FYF CHALLENGE #13: Position Play

LAUNCHED: JUNE 5, 2014

THE PROMPT:

This one is called #positionplay ... sexy huh! So the concept is, exploring a singular technique or shape and trying to make it feel different, or look different for you and your style. As always, take your time, move slow, and be patient with your exploration. It may take a full song to find the moments that really work. For my example here...I picked an open sit position (where one leg/hip is higher than the other, but the premise is a inner thigh hold or sit position). Take your time exploring how you can get in and out of it, play with all the free limbs and parts of your body you can articulate that are not contact or anchor points ... in my case that is my lower legs, my arms, my head ... all free to change and be creative! This exercise will hopefully open your mind to your more

fundamental techniques, that they are still exciting and new just by the way you approach them. You may also find musicality in tricks that you didn’t give yourself permission to explore before. If you need a suggestion on a position here are some ideas: any leg hang (inside, outisde, brass monkey), sits, layouts, shoulder mounts, climbs, jade, handspring, spin shapes on static, spin shapes on spin mode, the possibilites are endless! Let’s do this, let’s explore!

 

FYF Challenge #12: Happy Accidents

LAUNCHED: MAY 12, 2014

THE PROMPT:

Sometimes when you are freestyling you can surprise yourself with interesting choices, fumbles that turned out cool, alternative transitions or shapes, happy mistakes that lead you somewhere new! I wanna see ’em! Either snap a pic of your “dramatization” redoing the mistake or go ahead and just screenshot your freestyle videos (old or new) and capture the amazing moment, trick, shape, or beautiful motion movement that

caught you by surprise. Let’s celebrate finding new things in our Freestyle journey!

FYF Challenge #11: Style Swap Pt. 2

LAUNCHED: MAY 2, 2014

THE PROMPT:

So excited for this one, as I’ve played with variations of this idea before on this page – but I’m bringing it back as it is SO important to branch out of your comfort zone!

The prompt is simple, ask yourself or ask a movement/pole friend this question “What is a style of pole that is TOTALLY out of my comfort zone?” Or… “What is a style of pole I might (for whatever reason) avoid?” And then – you guessed it – try on the style in a freestyle!

Explore through imitation of pole dancers from that style, explore new instincts and music that exemplify that style, pick out subtle form and quality details from that style, even dress and prepare your mood to commit to it and see how it goes!

Ideally, this should be a fun and playful experiment, even though it may take time to get comfortable (or might never fully), it may really surprise you! I choose SEXY & HEELS – because I absolutely never work in that space and I find it aesthetically so beautiful and yet it is so HARD to commit and do it well! Respect.

FYF Challenge #10: Entrance & Exit

LAUNCHED: APRIL 23, 2014

THE PROMPT:

This challenge is one of my favorite things to explore, as it is one of the most neglected areas of pole dance, and offer so many lost opportunities to really find your own style and narrative in pole dance freestyle.

This challenge explores your ENTRANCE to the pole, EXIT from the pole. This can be interpreted so many ways! Mainly, I’m thinking about the way in which you come into contact with the pole, and the way in which you leave your contact with the pole. This can be done with any part of your body, from hands/arms/fingers (standing spins and dance moves) to foot/legs and hips (entrances to climbs or inversions). I wanna see those important moments when you touch the pole, and those important moments when you leave the pole, it is that simple!

Think about what that contact means to you, is it expressing an emotion (scared, joyful, curious, hesitant, motivated?) or is it expressing a creative quality of motion in your pole movement (sticky, swift, slow, heavy, light, rhythmic?)

How can you do this in freestyle without too much thought or planning? Put on a killer song and film your entire freestyle with your main focus on the moments when you come in (and out of) contact with the pole, repeat this as many ways as your body can curiously discover in one song in a continuous flow…then review your video and share the snippets of your favorite moments!

GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY FREESTYLING!

 

FYF Challenge #9: Traveling

LAUNCHED: APRIL 10, 2014

THE PROMPT:

This is TRAVELING! Think floorwork, crawls, walks, slides, glides, flips, rolls. I’d love to see you come up with your own “system” or “pattern” and take it as a traveling move.

