Fun social dance classes
Essential Musicality

Sunday, 10 September 2023

Musicality is one of the best aspects of Modern Jive - we can dance to the widest range of music from slow to fast, latest chart hits to retro, rock to acoustic, and even 6/8 (Waltz) time signature music!

When you learn how to add musicality into your dancing you don’t need to learn any more moves! You can use the same moves you already know and give them life with every song for every dance partner. It may even be enough to know how to let your partner be musical and they will love dancing with you.

This workshop will show you many ways to incorporate musicality, and even if you just learn to recognise the way your partner is dancing is musical, you will both enjoy your dancing more.

Everybody should do this workshop and many people have so much fun they do it more than once.

What's In Musicality?

Musicality is sometimes known as dancing outside the moves and allows us to interact/play with various aspects and properties of a song such as:

  • Basic Timing
  • Genre, Mood, Melody, Lyrics
  • Phrasing, Breaks and highlights
  • Bridges / middle 8's

We can group all these aspects into one and simply say "The music made me do it" to explain why we might dance to a particular song in a particular way.

Workshops are a great way to improve your dancing in a short space of time and help you master the basics as well as challenge you with more advanced material.

Time: 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: Avonhead School (map below)
Duration: 3 hours

Please aim to arrive in good time to warm up and get ready. Attendance at the Workshop gives you free entry to a Sunday Social if one is held afterwards.

The Music Made Me Do It

Okay, so you know plenty of moves but you can't seem to put them into my freestyle or they don't fit in with the music. Sound familiar? This workshop addresses more challenging aspects of freestyle and blending moves to make the whole dance more exciting.

This workshop really gets to the essence of dancing. Yes leaders, musicality is what the follows really want when they dance with you!! We'll cover tips and tricks to help you and your partner get the most out of every song.

This is one of our Foundation Workshops. We recommend all dancers attend these workshops at least once during their time with us. In fact we think the content of each workshop is so important that dancers who have already attended one of these workshops can attend the same workshop again at a discounted rate (regardless of whether previously they led or followed).

A Small Difference Has a BIG Effect

Dancing is defined as moving to music, if you're not in time with the music you may as well turn the music off.

If you're out of time even by a small amount it can feel pretty bad and for some sensitive people it's like being sea sick because you ear hears one tempo but your body is being lead at a different tempo (sea sickness arises from the contradiction of the eyes telling the brain that the body is stationary but the inner ear is sensing movement).

Listen to the two recordings:

While the sound quality may not be perfect, hopefully you can tell there's a difference: the first sample is Moves Like Jagger played normally; the second one comprises two clips of Moves Like Jagger being played at the same time except that one of them has been speeded up by 5%. It sounds awful and dancing out of time is the dance equivalent of nails being dragged down a blackboard!

In this workshop we'll help you get in time with the music and save you and your partner from being sick.

Click below for specific information about timing and footwork.

Who Is This For?
  • Everyone!
  • You do not need a partner as we aim to match up leads and follows.
Testimonials

Loved it! I learned heaps about listening and responding. ... it did build confidence. ... Thank you. If you held it again next week, I would come again and tell every leader to attend!

It pushed my boundaries and made me think outside the square (always a good thing)

The workshop was great :), I really enjoyed how you covered so much stuff both music, timing, interpretation and style. It was really good and well worthwhile.

I loved the workshop, it was extremely well presented as always by Matt who is so entertaining. It was also very informative, and well demonstrated with the graphs and the songs taped on top of each other. I was able to understand what is required to improve timing, understand the idea of style and performance rather than the treadmill of move after move, and I also gained some confidence in taking risks to try new things that I'm not immediately comfortable with.

I really enjoyed this workshop as I need to work on this area when dancing. There was not too much material/information squeezed into the time frame which was great. ... thanks ... for a very enjoyable/ fun workshop.

Pricing and Booking
Entry TypeCreditsCashClosing Date
Everyone-3.0-Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Standard Entry-$42.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
SuperGold Card-$32.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Full Time Student-$32.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Community Services-$32.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Repeat Pricing

If you've done this workshop before then you can get a discount:

Entry TypeCreditsCashClosing Date
Everyone-1.0-Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Standard Entry-$14.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
SuperGold Card-$11.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Full Time Student-$11.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Community Services-$11.00Sun, 10 Sep, 2:00 PM
Avonhead School
  • 55 Avonhead Road, Avonhead, Christchurch
  • The school is located on Avonhead Road just up from Yaldhurst Road.
  • There is some parking near the hall within the school as well as plenty of street parking nearby.
  • The entrance to the hall is at the front of the building near the road.