SATURDAY’S JAZZ CLASS

SATURDAY’S JAZZ CLASS

The Saturday’s jazz class in the morning is one of the most worthy classes that one should attend in ACTFA. Unlike the usual lessons where one does warm-ups, some slightly more intermediate work followed by a short choreography session, this class trains one to become a technically-strong dancer.

A very brief overview of the two-hour long class:

Firstly, a vigorous stretching regime at the start to warm-up the students’ muscles as well as prepare them for the subsequent exercises. This takes up about a quarter of the time where everyone loosens up different parts of the body from the neck to the trunk to the legs. Practically, each muscle part that you can name of is taken care of and stretched during this period of time.

Secondly, be it a social dancer or a professional artist, the core muscles are crucial for one to hold his body upright and to be able to do physically-demanding moves. This aspect is covered when the instructor doing a series of crunches, leg-lifts, push-ups, planks that leave one very much exhausted. However, in the long run, with the gradual strengthening of these muscles, one will not be able to feel that great a strain compared to their first day doing it.

Subsequently, technical work comes in where there is a standard ankle-strengthening exercise that is done to build the dancer’s ability to stand on tip-toe. Naturally, the next set of exercises will be across the floor work that consist mainly of the different turns and spins such as pirouette and pose turns. This is often accompanied by jumps there dancers build their stamina to jump high and far.

The class ends off with students working on their splits to achieve the perfect, straight split or even an over-split. Initially, this is done on the floor. However, since the Saturday jazz class is more demanding, students work on their over-split with the help of chairs or sofas.

One must be thinking that this two-hour long class is impossible for the faint-hearted but I beg to defer. In fact, if you think that you cannot survive this horrendously crazy session, all the more you should take up the challenge and see how much you can achieve out of it.

This jazz class drills on the fundamentals of the dancer, equipping the person with the necessary set of skills for one to be able to tackle future genres of dance. Be it Latin ballroom, hip-hop or salsa, one has to be flexible and technically-strong enough to execute those moves. Thus, this is where the jazz class comes in to provide you with the necessary things that one needs.

Think no more, try this class and be amazed at how it will do wonders to your body.

by Dionne Buffa