You can do this across the floor, around the pole, outside, anywhere that allows you to go from A to a B. This challenge invites you to think of new ways to use your available floor to gain distance.

Notice how you want to use your gaze, or how your body orients to objects and walls. Take up space, or don’t, simply enjoy movement inspiration from bi-pedal and quadrupedal movers in our natural world. Let your ideas repeat and help you cover new ground.

 
 

FYF Challenge #8: Footwork

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LAUNCHED: MARCH 31, 2014

THE PROMPT:

The second Finding Your Freestyle Challenge for Instagram: Foot Work! This is a refinement challenge, it’s super challenging and fun!

Here are your tips:
1) Position your camera so that you can only see your feet (maybe hips down at most, use a friend to tape if you have trouble!)
2) Focus on the way your feet interact with the floor; how do you like to walk, what is your floor connection like? Heavy? Light? Dragging? Springy? Sticky? Loose? Tense? Playful? Try ’em all!
3) Feel free to try simple walks or include spins and transitions, don’t forget directional changes! (Shoes??? Socks??? Bare??)

This is a great challenge to create improvised fancy footwork and really SEE what is happening below in detail. Are you neglecting your feet and traveling transitional work? Can you extend further, change your pacing, play with non-traditional lines? Tell a story about the music with your feet.

As always, breath, and enjoy taking your time. In-Joy!

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FYF Challenge #7: Levels

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LAUNCHED: MARCH 21, 2014

THE PROMPT:

This challenge was our very first Instagram Challenge! We worked in the old time constraints of 15 seconds.

This is a LEVELS challenge (level changes), and should be completed in one unedited 15 second clip! Level changes add dynamic change to your movement.

In one exploration, your movement should include (in any order):

1) LOW level (hips/legs/back/belly on floor)
2) MID level (standing on feet/knees on floor) and
3) HIGH level (feet/body off floor).

4) Optional, you can add an INVERSION (hips above head) — this can be grounded on in the air.

This is also a great tool to create an improvised combo in a short space of time. Take your time, play with your speed, direction, and the details of how/why you change levels.

 

FYF Challenge #6: Reflection

Hashtag: #FYFchallenge

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LAUNCHED: OCT 9, 2013

THE PROMPT:

Finally a challenge for the group freestylers! If you haven’t danced with others before, what are you waiting for? Collaboration yields evolution of your own creativity. It is both generous and personally fufilling. It also holds you accountable to practice freestyle if you aren’t productive alone, and it’s FUN!!

Mirroring is pattern-breaking, social-distance friendly, and embodying. Get those mirror neurons firing, too!

In this challenge, we go over a couple variations to work up to the most advanced form of REFLECTION. We only show a few (for the sake of time) … there are so many options!

FYF Challenge #5: The Body Scan

Hashtags: #FYFchallenge

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LAUNCHED: JULY 24, 2013

THE PROMPT:

Listen the beginning audio for instructions. This is a GRRRREAT exercise for breaking out of your BLEH moments, it brings out-of-the-box creativity and detail, warms up the body for freestyle, and can lead to invention of new authentic movement that is natural for YOU. YES!

FYF Challenge #3: Moving without Moving (Stationary Play)

Hashtags: #FYFchallenge

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LAUNCHED: FEB 1, 2013

THE PROMPT:

Simple concept, really. How much movement can you find without the added pressure of traveling from one spot? It really gives you time to focus on EVERYTHING we forget about: the direction of our head/eyes, what our hands and feet are doing, our own breathing, changing levels, and more. Tell yourself, “I’m gonna see everything I can play with, and what can move without any required tricks, spins, etc.” This hopefully will expand the fine details… and allow you to “mess around” with your movement, to really hear and enjoy the music in your dance, and do it all with less stress and expectation.

