Try that dance move that you think you can’t do

I was on a walk, for my #walkingforhealth blog, while getting inspiration for my next novel when I heard this song play through my headphones. 

I instantly smiled, because I did a fake tap dance to this song and performed it with my dance teacher during a Rockhampton tour. 

When I first saw my dance teacher show me the dance moves, I responded with, “I can’t dance tap.” My dance background includes ballet, contemporary, jazz and hip hop. But tap? Nope.

She said, “It’s okay Mel. It is fake tap.” 

I really didn’t even think I could pull off the moves because I had never danced tap in my life and the concept of tapping was so foreign to me, I never thought I would dance it.

For me, if you could dance tap, you were very talented and energetic. I had seen tap classes and you have to continually move your whole body to showcase your feet. Some people may think the body is not doing any movement but it is shaking up and bouncing with every foot movement. 

But after my dance teacher said, “It’s ok, it is fake tap.” It was a very similar thought I told one dancer showcasing the splits. I told her, you can fake the splits and I showed her how. When she performed and ended the performance with the splits, people believed it. And she glanced up to me to say, “I guess fake can look real.” 

But it’s not “dancing fake” at all. It’s just dancing! It’s completely removing the mindset that you can’t do something because you may have never done it before or maybe not be flexible enough. It’s changing your mindset that actually, if you change how you think it should be done and maybe ‘cheat’ or do it your way, your style and your dance movement that may be it will just work out. 

Also maybe it will even look cooler than how it should technically look. My dance teacher and I, danced with no tap shoes. Maybe jazz shoes in the end. And we faked tapped danced to the entire song and it was fun and energetic and I even felt like, maybe, I could tap! 

And then while walking, I opened my mobile and watched this film clip (the YouTube video above) and laughed. Of course they had one of my favourite actors dancing (awesomely I might add), to this song. 

It even made me wonder if they hired a body double to do some of the dance moves. But I reckon, he could dance them. However, after re-watching this film clip, I dare say he didn’t dance the entire dance. Maybe it was digitally edited or maybe he was on wire or maybe a dance double. It doesn’t matter. 

All that matters is you remove your belief that you can’t dance a certain dance move or dance style and you just try it and do it your way, proving to yourself that you can. 

#dance #dancestyles .@#danceconfidence 

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