JESSIE: What's up everybody!
Welcome back to STEEZY's YouTube channel!
It's your girl, Jessie!
CLAY: And Clay!
JESSIE: So Clay, you know how dancers usually choreograph to music?
CLAY: Yes..
JESSIE: What if we had a producer make music to a dancers moves?
UNO REVERSE on that b**ch!
CLAY: That'd be crazy!
So you're saying,
if we had Franklin Yu choreograph a piece to NO music,
and then we had producer TungFuHustle make a SONG
to Franklin's choreography..?!
THAT would be in this video?!
Alright, I want to watch this..
Let's get into it!
FRANKLIN: Hey everyone!
My name is Franklin Yu!
I used to dance on ACA,
and you may have seen me on
Street Dance of China!
So it's funny, when Clay asked me to do this
no-music-choreography challenge I was like
"Alright! Easy!"
Cause I move around to no music all the time!
When I got to the studio,
I spent HELLA long time on the first 8-count
and, I think it's because
when you're tasked with making choreography to no music,
it's almost as if you have to make
the song in your head..
The way I am, I'm just so used to optimizing-optimizing..
Making things better.
When you don't have music,
What do you optimize..?
It was hard because, when I was choreographing, I was thinking like
"Okay.."
"How should I pace my movements..?"
"S o that the song is.. comfortable"
"for people to listen to.."
There are parts in the piece where
my movement quality's a little more fluid.
I've been liking-
like, waves a lot lately..
I'm pretty excited to see, uh..
what he did with that.
TUNG: So...
we finished our song!
And, I'm excited to show you guys what I've done!
I watched the video OVER and over again..
I paid attention to what
count he put emphasis on.
He goes,
"One, two, THREE, four,"
"five, six, SEVEN, eight.."
That's what kind of dictated the beat for me..
He starts his movements on a
five, six, sevenn, eiight..
And I tried to decide what matches THIS movement here..
And, I was thinking like, something SOFT..
Something out of nowhere..
And then, I gave it a little melody..
Where he..
puts in those like, quicker moves
those combos,
that's when I use opportunity for
adding bells..
There's a SHARPNESS to it that
you can really hear.
So, with this first combo, he does something super fast.
It's probably like,
"One-e and-a two-e and-a-three.."
"four-e-and.."
But I go faster than that,
cause I wanted it to be that much flashier,
so this is the combo that I came up with.
And then I punched in some brass sound,
just to like,
really give it some POWER.
He's doing a little head isolation,
which was-
it was pretty.. difficult to capture..
in that large space of sound.
I added a guitar.
It's myself playing..
and I just PANNED..
the chord..
so that it goes,
"left right left right"
"uh uh uh uh uh uhhhhh"
so that it FEELS like your head's going in a circle..
Coming from a dance background,
it was fun to LEARN how to make music
FOR dance..
It was a pretty challenging process,
because, the way one can execute when they FEEL the song
is completely different.
I wanted Franklin's movements to..
seem EXPLOSIVE..
at the same time when the MUSIC explodes and..
the hardest part of all of it was
literally doing that.
So, this whole time I felt like I was trying to just fool..
the audience to think that
this is already made..
and he was dancing to it.
But yeah..
THAT is the process..
I hope you guys enjoyed it..
It was a lot of fun!
FRANKLIN: Ayee..
Oh my God..!
Tung..!
[chuckles]
[laughs]
Oh my God, he even–
[laughs]
I didn't expect him to make a song like that..
Uhh- NOT because it was bad,
I actually REALLY liked the music.
Musically, I think..
I appreciated the melody in the beginning the most..
the "duhh-nuhnuh-nuhnuhhh"
I also really like the bells,
If I heard the song BEFORE choreographing,
I think I just would've emphasized things differently,
and in different places..
There's a part where I-
I move my head and my FOOT at the same time
while I'm on the floor..
Parts like that, I would've uh-
put in a SLIGHTLY different spot,
just to like,
match the flow of the music.
I think if there's one thing I learned,
it's that-
and this might sound really obvious but,
it's that music is really IMPORTANT
for dancers and choreographers.
That's NOT to say I think,
dancers are completely CONTROLLED by music..
I think music and dance have
like a mutual give-and-take relationship.
There are some times when dancers will manipulate music
and you'll see things that-
or HEAR things that you didn't before.
And then there are times where,
music will kind of dictate..
the direction you're taking..
But, I don't think it's.. binary-
I don't think one COMPLETELY has control over the other.
With ANYTHING, this project..
HOPEFULLY will encourage people to..
approach dance in a different way, perhaps..
creating like a STORY or an underlying theme..
Something..
beyond movement-
beyond MUSIC that resonates with people..
JESSIE: Thank you all so much for tuning in
to our very first episode of Reverse Choreography!
You can find these two on Instagram at
@franklinyu82
and @tungfuhustle!
Fun fact!
Franklin is also a STEEZY Studio Instructor,
so if you wanna take classes from Franklin himself,
then sign up to STEEZY.co,
and get a 7-day free trial!
CLAY: You can also find the link to the song in the description below!
And don't forget,
subscribe to our channel if you wanna watch more awesome, dance-related videos!
We'll see you on the reverse!