Advanced African Dance Tips

Series Summary

African dancing has been around for thousands of years and was some of the earliest forms of dancing known to man. Africans used dancing to convey emotions and tell stories with body movements. While the dancing is spontaneous and voluntary, the drumbeat provides the rhythm that holds the dancers together. The drum, in African culture, is the symbol of life and represents the heartbeat of the community of people. Body thrusts and undulations represent feelings and emotions of the dancers and most of it is spontaneous. This free video series will cover many of the important moves involved with African dancing including turns, jumps, hand and hip movements along with many others. This dance expert will not only walk you through each move but also demonstrate them so you will never feel unsure of your movements. It is important to get these moves right in order to convey the right emotion from the dance. So take off your dancing shoes and lets tell a story!

Video Transcript

"Now if you have already been taking class for maybe a couple of years, two years, five years, even fifteen years, there may be some rhythms you're more familiar with than others. We're going to focus mainly on the country of Guinea, and we're going to focus on some of the movements from the Susu people, and also some of their movements and more advanced and variations of their movements. Some of the basic movements that you may have seen, sometimes in certain classes, the master choreographer can add their own flavor to it, their own variation, more jumping, more turns, and more fancier footwork. And a lot of this from advanced comes from also being free, feeling free, not feeling too restricted. So we're going to get going and get moving."