Footwork Tutorial: How to Dance with Poi

Hey gang!
Drex here from DrexFactor.com and today we’re going to talk a little bit about footwork
as it pertains to flow arts movement and dance in general.
Without a doubt, one of the more common criticisms that flow artists get from other movement
artists is our tendency to plant our feet and forget to move them as we spin.
Take, for example, this simple poi combo.
It’s not uninteresting.
In fact, it features quite a few of my favorite tricks.
But what if I performed this same combo while moving around?
All of the sudden it takes on a whole new life and a new level of visual interest.
We’re going to try and tackle a couple ways to get more comfortable with footwork and
a few exercises for integrating it with your prop spinning.
Before we dive in, I just want to take a moment to give a shout out to the friends of the
channel!
Big thanks to Dark Monk, Spinballs, and Ultra Poi for helping to make the videos on this
channel possible.
You can visit them all on the web by following the links down in the description of this
video.
Now on with the show!
I think a lot of our troubles in moving our feet come from a lack of comfort in moving
to music in general, so we’re going to start by attacking that angle.
Throw on some music that you like and try and keep count to it.
Most Western music is in 4/4, so you’ll wind up counting 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.
Now as you’re counting, try to just walk forward and take a single step for each beat.
This might be a bit of a challenge for those of us who don’t have much of a movement
background--it certainly was for me.
If you have a difficult time identifying the beats, perform this exercise to a metronome
instead.
There are tons of options for free metronomes that you can download to your smartphone and
will make the counts clear as day.
Next, add something new to the exercise by turning around completely every 4-count.
Switching from walking forward to walking backward.
It doesn’t matter which way you turn, just so long as you take a step every beat.
At this point you can also introduce steps to the side rather than straight forward or
backward.
A great tool for stepping to the side is what’s known as a pas de bourrée or a grapevine
step.
It’s performed by crossing one foot in front of the other, opening your legs back up, crossing
one foot behind the other, and opening your legs back up again.
Now try doing this same exercise while spinning your prop.
It can be a bit of a challenge to keep track of the beats and spin at the same time, so
be sure to stick to some of the easier tricks you know until this gets to feel comfortable.
All these methods for moving involve us alternating our feet as we move around.
We can also move around in ways that keep the same foot forward.
One way to do this is to skip--performing a small hop that takes off and lands on the
same foot.
You can try incorporating this into one of our forward walks by thinking Right-Left-Right-Right-Left-Right-Left-Left
like a paradiddle in drumming.
Another option is to shuffle your feet so that your rear foot comes forward and then
kicks your front foot out again.
This technique is known as a chassé in classical dance.
Again, you can practice it by thinking Right-Left-Right-Shuffle-Left-Right-Left-Shuffle.
Notice that when we’re skipping as well as shuffling that we alternate which foot
we start on coming out of the pattern.
That’ll be important as we begin learning different rhythm patterns going forward.
The first such pattern I want you to work with includes what’s called a triple step--that
is three steps grouped together in a different rhythm from your other steps.
This will change the count in our heads to 1-2-3 and 4, 1-2-3 and 4.
Just like our skipping and shuffling exercises, it’ll also mean that on every new 1 beat
we’ll be starting on a different foot.
You can think of this as Right-Left-Right Left Right.
Left-Right-Left Right Left over and over again.
Put on your music once again and practice taking steps in this new rhythm pattern, whether
you walk forward, backward, sideways, or some combination of all these directions.
The pattern you’re looking to master again is: 1-2-3 and 4, 1-2-3 and 4.
Again, start this off by simply walking to this rhythm before adding props to your hands.
Here’s another great pattern that also incorporates some level changes.
Level changes are something we’ll tackle more in-depth in a later video, but for now
this pattern essentially has a couple such changes built in.
For this pattern, we’re going to count a rapid 1-2-3 and rest on the 4.
I find it’s more helpful in this pattern to think of it as up, up, down.
Up, up, down letting the down last for 2 beats.
This is actually really helpful for getting your feet moving in rapid fashion with a double-time
feel, trying to get two of these in for every 4-count.
Think 1 and 2, 3 and 4.
1 and 2, 3 and 4.
Again, this means you’ll be starting each group on a different foot.
Now how about we pull in the skipping from our first set of exercises to really spice
this up: imagine the pattern up-up-down-skip, up-up-down-skip.
Crazy right?
Okay, so here’s the culmination of our exercises for moving our feet.
Take a song you really like and break it up into sections.
Nearly all popular western music has the following format: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge,
chorus.
Pick 3 different footwork patterns that we’ve covered in this video and assign them each
to a different part of the song, such as our 1-2-3 and 4 in the verses and then 1 and 2,
3 and 4 in the choruses.
Now try to perform it all the way through!
I’m not picky about what tricks you do as you move around--just that you keep your feet
moving the whole time.
As you do this, I want you to imagine that your performance space is a canvas and that
it’s your job to touch every last square inch of it with your feet.
Try out other combinations of footwork and counts.
Try stepping on syncopated beats--that is, on the “and” or even numbered beats.
See what fun ways to move emerge as you play around with different patterns.
Now, this is a really, really analytical approach to learning dance footwork and I’m sure
a lot of dancers watching this are rolling their eyes.
While these exercises will definitely help you start to move your feet, they’re also
going to wind up looking very robotic and mechanical over time.
If you really want to dig deeply into different ways to approach footwork, take dance classes
at your local studio.
Thanks so much for watching and enjoy the flow!
Peace.
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Footwork Tutorial: How to Dance with Poi

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