Saturday 2nd May 2024 class with Tony and Anita on visualisations in voleos. Professional dancers use visualisations or imagery in their dancing all the time, to execute movements with the right quality, timing and mechanics if you like. Social dancers can use visualisations too, as a learning tool to learn the mechanics, to improve their timing and to give their dance movements different qualities, feels or dynamics.

Visualisations are not just referring to how it looks like, they refer to the total experience of doing a particular movement, how it feels whilst you are doing it using all your senses, understanding the mechanics but in a sensory grounded way. Also called embodied imagery or ideokinetic imagery. Taking an outside image or video recording and applying that your body and see how it feels doing that movement with that image for you. Referring to the body-mind connection that can be very powerful also used for example in meditation, yoga and mindfulness.

Class on visualisations in voleos

We choose voleos as they have a clear ‘whip’ like quality, with a clear timing from slow to sudden uptempo reversal of direction. Another image that is often used in dancing voleos is a wind up and a quick release unwinding. Using/ thinking these images whilst dancing them will improve your movements.

When learning a dance movement most people will go through several phases, first phase could be learning the mechanics; where does what body part go? Once that has been learnt and done most dancers will correct the timing and the size, how long before the release happens in the voleo for example. Then a third layer can be explored, how to perform the voleo in different ways? Here using visualisations or imagery is very useful.

Is it still a voleo danced continuously and slowly? How big or how small can you make them? How gentle or how slow before it is not a voleo anymore? Or the other extreme how much force is too much? And how fast is too fast? You could practice matching different types of voleos to different types of music to match ‘the mood or feel’ of it.

On Saturday we will explore these questions and encourage you to use imagery whilst you are dancing and also to start exploring your own feelings and images that come up.

Private tuition available 

There are slots of an hour before or after this Saturday event for private tuition suitable for couples. If you are interested in booking a private class please ring Tony Lane on 02075383852.