How do you dance naturally? This is a question that is often asked but rarely addressed fully. The reason for this is the question is more complex than it appears. It’s not just how to dance, but how to dance ‘naturally’.
This sounds relatively simple, however, there is a breadth of topic here which is somewhat large. What makes dancing naturally different from other forms of dancing? What is the driver behind why people need to ask this question? Why aren’t dance schools teaching this skill?
Dancing naturally is the gold standard of dancing. Everyone would like to be that person that just ‘seems to have ‘it”.
The good news is that this gold standard of dance is not impossible to achieve. However, it can certainly feel like that at times.
This article will debunk the mystery of how to dance naturally. You will find there is in fact a method to the madness.
Dancing naturally requires an understanding of:
- What is natural dancing
- Having the right environment to practice this skill
- Building a toolbox of muscle memory familiarity with dance movements
- Mastering rhythm and committing to movements
- Understanding dance beats
- Building movement confidence through mirror feedback.
Read on to discover why these factors are key in being able to dance naturally.
What is dancing naturally:
Dancing naturally conjures up images of dancing that ‘flows’ and is not forced or awkward.
Anybody can get on a dancefloor and shimmy and shake without any rhythm or skill. Anybody can take formal dance classes but still stumble around a social dancefloor with no real skill. But only a few will truly know how to:
- Feel a beat
- How that beat works with movements
- Know what movements they are familiar with and have mastered (this is called freestyle dancing).
This group of people is the group that can dance naturally.
Dancing naturally can be defined as unchoreographed rhythm, coordination, musicality, emotion, and dance confidence.
The above is built on regular mirror feedback. This creates a ‘dance move toolbox’ using muscle memory. In turn, natural dancers will learn how this toolbox of moves can work together and transition from one another. This all comes together seamlessly which to the average person looks like someone dancing ‘naturally’.
As you can see, there are many factors that go into dancing naturally. It is not simply a case of ‘just relax’ or ‘be confident’ or the unhelpful advice is ‘just have fun’.
Make no mistake, dancing naturally is half physical skill and half overcoming mental blocks.
Many people will know what dancing naturally LOOKS like, but few know how to ACHIEVE it. Fortunately, we have the right experience, skill, and powers of observation to know exactly what it takes to dance naturally.
How to make the right dance practice environment:
Having the right environment in which to build your natural dance skills is critical.
Think of it this way, learning to dance naturally is like learning a whole new language. This language uses a medium which you have never used before (if you are a beginner).
The aim of this language is to have an alignment of physical skill, mental confidence, and emotion. Essentially the meeting of the body, head, and heart. Read that again.
This is not actually that easy. So it is very important to give yourself the best chance of acquiring this skill by creating a ‘practice space’. Such a space needs to be designed specifically to:
- Calm your judgemental mind
- Give you feedback to improve
- Enable you the time and space to explore these new skills without judgement or interference from others.
Just as a rugby player needs a rugby field, an Olympic archer needs a target range, so too does a dancer need a dance practice space conducive to dancing.
For a comprehensive guide on how to make this important dance practice space, read the article How To Become A Good Dancer: The complete guide people need (and don’t skip any steps).
This is the first and most important step in learning how to dance naturally.
How to build a toolbox of muscle memory dance moves:
When you practice dancing freestyle, you will start by feeling very awkward which you will likely not enjoy. You will perhaps be frustrated that you may not look as cool as you would like. Or perhaps feel frustrated that you cannot express the music the way that you want to. Your feet may feel like lead, your arms may feel like these strange limbs which make you feel very self-conscious. This is completely normal.
However, when you continue the dance practice, something subtle starts to happen, unbeknown to you. This ‘something’, is that your body starts to learn how certain movements work with different speeds and rhythms.
We call this the dance toolbox creation process.
The dance toolbox creation process:
A logical progression of how our bodies create such a toolbox is broken down below.
- You are just beginning to feel comfortable with stepping from side to side to a beat. This is one tool in your dance toolbox
- Next, you might start to shimmy your shoulders to a beat. You learn to feel comfortable doing this to a beat. This is another tool in your dance toolbox
- Next, you might start to step from side to side AND shimmy your shoulders. You have just used two tools simultaenoesly
- Next, you might get comfortable and familiar with punching your fists to a beat. This is another tool in your dance toolbox
- Next, you might put it all together by:
- Stepping from side to side to begin with
- Incorporating shimmying shoulders
- Then finishing the dance with 2 quick punches as the song climaxes
- You do all of this to the beat
- You perform the above naturally as you have conditioned your body to feel comfortable with each movement prior to incorporating them all together
- With enough practice this is how a dancer learns to dance naturally. Read these steps again.
A useful tip with the above process is to start off simple and slowly.
It is better to do a movement with confidence and commit to the movement rather than do many fast energetic moves which are half done.
As you become familiar with one movement your mind will start to get somewhat bored of it. So the natural reaction is to try out new movements. THIS IS PROGRESS.
Muscle memory vs normal memory:
But why MUSCLE memory and not just normal everyday memory?
Well, an important note here is that due to the complex nature of dynamic movement such as dance, it is simply not possible for the mind to:
- Remember hundreds of moves
- Process hundreds of moves
- Deliver hundreds of moves that are required in dancing
Dancing needs to become second nature.
For example, martial artists need their moves to be automatic. The legendary Kung Fu Shaolin Warrior Monks would repeat moves until the movement became second nature.
