What is waking and how to learn to dance? Waking dance: origin and style Waking dance style.

What is waking? This is a beautiful and energetic dance. Wacking appeared in the early 1970s in special establishments for people with a gay orientation in Los Angeles.

At first given style was called The Garbo (after the famous Swedish actress Greta Garbo: the dancers imitated her theatrical poses). It looked pretty interesting. The modern name of the dance "wacking" (from the word wack - waving arms) is commercial, it arose due to the fact that everything more people became interested in this phenomenon. Initially, this style was a mixture of jazz, locking movements, as well as hip-hop.

This style has another name - Punkin. How did it come about? It's just that the locking dancers called homosexuals who tried to imitate them the word punk. It should be noted that there was no enmity and confrontation between them, on the contrary, there was something like cooperation: some borrowed something from others. Waking appeared as part of locking, the musical accompaniment for this dance was different: first in 1972-1973 it was funk, then disco, and after a while - house. The latter is still used for performances. Nowadays, waking is an integral part of house culture.

How did this dance originate? It's just that homosexuals began to imitate locking dancers: they made similar movements with their hands. However, by their manners it was possible to understand that they were people of non-traditional orientation. At that time, many began to be interested in what waking is. This dance became more and more popular.

Of course, there was a connection between New York and Los Angeles, and waking thus began to gain more and more popularity. The dancers added to it movements from voging - a direction that appeared in the 40s and 50s in New York establishments for homosexuals. What can be said about this style? It was an imitation of the gaits of models and their postures. So it turns out that the New York and Los Angeles manners have many differences. In the first case, there are pretentious poses, bouncing and ejections, and in the second - a lot of different different movements hands. It may even seem that different dances. In addition to hand movements, this style is characterized by peculiar postures and model gaits. Currently, waking is an integral part of a variety of colorful performances. But it should be understood that this is rather not choreography, but a desire to show oneself and express one's individuality. It is a pity that some still do not know what waking is. The dance, whose origin is very exotic, does not appeal to some at all.

Waking appeared thanks to following people: Lanny Michael Angelo, Tinker, and Aurther Andrew. But many other individuals have contributed to this cause. However, today it is not possible to find them, some of them have already died. Currently, the founders of waking are members of the Dancing Machine, a collective founded in 1975 by a man named Jeff Kutach. In the 70s and at the dawn of the 80s, it included such talented individuals like Fast Freddy, Dino SugarBop and also Gino. There were also representatives of the fair sex: Topaz Lanette, Flame, Ana Sanchez, Diane and Dallas. Thanks to these people, many understood what stylized waking is. And it's worth it.

A huge contribution to the development of waking was made by Shabbad, who was listed in the famous The Lockers. Together with Ler Courtelmont, he once told interesting story: once in a club a homosexual who performed garbo decided to compete with him. And Shabbadu wanted to be the best in everything, and therefore he immediately began to study this style, which he had previously known nothing about. Soon he realized that you can mix garbo with locking - this is how the Shway direction appeared. In general, when he realized what waking was, his life changed dramatically. Of course, for the better.

Tyrone Proctor is another person who contributed to the development of wacking. He is one of those people who contributed to the popularization of dance in New York. He arrived there with West coast in order to become a member of the Soul Train program. Currently, Tyrone Proctor continues to teach dance to beginners, although he has an injured one hip and is only able to move his arms. The dancer moves with difficulty. The meaning of his life is to show people what waking is. Origin this dance is very unusual, but even more interesting are bright personalities contributing to its popularization.

Another high-class and very talented dancer in the underground scene is a man named Archie Burnett. For thirty years he regularly visited the most prestigious establishments New York, and all this time honed its original, beautiful and bright style. AT this moment he is 54 years old, but no one who has ever talked to him can believe it, because he looks younger than 40. He has participated in filming for dance publications, for example, Village Voice Dance, as well as Dance Ink. He can also be seen in Sally Sommer's documentary Check Your Body At The Door. Anyone who has watched this movie knows what waking is.

Today, waking is used as a base for original, original dance shows. They are very spectacular. basis this direction is not the flawless choreography, but the resourcefulness of the dancers who tirelessly improvise. They show individuality and demonstrate the originality of their personality. The dancers are united by one desire - they want the audience to know what waking is. And many people like this style. Some even want to learn how to dance too, and that's great.

