Monday, June 1, 2009

Choreographing a dance with a language barrier

There's a block party coming up in June and Ryohei--the b-boy I met at last month's hip hop show--and I are putting a routine together. Despite the language barrier, things have been coming along pretty smoothly. We put this first part together in about 10 minutes:



I find that amazing. Not the dance itself, but the fact that we were able to choreograph it so quickly while not speaking each others' respective language. The routine isn't complex, but we literally only communicated using the music and the moves. It was equally created so we both had to do some "talking" and "listening".

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said that "music is the universal language of mankind". Does that make dancing its sign language?

8 comments:

  1. I cant wait to visit Japan! Your blog is so inspirational!

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  2. That is awesome! You should go on SYTYCD when you come back to the US, hehe.

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  3. Hmmm...dance the sign language of music. I like that. I took American Sign Language for my language credit for the non verbal level of communication. I felt like my dance creativity was vast during that semester. It is wonderful to see you have found a fellow dancer/bboy to get down with...no doubt they exist in much smaller numbers there.

    Keep that body rockin.

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  4. you are picking up some great skills. they say music and dance are universal languages. sounds like you are living it up!

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  5. Yo this is Jeremy Fain bboy Complx, nice moves man, good to know you breaking it down across the seas. Dope man real dope.

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  6. nice! on a side note, that room is pretty amazing to do a photo shoot in. love those walls.

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