Strengths and Weaknesses (Jazz Technique) - 28/09/15

Strengths and Weaknesses in Jazz:

In todays Jazz lesson, our dance teacher; Julia's main aim was to focus and clean up our Witches routine. In this lesson, I felt like I achieved a lot. This is because I had no negative comments and I knew all the choreography. Also, I managed to clean up the routines and focus on my technique. This meant that I had a lot of technical strengths this lesson and not as many weaknesses. In this post, I will talk about my main strengths and weaknesses and how I can become technically better. 

Strengths:

• In my dance lesson, one new strength I found was that I managed to stay in my formation during the routines. This meant that the routines looked clean. Also, it shows the audience and my dance teacher that I know where I should be and what the routine is. I believe this will continue to be a strength of mine as now I know the whole routine, I will focus on the formations and my technique. 
• Another strength of mine was getting to my place in time. Although this was a strength in my last blog post; my dance teacher was not in my last dance lesson, so did not know I got there. However, as she was in this dance lesson, she was able to see me get to my place in time. This is a strength because now that I have got there more then once, I now know I can do it. Also, when I wasn't getting to my place in time, I knew that I was ruining the whole routine, so this pushed me more to get there. 
• As one of the above was a strength from a previous lesson, I thought it best to add another new strength. This is my stamina. I know this is a strength as I was able to go full out throughout the whole routine and keep my energy and effort high throughout. This means it has improved a lot since last week which I think may be because I have practiced at home full out to improve my stamina. I am proud of this as last week I found it difficult to get through the whole routine without getting really tired. 

Weaknesses:

• One of the weaknesses which I started to notice today was my actual technique/presentation of my moves. This is because although I know the moves, I do not think about where I should actually be (e.g. where my arms, feet, head should be). This is a weaknesses because as a dancer, you should focus on performing and the moves, just as much as your technique. I will focus on this by going through the routines slowly in front of a mirror and thinking about where my arms/legs etc should be. This will help my technique to improve and so overall my performance of the routine. 

[Both of these next weaknesses are the same as one of my previous lessons. However, I do not find this an issue as it will take much more time and practice before I see any real improvement. I think both of these points will be in my blog posts for at least the next couple of weeks until I see a real improvement. Even if I do see any real difference, I will not put them in my strengths, as I do not think they're ever going to be strengths. Instead, at the end of one of my Jazz Technique posts, I will write about the improvement of them.]

• One of my main weakness, which I have found very obvious over the past few lessons is my strength. This is because I have found that my upper and lower body strength isn't as good as it should be. For example, in some moves which involving using upper body strength, I do not have enough force behind my moves, so they look lacklustre and weak. I will need to focus on this by doing exercises which will improve my strength until I see a real progression.
• My final weakness which is also from the previous lessons, is my agility. Although this has improved a little bit since my last lesson, it has not improved to the level which I want it to be. This means that I have to focus on it until it is better. I will improve this by doing moves which need to use a lot of agility over and over again until I feel that it is at a reasonable level.