Lithuania Workshop Day Descriptions

These workshops are going to be all about Rhythmical Body Movement done first solo and then with a partner. During each day we will focus heavily on improving the way your body moves, dances, and interprets swing music. The goal is to learn how to dance better, and use that rhythmical body movement to do all the leading and following for your lindy hop. Say good bye to arm leading, stiff following and unnatural variations. It time to go Old School.

Day 1- Intermediate Lindy Day

Lesson 1 (1h15m): Introduction Lesson: Rhythm, Body Movement, and Application to the basic dynamics. This lesson will give you an idea of my basic concepts and an easy set of variations to apply them.

Lesson 2 (1h15m): Fun Body Movement Variations - Learn some awesome body movement variations that are purely lead and followable by just doing it. These are great for social dancing and also will help us build our understanding of the concepts at work.

Break (1h30m):

Lesson 3 (1h15m): Momentum, Anchor, and Stretch: This class we will begin to get a little bit more serious and work with some variations that require a lot of stretch and momentum. We will learn how to stretch lead, change the shape of the body and start building the tools necessary for some badass lindy hop.

Lesson 4 (1h15m): Swing Out's & Circles: Once we learn how to create momentum, stretch our bodies, and anchor we will be ready to reinvent our swing out's and circles. This class is not about learning the swing out, it will about learning to swing out more like a badass, getting the girls to twist their little hearts out and the guys to stretch and anchor and do it all in Rhythm.

Day 2- Advanced Lindy Day

This day is mainly focused on people who are familiar with my fundamental concepts behind rhythm and body movement. The pace will be directed to please those who have taken classes with me before so please get ready to progress quickly and work hard.

Lesson 1 (1h15m): Solo Body Training Routine - Here we will work on a Jazz Routine that is designed to train your solo dancing, rhythm, and natural body movement necessary for leading and following. This is routine will be physically challenging and will set up the the foundation for the next class.

Lesson 2 (1h15m): Partnered Body Leading/Following Training - Here we will take the routine we learned in the first class and learn how to lead and follow it. This will connect the concept of natural body movement doing all the leading and the following for dancing. This is the key to developing good connection and partnering skills for lindy hop that revolve around dancing, instead of arm leading and unnatural patterns and variations.

Break (1h30m):

Lesson 3 (1h15m): Mid Tempo Social Lindy Variations : Put all the technique to the test in this lesson to some mid tempo swing. We will cover some great socially danceable variations that will draw upon the tools we learned in the previous two lessons to connect the techniques to your social dancing.

Lesson 4 (1h15m): Fast Tempo Social Lindy Variations - Put all the technique to the test in this lesson to some fast tempo swing. We will cover some great socially danceable variations that will draw upon the tools we learned in the previous two lessons to connect the techniques to your social dancing.

Levels:

Day 1: You are expected to have experience social dancing and have an interest in getting better at doing it. This day will cover more of my fundamentals so you are not required to have done classes with me before, but if you have and want some review on how to do things like stretch, anchor, body lead, body follow, release tension, and move your body naturally, then this is the day to attend.

Day 2: You are expected to be familiar with my basic concepts behind Leading, Following, Rhythm and Natural Body Movement. This will not be a day for review, but for moving forward and applying the concepts to your dancing. If you are not totally confident with my fundamentals, it is recommended that you take day 1 and then give day 2 a shot. It will probably lead to a much better learning experience.

A little bit about Dax's Lessons

In Dax's lessons you will discover the secrets that the top Lindy Hop pro's use to create inspirational dancing and you will gain more control over your connection and body movement. The overall workshop goal is simple: Dance, have fun, and learn to play your body like a musician plays his instrument. in order to achieve this we need to take total control over our "instrument", the body, and create natural, rhythmical and musical movement. This is the essence of dancing and without it our partner dancing will seem to lack a musical and rhythmical essence. In other words, leaders will look like they are playing Nintendo and our followers will look like stiff chairs being moved around. Not Good!

We will then connect this musical body movement to our partner just as the musician connects to the band. Whether or not you believe it now, you will discover that everything can be made lead-and-follow-able, that is everything YOU can dance. So if you learn to dance it, you can learn to lead and follow it together.

As we develop more control of our bodies movement and partner communication, we will be able work on the musical elements; color, intensity, dynamics, rhythm, accents, style, shape. These tools can then be used to build awesome variations and dynamic musical dancing. Here we unlock your inner creativity and the real fun begins.