little bit of stretching at the end, which I will talk you through. But let's start it with an improvisation. Some dancers are not comfortable doing improvisations, especially if they've never done it, or if you focus on something is very driven. But improvisation is a very important part of your dance training. Improvisation is your chance to speak your voice as a dancer. And a structured improvisation is something that we give perimeters to help develop your dance. But within those parameters, you get to explore that movement. So a structured improv. Today, we're gonna say, we're gonna use our dance space here. And we can move anywhere horizontally and that dance space, and we can also move vertically in that dance base. Okay, So that's gonna be our first parameter that we set is this is how we're going to use the space, exploring the horizon and the vertical space. The second parameter is every part of our gestures today are going to be a sequential movement. So I can set any parameter. I could say that every gesture you're gonna do, it has to be a right angle at every step. Or I could say every gesture you do has to be symmetrical in some way, but we're not gonna do that. We're just going to have sequential movement because that's kinda what we talked about with the lumen. So where you see one part of the body and initiates and there's a sequence of movement that happened from that body part. So if I were to initiate movement from my shoulder, my shoulder initiates. It could initiate and extension through the arm or my shoulder could initiate a turn. My head can initiate movement. I could even focus on my nose if I want to. My nose is a thing that initiates the movement and my body from that point follows. It could be my fingers, my fingertips, right. And I can have the movement be initiated from out and come in. Or I can have the movement come in and come out and that's your choice. I can use my knees. My knees could initiate gesture. Right? My knees could initiate something that comes all the way up my body, my hips, my toes, right? So I want you to explore your own body, how you can move through the body and just in this improvisation, change the point that starts the movement and then try to have this sequential movement come out of that. Okay, so the first part of this is just improvisation. You don't have to look at me. You can just listen to the music and try to move. When the beat starts and the rhythm comes in, the music will stand back and our center space. And we'll just start to really soften the gesture and cool it down. We'll take sequential movements starting from the head and will roll forward, just following the music. Eight counts coming all the way down and then we'll just rest here trying to let the shoulders relax this time, the head relax the hands. This is nothing structured. I'm just going to let all the body go and we'll go here. And if you like, you can add in a little sway, side to side. Sway side to side. We'll roll all the way back up the body. Okay, So the counts for that will be 12345678 and just rest. 234, 5678, little sway. 234. You can even bend the knees if you want. 78 will roll up. 234567 was set in first, we'll do a deep play with the arms this time, pushing out 45678, little rise, 234567. We'll come to the floor, will go to the side and just bend down to the floor, take a roll to the other side and come back rolling on the floor and just getting ourselves in a comfortable place. So just kinda massaging the back of the pelvis. Then we'll just take a stretch coming forward 45678 and come back. And if you needed to take any more extra time, don't feel like you have to even stay in time with me taking two forward rolls, just relaxing the back. And then we'll extend the legs out and we'll take a stretch forward over. I lay eggs for eight, hold for eight, and come back up. And the same thing will open second. And we'll come forward. Just hold the stretch coming up and we'll just finish crossing the legs. To have a nice finish to our class. We can take the arms all the way up, nice big stretch out, and let the arms bar and we'll just finish there and that'll be the end of our lesson. Okay, Let's give it a try with some music. Thank you. 30. Limón Lesson 29 Body Conditioning: I want to thank you so much for joining me on your journey learning lemon contemporary modern dance. It's been a wonderful time. I know I'm still learning things about myself through this process. And I love this class and I love these exercises. I've carried them with me through all of my dance career. And now even afterwards. For the closing, I just thought it'd be nice to do some conditioning that might help you with your dance lessons. If you have never done any stretching or body conditioning classes, some stretching will really help you be able to sit and move on the floor. There is also a great foot exercise to strengthen the feet, or feet need to be very