Response to Dancing Publicly as a Dancer

This discussion will constitute my reflections on a dance club meeting that I attended in which a senior dancer gave instructions on tutting and popping. The unofficial name that the students had given to the class was The Topping Session; meant to be a play on the words tutting and popping. The instructor was a senior dancer who held classes twice a week and gave students practice assignments by showing them advanced dance moves and asking them to prepare them for the next session. The response paper will be based on my experience of the dance class that I have attended. I will highlight the factors that I found interesting and the factors that I found uninteresting in order to draw up an elaborative reflection of the class. In addition, I will attempt to substantiate my assertions with my observations during the class.

Tutting and popping are two relatively new dance styles that have come forth within the last few years. The dance moves have garnered significant attention in the last few years and are frequently used as parts of dance routines in addition with other dance moves (Morgan). The dance styles focus on upper body movements; leaving the dancer's lower body free to either compliments the upper body movements or play out a completely separate dance move to create a unique combination. The seemingly minor movements were meant to intentionally initially confuse the viewer before coming together to form a complete routine that the viewer could understand (Garofoli).

The dance movements were rapid and highly demanding. I noticed that half an hour of practice would result in a few seconds of actual performance (Morgan). The students practiced continuously and were mostly practicing in two-person groups facing each other so that each could tell the other if ...