Good afternoon, night or morning to all of our From The Top Family all over the world! Thank you so much for dropping in today for another blog post! In today’s entry, we are talking about floorwork! That’s right. Whether you love it, hate it, or even love to hate it, floorwork is a skillset that appears in the training of dancers at some point. Hooowever, believe it or not, rolling around on the floor to the sound of eight counts can be quite fun once you get the hang of it! That’s why in this post, we will be sharing some fundamental tips to put into action to make your floorwork ability that much better or even help you know where/how to start. So without further ado, let’s get rollin’, everyone!
Tip #1
The Floor Is Your Friend
I couldn’t think of a better tip to start out with than this one right here! A Lot of what keeps dancers from excelling in floorwork is, well, the floor. I mean, just off the bat when thinking about it, the floor doesn’t seem very inviting. It’s hard, it’s cold, and not very giving. And that may sound like all of the ingredients for necessary apprehension. However, it’s actually the complete opposite. The floor is actually none of the things listed above, at least not in this case! When talking about floorwork in choreography, the floor is actually solid, dependable and a companion that gives good leverage to help you navigate from one move to the next! So in order to go about floorwork in an advantageous manner, we must shift our perspective from one of apprehension to one of comradery. The floor is your friend and it’s going to help you accomplish your goal of beautiful floorwork that you may be asked to do in any given dance piece!
Tip #2
Hold That Core And Stay In Alignment
There seems to be a common rule in pretty much every genre of dance: Hold. That. Core.
In floorwork, an untightened core and lack of body alignment will really result in a lack of a balance and even prohibit your ability to move through the floorwork easily (we will talk more about that later as well). Keeping your body in alignment (shoulders down, tushy tucked, core engaged, etc) will result in better weight distribution, which will also help in throwing your body around the way that you desire to. So just as you would with any other kind of choreography, keep your core engaged and stay aligned. It will make everything much, much easier!
Tip #3
Focus On The Flow
Fluidity is easily one of the things that makes floorwork so mesmerizing. It’s the key element to making floorwork look ethereal, allows it to showcase its strength and even make it appear much more complicated than it may actually be, depending on the level of choreography. This aspect of fluidity in floorwork is actually where the mind and the body meet in the middle.Personally, I like to keep the aspect of fluidity as one of the main objectives when doing floorwork, just as much as I keep the technical aspects in mind. Though it may sound cliche, I like to think of myself as a wave in the sea, seamlessly moving from one posture to the next calmly and collectively. And because I keep that thought in mind, it helps that goal translate to the appearance of my body and my goal of fluid floorwork is reached, even if I had to make real physical effort to execute it. And now that I have given yet another (unintentional) guided meditation scenario, what am I getting at this time, you may ask? Simple. Think fluid, no matter the method you use. Whether it be water, wind, fire or even just saying “fluid, fluid, fluid” in your head over and over again. Once again, dance is just as much mental as it is physical, and what you lead with in your mind, will most likely help translate to your body.
Tip #4
Continue To Build Your Lower & Upper Body Strength
And our final tip today is one that is perfect to practice outside of the studio, which is to continue to build your lower and upper body strength. In floorwork, you’re either getting from point A to point B primarily using your hands/arm, or by using the strength of your legs as leverage. By building your strength in your upper and lower body, you will be able to much better navigate yourself in floowork with much more ease. Exercises such as lunges, squats, wall sits and even releves work great for lower body strengthening floor floorwork. Classic push ups, planks, arm curls with light weights are perfect for building your upper body quickly. By adding these moves into your fitness routine, or consistently using them as a warm-up to your at home stretching, you’ll be able to see results in no time and you’ll find floorwork to be that much less of a challenge. Just like anything else in dance, the more you prepare yourself for your new goal, the better you will be able to handle what comes your way.
And that will do it for today’s blog post! As always, we hope these tips were able to help you in some way as you endeavor to improve your skills in floorwork. We wish you the best of luck as you embark on this new technique goal in your journey! Thank you all once again for rocking with us today and until our next blog post, remember…
Keep dancing!
Lexi
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