strong, which will help us all throughout our dance career to keep ourselves well. So we're gonna do a little foot exercise that comes from Donna crowd Snow's work. And it's one I really like and I've used in my yoga classes and all my dance classes. And anyone experiencing flat feet are problems with their feet. It's usually the exercise that I recommend to them. Then we'll do some stretching as well. So I'll walk you through this exercise. Now. We're going to start lying on her back. So get comfy. If you have any issues with lying on your back. You can also place your hand slightly under your pelvis to give support. But I don't mind having my hands all the way down when months I lived my legs up. That's usually when I feel like I need a little bit of support and I place my hands here. For this first part, you're going to need your feet about hip-width apart. So I like to imagine that I'm standing on the ceiling in a plea. So this is starting position. We're going to extend and open the toes as much we can point. And then we're going to squeeze the toes and flex or trying to strengthen all the muscles of the foot and the ankle. So we're going to point the toes and squeeze to flex, point the toes and squeeze the flux. So we're going to incorporate the legs, stretching the legs all the way up, keeping that little space between the legs, point the toes, squeeze to flex, point the toes and squeeze the flux. Then we're going to bring the toes in and spread the toes, drawing a W down and squeeze the toes down and open the toes down and squeeze the toes. And then to finish, we're gonna do some circles. In some circles out. Your feet should be burning at this point, it is actually a really difficult exercise. So afterwards, you're going to need to shake them out. So we're just gonna shake, shake, shake our toes, getting the blood moving out of our feet, especially after all that work we've done through class. This is a nice one you can add in at the end of your class just to get the lactic acid out of the legs and moving down the body. And we're going to squeeze the legs and we're going to take a little stretch. There's a little stretch that I like to do for my hamstrings because I have trouble articulating at the hip. It has been difficult, like I said in my career having tight hips. So I like to do this lying on the floor because I can't compensate stretching with my low back, I have to really focus on my hamstring muscle. So I always suggest if you have tighter hamstrings, you're working on flexibility to lie on your back. So we're going to bring the leg in. Okay. And then we're going to stretch the leg up. We're going to lift the head up to work our abdominal muscles a little bit. And then we're going to come back down and it doesn't have to be very high. I'm not going my maximum. I just want a nice, gentle stretch, nothing that's going to tear my muscle. It's more just about relaxing and letting go. And then I'm gonna take my foot and do a couple of circles. I'm going to reach. If you can grab your foot, if not, you can use a strap or something that you can wrap around your foot. A sock is fun. I got to take a little stretch to the side, bring it back, lift the head up again, and lower everything down. So let's count that out on the other side, 1234567812345678123467. Eight open side, 2345678. I'm just doing it on eighth like that, but you when you practice on your own, you can do it as long as you want. The longer you kinda relax there, the more you're going to stretch, then we're just going to finish with a little bit of an abdominal exercise, but I like so placing the hands at the side, sorry, I'm placing the hands on our head. Much better. We're going to come up, but in three pulses, we're gonna do a typical setup. We're going to go like this, 123 and down 123 and down the road or reverse that coming up on 12. Three and down, one, down, down, down. So we do three pulses, one down and then one pulse up, three down. And then we're just gonna go and do 81234, just small crunches, 678. Then we're going to do pulses, pulse 2345678. We'll pulse, they're coming down. We'll take the legs to the side. We'll do the same pattern in a twist. And then we'll take the legs to the other side. Same pattern. Okay? Then will come up. And that will be all we do for our conditioning, since we've already done a lot with our legs and seconds. I think these are just a couple of little of my favorite exercises that I'd like to share with you to help you get in shape. Here we go with the music. Hi. 31. Limón Lesson 30 Full Class: All right. Welcome. All right, We're gonna do that one more time. But we're going to break down the terms section into two parts as well. So we're gonna do the arms and body, and then the arms and churn for the next time with the music. Okay, so preparing the circle and we'll try it again with the music. That's a hard one to finish on, but fast and fun. Welcome. Good. Thank you.