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Did you know that Michael Jordan took ballet lessons during his recuperation period from injury? Well, I think ballet did Jordan well. Nevertheless, if dancing became beneficial to the best basketball player, you would also benefit from learning some dance types, especially if you are a singer.
Of course, you are not required to learn any dance as a singer, for your voice matters most, not your dance moves. Unless you wish to be a versatile artist like Michael Jackson or Jay Lo, you’re not required to be a good dancer. Yet, as a singer, knowing some dance types will be an extra draw to your performance, further expanding your level of creativity and flexibility.
Types of Dance You Should Master as a Singer
There are many dance genres to choose from if you want to learn to dance as a singer, which makes choosing the best dance types to enhance your singing career a bit confusing. Nevertheless, as a singer, it will be advisable to learn the following dance types:
1) Ballroom
You might have experienced ballroom dancing in your youthful days during your debut and other occasions. As a dance type, ballroom originated in the 16th Century in France. However, the ballroom has dramatically evolved since then, and now there are two main subtypes of the ballroom: the Latin/rhythm and the Standard/smooth. Ballroom dancing also includes waltz, foxtrot, tango, pasodoble, samba, and bolero.
Ballroom dancing builds your stamina and your body better. It also builds your strength and flexibility, and your range of motions as you learn ballroom dancing increases. Moreover, it improves your heart rate and promotes your well-being.
Aside from ballroom dancing’s health benefits, it will also expand your repertoire and antics when performing your musical piece. You can use ballroom dance on stage as you sing. Such dancing while singing will indeed make you a versatile artist and endear you to your audience.
2) Hip-Hop
Hip-hop is a freestyle way of dancing that has become commercialized in recent decades. It originated in New York City’s streets and is often referred to as urban dance or street dance. Hip-hop, however, has carved a niche as an art form and a culture. It includes different influences and styles like breaking, popping, locking, boogaloo, and social dances.
Hip-hop is characterized by rapping, rhythmic vocal style, graffiti, djing, and breakdancing. Moreover, as a dance, hip-hop can infuse into your singing performance its edgy and raw characteristics. Its freestyle nature lets you enjoy your singing performances as you improvise new dance moves on stage. It also enables you to express yourself more, given the very personal expressions involved in hip-hop dancing.
3) Ballet
You may frown at the idea of learning ballet if you are an established singer or a fledgling singer. Yet, ballet can be a useful skill as a singer. It is a performance dance that originated in the Italian Renaissance. Since then, ballet has dramatically evolved as a form of art dance, and now, ballet is a well-established dance form. Aside from ballet’s health benefits, it will also benefit your singing career if you know how to ballet dance.
Of course, if you are a theatre singer, ballet’s benefits will be quite evident to you. Yet, if you are a pop singer, you may end up scratching your head, asking yourself why you should learn ballet. Nevertheless, I believe you can always showcase your ballet dancing skills in some instances in your live performance as a singer.
4) Contemporary Dance
What is contemporary dance? Well, contemporary dance includes different dance types like modern, ballet, lyrical, and jazz. It utilizes a technique like that of ballet, and it expands these techniques to include more movements beyond the strict ballet rules. Contemporary dance also includes Contemporary Jazz and other non-traditional dances.
Contemporary dancers make use of different types of music as well as non-traditional costumes. It showcases a muscular torso and much legwork. It also emphasizes contraction, release, recovery, fall, and floor work.
Contemporary dance is typified likewise by disordered changes in rhythm and speed. Hence, as a singer, you can enhance your singing performances by utilizing the different steps you could learn from contemporary dance.
5) Jazz
You may be familiar with jazz music, but jazz is not only jazz music, for jazz combines dance steps and styles. Jazz dance is characterized by high energy that knows no boundaries. It gets its cues from ballet, tap, modern, African dance, hip-hop, and other styles.
Upbeat or currently popular songs mostly accompany jazz dance. Moreover, you will find jazz dancers wearing jazz shoes made of leather split sole. This type of shoes offers the feet of dancers enough freedom to move or bend. Jazz, of course, belongs to the most popular dance types at present.
As a singer, you will benefit from learning jazz for its dramatic body movements and improvisions. It is a relatively modern type of dance, and at present, many people are enthused by jazz dancing. As a singer, you can add this dancing style to your talents as a versatile artist when you perform live on stage.
6) Tap Dancing
Tap dancing is another type of dance, characterized by the tapping of shoes and percussive dance. When you do tap dancing, you hit the floor with your shoes in a rhythmic way. You can either use the heel of your shoes or your shoes’ toe to highlight the sound. Moreover, you will often see tap dancers in musical theatre, and more often, tap dancing focuses more on formations and choreography, with many tap dancers dancing at a time.
Tap dancing features different dances that include rhythm, flamenco, classical postmodern tap, and Broadway. Furthermore, tap dancers use the crisp and hollow sound of their shoes to accentuate every performance. Thus, tap dancers perform more often on a specialized floor for optimum effect.
7) Swing
As a variation of jazz dance, swing originated somewhere between the 1920s and the 1940s. It was a reaction to the increasing popularity in America of swing jazz. Yet, swing music also evolves more closely with the jazz dance, and it encourages more rigorous and faster movements.
Swing dance has popular forms like the Jitterbug, Lindy Charleston, Balboa, and the Lindy Hop. Big Band musicians commonly complement swing dancing. These musicians play smooth upbeat melodies that are cool to listen to.
8) Modern Dance
Another type of dance is modern dance, which is characterized by a vast genre of dance. It originated from western countries like Germany and the USA in the late 1900s. The main goal of modern dance is to depend heavily on the dancer’s interpretation of the music. Of course, modern dancers rely more on their feelings as a dancing guide.
Modern dance is a reaction to the highly rigid and regimented moves of traditional dances like ballet because such a dance seems to be oppressive to the dancers. At present, it is enjoying enough popularity with its incorporation of various dancing techniques like ballet sans the strict focus on rigid techniques and rules. Moreover, it lets the dancers choose whatever piece of music they like to use to create expressive and unconventional movements to convey feelings and emotions.
9) Theatrical Dance
Theatrical dance is an excellent type of dance perfect for channeling your physical energy to express your storytelling capability. It is an ideal type of dance for those who thrive in stimulating the senses, using costumes, props, backgrounds, and music. Moreover, you will find more often the theatrical dance being complemented by these sensory-stimulating elements.
Choreographers make sure that theatrical dances are highly visual and stimulating. They incorporate the abovementioned elements in theatrical dance. Moreover, they integrate ballet themes or jazz musical accompaniment into theatrical dances.
Singers and aspiring singers will surely benefit from learning the theatrical dance, making them more dramatic in their singing performance, giving their performances depths and dimensions. As a singer, you need to have a dramatic flair, and thus, you would benefit from engaging in theatrical dancing.
Conclusion
As a singer, you need to harness whatever skills you could develop for your singing performance. If you know how to dance, you should not shy away from dancing on stage, employing the necessary steps to enhance and enliven your performance. If you can infuse a nifty dance step every once in a while in your routine, your performance will never become boring.
Of course, your audience deserves the best performance from you because most of the time, they are paying to watch and listen to your performance. Hence, if you want to raise your performance a notch higher, you need to be very versatile and flexible. Learn how to dance, for you got nothing to lose but everything to gain if you know some dance steps as a singer.
