Try this! A Cure for Dancer's Block
- Aleena Glinski
- Jul 23, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 4
by Aleena Glinski
We did it!
Me and my good friend Ty came up with a list of movement prompts to try over the course of a 28-day period to practice consistency and deepen our creative movement practices:
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This was a difficult challenge! Here were some things that I found challenging about this exploration and how each one helped me to grow:
Consistency
Committing to do anything for 28 days is challenging in and of itself, and I found that that was actually the hardest part: consistency. Most of the time, it didn’t even take me very long to explore the prompt of the day and make a video (maybe only 15 minutes!), but somehow, even the little time that it took can be hard to carve out in a day. To be fair, with this exercise there was also a component of video editing and posting, which often took much longer than exploring the prompt alone, so that was another aspect of this challenge that I had to navigate.
Technology
Initially, I was spending much more time editing videos. I had recently discovered CapCut before starting this challenge and this user-friendly video editing app had me remembering that this is actually something I’ve always enjoyed! I love the creativity that comes with creating videos, but I found Instagram’s reel-editing software to be so glitchy and clunky that I never bothered making elaborate videos because the experience usually left me feeling angry and frustrated. Now that I have CapCut, this can be a lot of fun! But eventually I did burn out a little bit with this, trying to create a perfect video every day, so I ended up making my videos a little bit simpler more often towards the end. This was also really good practice for me to get in the habit of just posting without perfection! Sometimes if I wasn’t really jazzed about my movement and/or video for a day, I would just post it to my story and not make a reel, which helped me to keep things moving as well. (Of course if you feel like giving this challenge a try, there’s no need to post to the internet everyday! But for me, this a was a big pieces of the benefit.)
Social Media / Engagement
Sometimes the highly edited videos did pay off with more engagement, but sometimes they didn’t. I found that a video with text on the screen tended to do better than videos without text. I think overall, the videos where I was able to really channel a certain vibe did the best. For example, I found it fun and easy to tap in to the “move quick to rock music” and channel some punk rock energy, and I think people really felt that! It had the second most views of any of my videos. The most popular video I made was the first one with the prompt, “explore the hips.” I think ladies exploring their hips is probably always a best seller. It was interesting to find out that these two themes performed best for both me and Ty! But I think the prompt that most inspired other people to join in with was the prompt “move slow to R&B Music,” so I guess that’s an exercise that a lot of folks were craving!
Listening to my Body (Mind over Matter)
Another layer of the struggle with consistency was noticing in myself that I might have had a preconceived notion of what I wanted to do in a given day for a given prompt, but sometimes my body would be asking for rest, or something less strenuous. It can be hard for me to listen to my body when I have an idea in my head, so sometimes I did overdo things. I think any of the prompts could be done in an extremely gentle way, but it takes humility to post a video of doing something “simple,” or “basic,” that was hard for me. For example, for the “focus on facial expressions,” prompt, I had hurt my neck earlier in the day, and it was really hard for me to post even the simple video that I did, and even the simple movements I made there were overdoing it for me! Of course I could have kept my head perfectly still and really focused on my facial expressions, but that felt too vulnerable.
Sometimes being in my head too much would also have the effect of me loosing sight of the prompt a little bit. I would go for what would satisfy my ego more than what the prompt was really trying to awaken in me, which I think is a loss (although sometimes I really did just want to try this one new trick I’d been eyeing so I would do a little mental gymnastics of how to make that fit the prompt). But for the most part, I stuck with the prompts, and really valued what they had to offer!
Here’s a break down of each weeks’ prompts and what I got out of it:
Week 1 isolate
Day 1: Explore the Hips
Day 2: Isolate Upper Body
Day 3: Move Spine Slowly
Day 4: Isolate Lower Body
Day 5: Explore the Hands and Feet
This was my favorite week! It was so fun and interesting for me to see what came out of these ones! I loved incorporating circus apparatuses into this, as well. To isolate my upper body, I tied myself up upside-down to force that isolation and found that twisting from this position (while spinning) is extremely satisfying! I got a lot of positive feedback about this as well, and I never would have thought of that if it weren’t for this prompt. I also really loved isolating my lower body by tying my hands up and suspending from them so it forced all movement into my lower body! This video also got a lot of engagement, and I liked it so much that I made it my profile picture. Breaking the body down into smaller pieces like this really forced me to expand my creativity and the benefits from this continue to echo out in my movement practices.
Week 2 initiate
Day 6: Lead with the Elbows
Day 7: Initiate from pelvis
Day 8: Lead with head
Day 9: Initiate from chest
Day 10: Lead with shoulders
I felt that this prompt had very similar benefits but was a little bit more challenging! This prompt is a little bit more constricting in that you are narrowing things down to a single body part, but then limiting yourself in another sense in that you need to lead or initiate from that part of the body. It’s hard to think of many different ways to do this and keep things interesting! The effect was that things got a little weird sometimes, but that was cool too! It was fun to get a little weird and silly with things.
Week 3: Music
Day 11: Flow to the lyrics of pop music
Day 12: Move slow to r&b music
Day 13: Free flow to no music
Day 14: Move quick to rock music
Day 15: Make shapes to jazz music
This week had a lot more freedom baked in! It was fun to see the different feeling tones that evoked from each prompt. Pop music felt like I was exploring sassy, R&B more sensual, no music felt slow and almost spiritual, rock music invited me to tap in to anger, and making shapes to jazz music felt silly, but I really liked it! I took that one literally and had some friends help to spin me as I made each shape, and I really enjoyed the team effort on that one. It’s so nice when your friends show up to help you!
Week 4: Focus
Day 16: Focus on Breath
Day 17: Focus on Facial Expressions
Day 18: Focus on Transitions
Day 19: Focus on 3 Dimensionality
Day 20: Focus on Floor work
This week was a little bit harder again! It felt like the prompts were getting a little bit more nuanced, complex, and thought provoking. Floor work was probably my favorite prompt this week, because it felt a little more open, but it's always such good practice to think about how to take up space and be three dimensional, how to make your transitions smooth and think about what your face is doing. But these are also some of the hardest skills to develop as a dancer! It takes real style and experience to be able to do these things fluidly.
Week 5 play
Day 21: Play with your shadow
Day 22: Play with circles
Day 23: Play with rising and falling
Day 24: Play with dynamics
Day 25: Play upside down
This week felt almost therapeutic. It was so good for me to revisit this prompt each day and introspect and ask myself as I would move, “does this feel like play? Am I playing? Or am I taking this too seriously right now?” It’s so easy as a dancer to get wrapped up in how you look and take yourself too seriously and forget that the whole reason you got into dance in the first place was to have fun! For me, this is really what it’s all about. I love being playful and silly with my body, which is probably why I’m so attracted to circus.
Extras!
Day 26: Dance outside in a new place
Day 27: Flow to the first song on shuffle
Day 28: Film from a new angle
These prompts felt extra artsy! I got a really cool new angle that I probably never would have tried on pole, and it was amazing to see how going to a new place to dance can really just take you out of your head and put you in a new mindset!
So that’s it! Check out my recap video on YouTube, download the JPEG and tag us if you try this! @aleena246 on instagram and @tyspectives
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