Do you think I lose all credibility if I start by critiquing like this? What's up guys?
I'm Clay (aka Claydohboon) and I'm the director of video here at STEEZY.
In this video, I'm gonna review some of your dance videos to my choreography
I'll be breaking down what makes each dancers take on my routine strong and
also, give some tips and feedback to help you guys bring it to the next level. Each video that I critique features a class
That's taught on www.STEEZY.co
Also guys, we release a new video every single week
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First up: Jada Estrada dancing to butter
So Jada does a really good job at completing her arm extensions
and this means that she's reaching to the fullest extent required of her to hit a position.
So in moments like this where her arms are extended, you'll notice that her shoulders are completely dropped
This allows her to add a bit more length to her arms, as opposed to if her shoulders were tucked back or raised.
The drop shoulders also allow her body to look more relaxed.
The main critique I have for Jada is to work on her stops.
Even though she has great extensions, there's an overall lack of power.
So stops are exactly what they sound like: when you stop a movement.
They're used to help viewers understand when a move or idea is complete, so for move like this:
Even though this is such a quick moment, I wanted to make sure that each of the ideas were crystal clear
so the baseball bat, and looking at the homerun. I made it clear by using stops
You'll notice that when Jada does this move, her right arm drops right after it hits the ball,
and her left arm continues to move to the eye shading position without stopping beforehand.
There was no resolution to the two parts of the ideas.
So show your stops people! Neon Blake dancing to butter
I like the way she takes liberties on the movement. Neon has such a fun attitude
when she's dancing and that's like half the battle. I bet you that Neon kills it at the club
I also love the eye contact that Neon provides. It engages me as a viewer and I feel like I'm being interacted with directly.
I also like the moments where Neon looks away from the camera with intentionality.
This allows us to not get lost in her facial performance qualities,
but also brings us back to the other important part: the movement!
I think she nails the energy and attitude that I really hope this piece would bring out.
A few apparent areas that Neon can improve on are:
maintaining pictures and also letting her armpits breathe.
The critique about pictures is similar to the note I had for Jada in the previous video.
So you'll notice Neons dead arms, or the arms that aren't the main focus of the move,
often jiggle, or shift away from their intended positions. This isn't always wrong,
but in my choreography, generally there's a base in isolations.
As my good friend Franklin once said, when you're doing isolations,
you need to focus more on what's not moving than what is moving.
The last bit I mentioned is letting your armpits breathe.
This fun little concept is really what just helps dancers look more confident in their own skin.
It just means in moments like this:
the move would be just a bit more confident if she allowed her armpits to breathe
Last but not least! Jericho dancing to don't be sorry.
Quick shout out!
This song is made by my friend Ken Hilton AKA Mizu. Check him out on Soundcloud!
So I actually know Jericho, and he is a stellar freestyler.
You can see throughout this video that he has a solid understanding of textures,
and this refers to the way a move feels or appears to feel.
He's also really good at attacking the quick waving moments within the piece.
There are a few moments where the piece requires the dancer to activate certain body parts.
Activating basically means that you're using one movement to move another one.
Jericho doesn't quite complete certain activations,
you can see right here that his right arm does initiate the activated body part,
but it doesn't quite match the logic of the movement.
That's a whole thing that I can get into but the main idea behind activations is that
they have to have a balanced level of logic and fantasy.
If it doesn't have that, then the viewer often won't understand what's happening.
So let's say I do this:
It doesn't really make much sense. But if I do this:
It's more understandable. This is just because it relates to a certain level of
human understanding in the real world, but I digress.
Jericho could take more time to focus on completing activations. If your arms gonna hit the body then hit it.
The last part is a bit harder to notice but it makes all the difference when it comes to leveling up your dancing
Jericho's weight is being unnecessarily
distributed onto his heels.
He looks a bit off-balance.
This keeps him from looking grounded and stronger when he's doing the piece.
It also makes it a bit more difficult to move into the faster sections
because heels don't have toes to push us forward or back.
Jericho could take more time to find what positions really throw his weight too far back
and limit him from being more agile and grounded.
Thank you so much for watching
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See you next week! Go get critiques!