Ryan Martinsen

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Dance Tip #42: Watch Yourself Dance

If you dance a lot, I highly suggest recording yourself and watching the videos. You can learn a lot from watching yourself. I’ve been aware of this for a long time, but I rarely put forth the effort to record myself. This past Friday though I was lucky enough to have someone else do the recording. So here is a video of myself dancing with the wonderful Karen:

NOTE: This video was originally an embed from myspace. I haven’t been able to find the video to upload elsewhere. I will re-add it to this post if I ever find it again. :(

Watch yourself, and learn. This, of course, not only applies to dancing, but to pretty much everything. Take a step back and look at your work. One of my favorite things about being a programmer and having other programmer friends is that we get to show off to each other what we’ve done (well, we could show it off to other people, but non-programmers just don’t get excited over things like “check out this sweet code, I reduced 20 lines of code to just 3 and it runs way faster now!”). Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged at what you are not. Look at your accomplishments and then pick one thing to work on and then when you’ve done that, go tell somebody about it!

P.S. Don’t bother looking for the other 41 dance tips on here. I don’t think I’ve posted any others. I just figured #42 sounded better than #1. Also, 42 is the answer to everything.

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Posted by Swing Dance, Lindy Hop, Dance, Tips

Comments

  1. Beth Very entertaining. You guys should smile more - or maybe that is like the Tango where you aren’t supposed to smile? ;)
  2. Ryan You’re right, we should smile more. I forget to tell my face that I’m happy. I gotta work on that, thanks.
  3. Sammi Hey Ryan! You are so talented! I agree with the smiling and I would also throw in a few spirit fingers or jazz hands. :) j/k Great to talk to you again lately!
  4. Beth I’m just giving you a hard time. I’ve seen you smile when dancing before and anyone who knows you at all, knows how much you love it!
  5. Ryan But I should still tell my face more often while I’m dancing! :)
  6. Ryan Jazz Hands!
  7. Julian Just dropped in to see what’s new - always makes me smile to see people enjoying their dancing. One day I’ll get back to it myself if I can find a babysitter for the family.
  8. Shea_Byram I got your blog through your sister, kerflop, (through a link). I watched your dancing. You are very talented! It made me smile just watching it :)
  9. Ryan Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
  10. justin and you look way better than i did when i taped myself dancing with karen…
  11. Amberlynn

    This is definitely good advice, and has always been one of my favorite ways of improving. Once you can watch tape of yourself without cringing, you know you’ve made it past the beginner stage. :) I plan on having plenty of playback-enable cameras at our upcoming Practica here in PDX.

    Thanks for sharing!

  12. Karen I was tired… i mean it was the end of the night. That’s why I’m not smiling. I remember Ryan begging me to record another time, because he was tired. So in our defense it was the end of the night… I’m usually good about smiling, Ryan needs work, but when he catches the person’s eyes, that he’s dancing with, he’ll smile. So he’s good on that one. We should record again and compare and contrast. How does that sound?!