What I Learned When I Taught Myself To Dance
The 4 lessons I learned in the course of teaching myself to shuffle
I was drawn to dancing in my early 20s and wished to learn some form of Western dance like hip-hop or such. That is when I came across Shuffle dancing — which became a rage during the pandemic period, especially during the Lockdown.
I was fascinated with this dance form — with the stylish footwork, the precise execution of spins, and the overall vibe. I did not have the funds or the means to learn it by taking a class so I decided to teach myself by consulting the master, YouTube.
Teaching myself how to shuffle had its own challenges as this dance form is not as easy as it looks. Learning a couple of the basic moves took over a month. Thus, after two years and innumerable setbacks and slipups later, shuffling came with some life lessons.
# Lesson 1. Trust the process
Acquiring a new skill takes time. As a rookie, I felt a sense of underachievement.
When I started learning the foundation moves like the Running Man and T-Step, I did not seem to be getting anywhere for the first few weeks. Whenever I watched seasoned shufflers, I thought I might never be able to reach that level and speed of shuffling at this rate.
Nevertheless, I kept going; sliding, jumping, and stepping at a steady pace. There were times when I had to go back to square one because I had gotten on the wrong track in my haste to learn as quickly as possible.
Given the pandemic situation, I could only practice within the confinement of my house, on its rough mosaic flooring. After about a month and a half, when I found myself standing on a squeaky smooth floor in a vacation hotel room, I had to test my moves. The floor begged me to ditch my inhibitions and try out my half-learned Running Man on it. I gave in.
To my gleeful surprise, I got it right! Looking in the full-length mirror when I executed the RM, I noticed that I was actually. Running. on. the. spot without seeming too much like a bouncy bunny.
I realized later that the monotonous repetition of the basics of basic moves did the trick. Somewhere, I had learned to blindly trust this whole course of learning, without getting ahead of myself. The little steps needed to get into my muscle memory in order to improve the execution.
#Lesson 2. Listen to your body
I was so enthusiastic about learning shuffle, that I pushed myself too much. My body had not yet gotten accustomed to that kind of cardio. Though I knew when I was getting tired, I used to mentally push myself until I could no longer obey.
I also remember having talked down to myself ever so slightly when hints of exhaustion surfaced.
All that did get me to reach a few of my goals in dancing but I got a bad lower backache as a byproduct. I was off dancing for more than a month.
That made me understand that I must not blindly listen to the mind. My body is important. Even if it is willing to carry out my will, I need to give it a break from time to time.
#Lesson 3. Don’t stress too much about perfection
My drive for perfection did push me to keep honing my skills. But too much emphasis on it led to a drain of time and energy.
I wanted my choreographies and routines to be pristinely perfect. Hence, I would do numerous takes. Then I would end up skipping meals because I would be too tired to cook.
Then when I put up my dance videos on social media, I realized that people rarely pay close attention to minor imperfections and call me out on them. Though I aim for perfection, I still give it a rest and focus on giving it my best shot.
#Lesson 4. Accept your mistakes and failures
When I was a beginner, I remember failing many times — I learned some steps wrong, took time to acquire a certain move, and ended up spraining or straining a muscle.
However, I recorded my practice sessions and uploaded some decent clips of the lot on my social media stories. A friend even asked me why I was putting up such videos instead of properly finished choreographies. I knew the videos were dull and flawed. I knew I looked silly like a baby deer learning to stand up and walk. But it was a way for me to accept my trials.
This was my experience in the whole process and it helped in changing my attitude towards learning something new.