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Our fifth waking class has come to an end and it is clear that the end of the #WLDdancing experiment is near. As a reminder, the WeLoveDance team consists of dancing people- we all practiced different styles, at different venues and levels. But one day they came up with an experimental project: to try to learn an unfamiliar style and show by example whether it is possible to succeed in waking, pole dancing, twerk, flamenco or any other direction in eight lessons.

If you follow our diary, you know that waking is based on improvisation, which, in turn, is based on penetrations, postures and an element called “loops” in various variations. Waking is often confused with wog, because both styles appeared in the same country within a couple of decades, and besides, there are poses and penetrations here and there. But, as Lena TT, a teacher at The Dome studio, says, true professionals will never include elements of vog in their performance, just as vogers at balls never use waking loops.

But there is one important similarity - in both vogue and waking, the dancer must be able to improvise. In the lesson, we focus on this - we turn on our favorite music and add hands and hands to the steps in place. Important: during the execution of the “loop”, you can clench your hand into a fist, or you can leave your palm.

“This time we tried to perform a movement where each arm and leg does its own element. It looks cool, but it's almost impossible to do it right away. Probably, this is the difficulty of waking: individually everything is simple, but you need to work on coordination,” says content dancer Alena Bratukhina.

Over time, we add poses to the hands, and after a couple of minutes we connect the hips.

“I started to feel like I was hopeless. At least, I definitely need much more than eight lessons, - our usually cheerful editor Olga Lifintseva sadly states. - As soon as Lena showed movement, when different hands perform different elements the mission became impossible. I don't understand: how do style dancers manage to twist their arms so fast? Either mine is too heavy, or it’s clogged shoulders, but in speed I am a clear outsider. ”

Improvisation is not easy for everyone. Especially when Lena demands a solo exit from us.

“The body immediately ceases to obey, and then the most important thing is to distract yourself from the thought that everyone is looking at you now, and concentrate on the music and on yourself, try to just dance with drive, as the rhythm asks for it. This moment of overcoming myself was especially valuable for me,” says our dance photographer Natasha Murzina.

We also tried to make side penetrations, connecting them with "loops": one hand performs circular motions and the other is spinning. This is a difficult level, but Lena gives it to try, this skill is gained by practice and it requires already developed coordination.

“Working on coordination, especially in waking, is a complex and long process. A lot of time should be devoted to the basics of style, because. a very wide variety of elements. It is much easier to coordinate yourself when you are confident in at least half of the movements. But the desire to overcome oneself helps to quickly understand and do what seems very difficult for you, - says dance parthership manager Zhenya Medvedeva. – It is also important for waking to practice public improvisation, for example, in front of your group. The first and second times the knees are shaking and the result is ridiculous, but by the fifth attempt you feel more confident.

At the end of the lesson, Lena told us about "Soul Train" - an American TV show, thanks to which the world got to know dancers and new styles. It was she who gave the name to a separate tradition "Soul Train Line": dancers stand in two lines, forming free space, and everyone has to go in the dance from the beginning of the path to the end.

We try the tradition on ourselves. First, be sure to catch the rhythm and do something simple. Terribly embarrassed, we still went out. And it added, albeit a little, but confidence.

“Improvising is not a problem for me, but only when you have a base of movements and you dance them confidently. The same task for me became a real test, thinking about what movement to make next, trying to remember what we generally learned, I absolutely stopped hearing music, - says Olga. - After the passage, each received valuable advice from Lena. I got this: “Start simple, take what works best from this style.”

So our fifth lesson passed and only three remained ahead. And we still have to learn how to improvise like a goddess and look no worse on the outside. We hope that the images that we plan to try on in the final will help us open up more.

How long do you think it would take you to master a new style, even if not waking, and how quickly you would improvise? Share with us in the comments.

The Waacking style is a performance, a performance, a dialogue with the audience, a show!

Waacking (from "waack" - to wave arms) is an accurate fast technique, clear lines, combined with a free body, mannered podium gait (one way walking) and artistic game. Hand movements play a very important role in Waacking.

Waacking is a style that originated in gay nightclubs in the late 60s of the XX century. Many believe that Waacking is part of the House culture, but this opinion is erroneous, since initially waacking was danced to the music of Disco and Funk.

At first, Waacking was predominantly an African-American and Hispanic culture. Dancer Lamont Peterson was one of the first dancers in Los Angeles in the early 70s to use fast hand movements in dance. Also among famous dancers The first to use brushes and sharp arm swings in their freestyle to disco music include Mickey Lord, Tyrone Proctor and Blinky.

