Thread: New ideas for rythm workshop?

I´m teaching a 2 hour ruthm workshop next week. The students are beginners to continuers (1-4 terms of dancing), so their dance vocabulary is not the largest. The idea is to get them to regocnize some (2-4?) of the most common rythms and play around with steps and combinations to them.

They are not used to working on their own as to putting moves together, and I would like to get them to at least trying to think out some combinations themselves.

So do you have any fun ideas for this?

I was thinking about groups of 3-4 persons and let them have a couple of minutes to come up with a short combo and them drill together on everyones combos.

I let them do this foirst and then show some combos of my own.

But I would love to have some input and new fun ideas from you guys.

- You start a combo and get them to finish it with leading advice from you
- Give them a finite set of movements to work from ie: hip drop, hip circle and step touch and tell them how many counts to fill up, working in small groups with an allocated leader and you rotate through the groups giving advice... I wouldn't drag this exercise out though, short and snappy keeps it fun
- give them 1 body part or 1 movement and get them to explore altering it to suit the different drum sounds Doums vs Teks etc

I think giving them some kind of strategies for how to interpret the different sounds in a rhythm might be helpful. These could be as simple as doing upward movements on "tek" and downward on "dum" (or upper body on "tek" and lower body on "dum")-- in fact keeping these directions simple and clear would probably be for the best. Make sure that the students realize that these are not hard and fast rules but rather suggestions to get their creative juices flowing.
Are you teaching zils at all? I've found I don't usually fully remember rhythms until I've learned how to play them on doumbek or zils.
Good luck!

If you're asking them focus on rhythms, I'd suggest that (if you haven't already done so) you teach them to play each rhythm on the finger cymbals, at first standing still, and then give them a step combination to do with it.

I like to teach a basic combo to saidi rhythm (I usually do hip drop-up-drop-drop-up) and then get them to practice it to different types of music, which all use that rhythm. I'll use some traditional saidi, some pop with saidi beat, etc. This is to illustrate how the same rhythm underlies many different songs, and that, even though the melody is different, you can still use the same steps that match the rhythm.

Perhaps at the end of the class you can play various samples of music that have the rhythms you've taught and get them to ID what it is and dance the relevant combo. First person to dance the correct combo once you've put the music on gets a prize (or a big clap).

Thanks all! I´ve got some new ideas:D But keep ´em coming!

As for zills, I´d love to incorporate more zills, but us swedes are some sorry zill players;) Or let´s say that students think it´s too difficult and boring to practice zills. And we have a zillclass running, some of the students are attending that as well, so, I must skip them this time.

I put my students into groups of 4 and had each one pick a different move. I I would help them take the moves and group them together into a 32 count combo. They didn't feel so overwhelmed as to come up with a combo on their own but yet it was their combo since they came up with the moves for it.

Originally Posted by amirahdancer

I put my students into groups of 4 and had each one pick a different move. I I would help them take the moves and group them together into a 32 count combo. They didn't feel so overwhelmed as to come up with a combo on their own but yet it was their combo since they came up with the moves for it.

Sounds good. I´m planning on giving them a helping hand and lots of sggestions and hands on help if needed. I just would love to see what they come up with and what happens before they get the extra help from me;)

Well I´ll have to be flexible I guess;)