Today I’ll guide you through activity for finding roundness in the arms.

Day 7

Brazos redondos,

Round arms,

we hear Mercedes say in class.

Ricardo says it all of the time too, redondo. 'You’ll like her, she’s muy redondo,' he’s said to me so many times referring to various dancers. Round, he means, by the shapes created when someone is dancing. It doesn't matter what shape your body is, you can create roundness.

For today’s challenge we’ll focus on finding roundness in the arms.

How can we do this?

  • By imagining we’re holding a giant beach ball when our arms are out in front of us
  • By painting circles with our arms
  • By creating soft angles with our arms
  • By keeping air in between our arms and the sides of our bodies

In today’s activity we’ll monitor ourselves by looking in the mirror to find round shapes and movements. 

It’s similar to the flamenco freeze tag activity we did during the Dancing With David Challenge because we’ll be stopping mid-move and analyzing our positions.

Ready?

An Activity for Finding Roundness in the Arms

  1. Choose a move, a combination or an exercise to work with. (It can be the same one you’ve been using or something new.)
  2. Get in your beginning position. Look at your arms in the mirror, and notice the shapes. What could you do to make them rounder? Maybe you need to straighten your elbows a bit, or bend them more. Perhaps you need to move your arms further away from the body. Experiment until you find nice round shapes.
  3. Do the same analysis in another position that the combination puts you in. 
  4. Do this for as many positions as you want. 
  5. Once you’re done breaking your move(s) apart in this way, dance the whole move or combination paying attention to maintain the roundness you found. (If you’re struggling with this, no problem, simply slow it down.)

How Did It Go?

How did it go for you? Were you able to find greater roundness in your arms? What helped you do this? Did you discover any tricks? Let me know in the comments below.

By the way, Carmen had some great insights about going slowly and dancing flamenco with others. You can read her comment here. 

Only three more days to go! See you tomorrow for a new activity.

Want to Study With Mercedes For Real? 

Join me in for a private workshop with her in Jerez this fall (along with all kinds of other great activities.) Find out more here.

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