Many people mistakenly believe that Waacking evolved from the Locking style, because some of the movements are really very similar, but despite this similarity, they are two absolutely different style. appearance Waacking style promoted by the gay community, as opposed to locking.

Another name for this style - Punkin, from punk - so sarcastically in revenge, the lockers called gays, who in their own way tried to copy them. There was no confrontation and rivalry between them - it was an exchange, some learned and took something from others, and after a while, many locking teachers gradually began to teach Punkin lessons, such as Angel, Anna Sanchez Lollipop and Shabbadoo.

Most of us modern dances they are only seen on TV, and often we are simply surprised - how you can make such movements and build amazing poses. And the names of these dances are no less exotic and say little to an uninitiated person. For example, waking dance style - who knows what it is? But this is a very common way to dance just for health. Now we will open a few secrets - and you will find out why the waking style is very actively conquering the world, and now waking training is already present in almost every major city!

Waking is known by another name - punking, but in fact it is a variation of another style - locking. But first things first!

Somewhere in the 70s of the last century, a new direction in dance appeared - locking (originally campbellocking - on behalf of the founder Don Campbell, who invented this style). His peculiarity was in the specific sequence of dance steps: a series of very energetic movements, which are interrupted by a sharp fading for a few seconds. They borrowed this idea from famous actress Greta Garbo - her trick was to simply stop in some kind of theatrical pose in the middle of a movement or a conversation and maintain an intriguing pause for a couple of seconds. It was on this basis that the stylized locking dance was invented. To increase the attraction of the public, the founder came up with a very original outfit: shorts with suspenders, bright silk shirts with huge collars, flowered butterflies, striped leggings and a signature feature - white gloves.

At the same time, informal movements of homosexuals were developing very actively in Europe. And he impressed them with this style, but in order to distinguish themselves, they came up with their own punkin with special options for hand movements and funk music. In the 80s, funk was replaced by disco, and then house, which still dominates today. And to the classic manifestations of locking, free jazz movements were added, then hip-hop. Therefore, waking training has a complex nature, and today houseists, hip-hopers, freestylers and even blues dancers attribute this dance trend to themselves.

Ultimately, waking spun off from the originals and turned into a kind of fashionable feature for advanced young people. And thanks to the intensity of movements - already in a fashionable dance trend with elements of fitness, which has good prospects in training for weight loss. Knowing the origin of waking, one can clearly distinguish what is the difference between vogue and waking, although they were created at about the same time (although vogue is more than years old). In short, the difference is that waking is a copy of the individual manners of movement of movie stars, and vogue is a direction based on the smooth movements of catwalk models (from the name of the French fashion magazine Voque). The authorship of the vogue style belongs to the dancer Willy Nina (starred in the film "Paris Is Burning"). The main quality of this dance is regularity, while waking training is based on rather sharp and energetic movements, but with very effective swings of the arms with an almost relaxed lower body - from English word wack, which means "to wave your hands." In vogue, the lower part of the body moves more, and the torso is inactive with an almost complete static neck and head.

Where to learn waking dance?

Where and how to learn to dance waking is a fairly popular question, but there are few answers to it. In large cities with a population of over a million, waking lessons for beginners and experienced dancers are taught in several trendy clubs. At the same time, waking lessons are a rather expensive hobby and no one is taken there from the street. Here the special conditions of participation in subcultures affect. But! Nobody has canceled waking video lessons that can be easily found on the internet. And who likes this eccentric, bright and expressive dance - the video lesson below will help you learn the basics. And now we will briefly describe the features of these activities and what kind of music is best to use.

Basic movements

Since the whole dance is based on the fixation of effective poses, the main movements are sharp with the formation of a pause when a successful position is taken. Therefore, waking training is necessarily carried out in front of a mirror.

The main movements are called waack (swing), that is, for each dance step, you need to throw out your hands. Titles basic movements have names associated with associations with the movements of wild animals, cars and poses:

• wiggle;
• moving right/left without changing position;
• ejection of hands;
• embrace;
• penetrations;
• loops (rolls) with tense hands;
• levers;
• sharp blows.

By the way, in waking it is not customary to make traditional stage performances. In this style, eye contact is one of the most important components. Therefore, dance battles are most often held when two dancers (or groups), looking at each other, beat sounding music. Many consider waking less of a staged dance than an improvisation based on basic movements. This is its main advantage and the reason for its growing popularity.

