Activity Review | Shaw College Ballroom Dance Class: “Waltz Helps Me Fly”
After the first modern dance experience class in April this year, Shaw College was honored to invite Ms. Zhou Min, who is an active modern dance professional player as well as a CBDF (China Ballroom Dance Federation) professional ballroom dance teacher, to give a trial dance class again on October 10th and October 12th. More than sixty Shaw students along with over ten staff attended the class.
Mrs. Zhou and Mr. Zhao’s Demonstration of Waltz
At first, Ms. Zhou and her partner Mr. Zhao presented an elegant opening dance to the audiences. Everyone on the spot was amazed and intoxicated at the beautiful dance and the music ended with a storm of applause. All students were entranced by the teachers’ gorgeous and graceful dance; they could hardly wait to move their steps.
Ms. Zhou then introduced the concept of ‘waltz’, a word that appeared in 1780 or so from the ancient German word ‘Waltz’, which means ‘rolling’, ‘rotating’ or ‘sliding’. Waltz is characterized by gracefulness, softness and free-spirited elegance with body relaxed and natural. Through the movements of one’s knees, ankles, soles and palms, combined with the lifting, tilting and swinging of the body, one can dance with an undulating feeling.
The basic skills of Waltz were shared by Ms.Zhou. According to her introduction, the basic skills comprise the basic frame type, the back rotation, and certain inner thigh exercises. With the assistance of the two teachers, students’ postures gradually became presentable.
After half an hour’s practice of basic skills, Ms. Zhou started to teach dance steps. When dancing waltz, the dancers would achieve the movements of their body by moving their toes and stretching thighs; the whole dancing process is inseparable from the ground, and appears smooth as if flowing. After becoming skilled at single step, students began to learn square step, which added lateral movements. The subsequent content was two consecutive fast-paced steps including forward step and backward step. After completing a series of teaching and training in terms of basic motion, the final content was the double-partner dance training session. A boy held a girl’s shoulder blades and the girlheld the boy’s deltoid muscles, then the double-partner waltz training session officially started.
Blithe hours were always fleeting, and the two-hour class quickly came to an end. Despite the students were quite tired after the two-hour learning session, they were still eager to learn some more. Under the strong request of all students, Ms. Zhou and Mr. Zhao decided to perform a tango as a special gift for the whole class. All of them indeed spent a wonderful moment with waltz.