This exercise can truly give you new freestyle ideas; what to move, and how to be as you fill in those “dead spots” (pauses) when you are taking a break between tricks, catching your breath, or maybe even thinking about what to do next up the pole. These moments are important. Don’t disregard how beautiful the little moments can be. They can be huge!!! I say in my class a lot, “Make the small moves BIG”.

This stationary exercise has the added benefits of growing your own natural movement vocabulary without a lot of pre-conditioning, increase your body awareness and movement sensitivity, and warm-up your body safely as well!

FYF Challenge #2: Style Swap

Hashtag: #FYFchallenge

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LAUNCHED: JAN 7, 2013

THE PROMPT:

Watch the video (below) for a short instruction/intro to this exercise. This was a fun one we did a few weeks ago in class, dancing a similar sequence freestyle to three different styles of music – with the intention of trying to make that sequence look different stylistically.

Make sure the songs have either different instruments, different tempos, and/or even a different voice quality on vocals! It can all influence your movement. Full disclosure, this one’s not easy. When I attempted it, my body kept finding it’s set point and I had to start over a few times to actually comes up with some diversity. And sexy/shoes was my hardest!

Yikes, bloopers abound.

A tip: Make sure you keep your planned “freestyle moves” easy! You don’t want to have to worry about forgetting what you wanted to do. I choose to start off the pole, do a standing lean over, then a simple walk to the pole and do a three dip combo into body waves. I chose body waves because I wanted to challenge myself to make a traditionally “sexy” move different, if I could. (This was the most fun move to interpret, for me) Then I went into a climb, chopper, ayesha, to come down off the pole to the floor. Each freestyle took between 1 minute and 1:40, depending on the tempo.

I predict that the more you practiced this exercise, the better you would get at it, the more comfortable you would be at reforming your movement. (The more creativity as well!) Definitely “Fake It ‘Til You Make It” on some styles, but that’s all in the fun!

Per a question I had on the Facebook Page, here are some MORE Style recommendations:

Hip-Hop
Contemporary
Modern
Gymnastic
Latin/Ballroom
Belly
Jazz/Afro
EVEN SEXIER
EVEN DARKER

You can take any of these styles and apply them different. Hope this helps, give it a try!

Blog Re-Launch with the original FYF Challenge!

Hashtags: #FYFchallenge

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Celebrating the relaunch of the FYF blog by revisiting all our old freestyle challenges, the first was almost a decade ago now, my how time has flown.

LAUNCHED: DEC 13, 2012

Our older challenges were longer format videos optimized for YouTube.

THE PROMPT:

Here is my first video excerpt using techniques we practice in my Finding Your Freestyle class at Body & Pole. I combined two intentions for this video….

1. CLOTHING

Adding clothing, like sweatpants, change the textures and moveability when you are in contact with the floor and pole. Wearing pants can make you feel softer, slinkier, more cozy. It can bring you a different confidence and inspire you to move while harnessing the qualities of the fabric and fit. In this video example, I tried to utilize movement on the floor - pants on dance on.

2. CONTACT

We play with this a lot in my classes! Focusing your approach through different intentions while moving/freestyling can broaden your style, and give you new ideas. In this CONTACT exercise, I’m playing with hands, how you can use them, and NOT use them, on the pole to create new vocabulary, and new lines/angles. In this video, I tried to play with the other joints and parts of the body coming in contact with the pole;
back of the hand,
wrists,
elbows,
knees,
neck,
you name it it’s game!

Just grabbing at the pole and taking that moment for granted is a missed opportunity. How can you give connection with your hands, or body, meaning when it touches the pole? It can add excitement, anticipation, variety, feeling. Notice textures, the temperature of the pole, the grain of the floor… free your in-the-box thinking of how you come in contact with the pole and floor. You can even challenge yourself NOT to use yours hands when you come to the pole, you’ll be surprised at some of the fun stuff that comes out. (And yes, even awkward, but that is totally acceptable when you experiment, it is a practice after all!)

And of course, last but not least, put on a song that moves you. This song moves me, and allowed me to move slowly enough to explore the ideas of the exercise.

I’d love it if you shared your experiences with either CLOTHING or CONTACT!

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