In addition to beautiful gestures, facial expressions are also very important in waking, which must be worked out in class in front of a mirror.

According to those who have attended trial wacking classes, this is not such an easy thing. At first, the hands get tired after a few training repetitions, and only after regular training with home repetitions is it possible to enter the desired rhythm. As a result, wacking workouts help to improve the figure, tighten muscles, and get rid of body fat. Posture and gait also change.

The waking dance video we offer will help you visually appreciate this extraordinary movement and learn its basics on your own.

Any dance studio offers to learn different dance directions. They offer such an option as Waking dance. The name is unusual, many do not even realize that Waking is a dance style. Let's deal with this dance direction, watch the video, find out the origin of the dance.

A bit of history

It is difficult to say exactly about the origin of Waking. But, what energetic dance was born in North America it can be argued.

The origin of Waking dance style has several versions:

• one version of the origin claims that everything came from gays imitating the mannered movements of eminent actresses. Moreover, they imitated the actresses of the twentieth century, who played the role of dancers;
• the first dancers literally lived in the images that they tried to convey to the audience;
• the direction developed, slowly began to take some tricks from Locking. There was no conflict between the two dance styles, but many have renamed the Waking style to Punking;
• both styles took a bit of dance moves from each other.

Initially, the music, under which dynamic movements were performed, was in the style of disco and funk. Later, their place went to house, and this music still prevails.

Movement elements

To make it clearer, the main elements of Waking can be described as follows. This is an imitation of the model's gait on the tongue, their mannered postures. The model, as it were, plays with the viewer, lures him with hand movements, head tilt. She walks with a special gait, then stops abruptly, freezes, looking directly at the audience. Watch the Waking dance in the video below. You will see how much the dancers have in common with the models.

Dance is now present on every show program. This is clear. The dance movements are eccentric, sharp and at the same time bewitching.

From Locking, the Waking dance took elements such as:

• measured swings;
• sharp ejections of hands in a different direction;
• acceleration and deceleration;
• fixation in place.

Now the main dance element can be called measured. The speed between the execution of different movements remains unchanged, as during the origin. This is the passage back and forth, imitation of models, various hand movements. During fixation, there is a similarity with model poses.

Stylization

As for the origin of the stylized Waking, here we can say about different musical accompaniment. From the very beginning it was funk, then disco dominated for a while.

Stylized Waking today is house music.

This change is explained musical styles simply. There are dancers from New York, there are from Los Angeles, the city where it all began. In the first case, the main elements are assigned to the hands with outbursts, in the second case, the emphasis is on jumping with outbursts. It is clear that the music in the performance of these elements will be different.

Today people dance in this direction to attract attention. This is real spectacular show looks great on its own and as backup dancers with famous singers.

Today dance direction has no specific sexual orientation. It is danced by young boys and girls, regardless of their sexual affiliation. Watch the video of Waking and feel how the energetic movements of the dancers are captured.

famous dancers

Speaking about the origin of Waking, one cannot help but talk about the dancers who became famous in this particular direction.

First of all, it is Shabbad (Shabba Doo). A dancer always striving to be the best in all directions, mixing style with Locking.

Turone Proctor - This dancer was an intermediary between the followers of the direction in New York and Los Angeles. Now the dancer teaches, despite a severe hip injury.

Archie Burnett, who danced in New York clubs for over thirty years. He still looks great today, you can never say that an underground dancer has lived for more than half a century. He is known for photographs for dance magazines, starred in a documentary.

And for its origin, the Waking dance has to thank Willi Ninja. The actor performed at the time of the highest popularity of this direction. He even taught dance elements to models.

Popularity is growing

If initially, by origin, the dance was considered an invention of gays, had a narrow direction, but now it is becoming more and more in demand.

The basic elements of the dance remain the same as at the time of origin:

• model, slightly swaying gait on the tongue;
• behavior that attracts attention;
• complete relaxation in movements (in fact, this is a very difficult element);
• sharp lunges with arms and legs.

All elements resemble an emotional explosion. This is incontinence and at the same time a smooth, unforeseen fading in place for the viewer. Dancers always look directly into the eyes of the audience.

Even Madonna used the famous dance moves while performing Vogue.

The dance remains popular, despite its long history, thanks to a mixture of styles of music. Really brave, creative, confident people can perform it.