Another analogy for this is learning to drive a car. Do you remember when you first drove a car, and how your mind was trying to remember:
- When to change gears
- How to accelerate
- When to brake
- And the right time to use your indicators?
It was hard right? It felt like your mind was being overloaded with information.
Now think of how easy it is to drive a car after lots of practice. And it became easy BECAUSE you gained muscle memory for how to drive a car. IT BECAME SECOND NATURE.
This is the same process for learning how to dance naturally, and it is all through muscle memory.
How to master rhythm and commit to movements:
Rythym plays a key role in dancing naturally.
Even if you have perfect muscle memory of dance movements and you have a large toolbox of dance movements, none of it will be useful unless you learn how to dance with rhythm.
So what is dance rhythm? Dance rhythm is where a beat of a song and a dance movement ‘accent’ align.
What is a dance accent? Dance accents are movements such as a foot tap, a fist punch, or a pop of the hip. They are like the punctuation marks (full stops/commas) of the dance world.
Characteristics of people with rhthym:
If you really look at a person who can freestyle dance well, you will notice they have three key things:
- One is that they have a large dance move toolbox: They are familiar and comfortable with a range of movements
- They break these movements down to ‘fit’ into a beat. They do this so they can transition comfortably and confidently from one movement to the next. For example, say a dancer wants to use an arm swing in a song. However, the beat is too quick to do one full arm swing, they would:
- Break that arm swing down to fit the beat. This might look like a ‘stuttering’ arm swing
- Or, if the beat is slow, they might do two arm swings to fit the empty space in between beats.
- They commit to movements.
- This means that they do movement from start to finish with purpose
- Think of a military salute, it’s very easy to spot when a salute is half done right? This is the same principal in dance
- However, don’t confuse commitment with tension or aggression. A movement can be committed to with aggression OR with relaxation. The important thing is that it is done fully and on purpose.
The importance of rhythm:
So, knowing how to adjust movements to move with a beat, is very important to dancing naturally. Dancers do this by speeding up their movements, slowing them down, or just simply matching the beat speed.
With freestyle practice, you will naturally learn in time how to make movements fit the rhythm of a song. This is what people mean when they say ‘that dancer has RHYTHM’. This is one of the most sought-after attributes of dancers worldwide.
What is a dance beat:
Now, in dance classes, how they teach rythym is by ‘counting’ beats. The teacher will often count out the beat in a set of numbers, for example:
- 1235678. This is what they call an ‘8 count’ in hip hop
- Or, 123 567. This is still an 8 count but a counting system used in Salsa dancing. Here the 4 and 8 are not accented so the teacher will leave them out. The reason for this is Salsa uses a ‘quick quick slow’ rhthym.
This may sound confusing, and the majority of the time it is. This type of counting is rooted in music construction and dance choreography, but, NOT FREESTYLE dancing.
You don’t actually need to be counting music beats when dancing normally/freestyling. Watch any kids dancing and you will see they are simply feeling the beat and not counting the beat. All you need to do is to practice ‘feeling’ a beat. This will come naturally with freestyle practice.
For example, in the below video:
- The beat is mainly the bass drum
- But then at 0.39-0.46, a dancer could speed up their movements to the singer’s voice which has increased cadence. Or they could keep their movements to the underlying bass drum beat.
- Or at 0.58-1.00 there is a gentle sweeping orchestral/vocal note. A dancer could move accordingly by doing a broad sweeping movement.
In this way, beats can be complex. The best way to learn how to dance to them is to practice feeling them, not counting them. This all develops during freestyle practice.
How to build movement confidence through mirror feedback:
The right-sized mirror is invaluable in learning how to dance naturally. It provides feedback on how you look whilst dancing and your body will automatically correct itself when it sees this.
However, the key here is to have the right size. This is covered in the article How To Become A Good Dancer: The complete guide people need.
The brain releases dopamine (the reward chemical) when your body sees itself perform a move that:
- Looks good
- AND feels good
- AND is to the beat
When this happens your body and brain want more dopamine because it feels good. In this way, you are conditioned to keep dancing with all of those traits mentioned above. What happens next is two steps:
- With practice your muscles will start to remember what those movements are which made you feel so good.
- Becuase you have seen that you look good whilst dancing, you will gain confidence in your movements. This is where your controlling mind starts to relax and let your body take over. This is the much coveted DANCE CONFIDENCE!
Combining muscle memory with confidence:
Muscle memory and confidence intertwine and depend on each other.
The reason for this is that if you have muscle memory of dance movements that work well to a beat, but don’t have the visual feedback which grows your confidence, you may never get that confidence that how you are moving is actually worthy of confidence.
Similarly, if you have visual feedback that your movements look good, but you don’t have muscle memory of those dance movements, you will not be able to consistently reproduce those dance movements and lose your newfound dance confidence.
Be aware that people tend to express themselves most easily through activities which they are good at.
For a guitarist, his fingers are very practiced at plucking the guitar, so when he hears a piece of music he will likely want to use his fingers because the neural pathway from mind to fingers is well-formed.
For a soccer player, he will likely want to express himself through soccer, because that is the neural pathway that has the least resistance.
Similarly, a dancer will be drawn to dancing to express themselves, because the neural pathways from mind to rhythmic movements is well-formed.
Always remember that dancing naturally is learned, and if you follow the steps outlined in this article, you will improve. To conclude this article, we will leave you with the quote below:
‘The more you practice and get familiar with dance vocabulary, the easier it gets to understand, and you’ll feel more at ease with what you are doing.’
Ariel Hoffman, director of professional development at AKT, dance cardio studio, New York City.