if they just start to understand what they do in between those moments those things can help drastically I mean dramatically improve how you control and shape your dance once you train your eye you see it you can't unsee it I can teach you to dance but we can't make you a dancer to make yourself a dancer you have to this episode has a very special personal meaning to me because today I have a podcast guest who is not only a dance Legend although that alone would be enough he has also been my dance Mentor for a few years now and even more importantly a very dear friend I don't know anyone who possesses more comprehensive profound and deep knowledge about dance than he does of course I'm talking about Robert Rice get this he's a champion in 11 different dance styles a West Coast Swing Hall of Fame member a seven-time U.S open Champion a successful Broadway and film choreographer among others he choreographed for example for Taylor Swift but most importantly for us and for this podcast he has trained many champions himself and he led them to many Champion titles in today's interview you will learn his perspective on many interesting dance topics are you excited as myself for this interview you should be and you should keep your notepad also on your side because you will find some gold in this episode have fun listening and or watching let's talk about quality of Dance Movement when you see somebody that you need to either judge or work with him or for whatever reason you need to say is he or she a good dancer or not do you have some like a hard criterias how much time do we have um so there's a couple things I do quickly like if I'm analyzing uh somebody with scan yeah and analyzing somebody as a dancer so the first thing I do it can change a little bit depending on the dance that I'm watching but generally speaking I look immediately to their spine I look immediately to how somebody is free in their mobility and their movement from their spine and then from there normally I can ascertain what their issues are their shoes are their head weight their issues are their hip motion their issues are their knees their issues are you know how they take a step like where where their shoulders are like I can lots of times have people move and walk like in a lesson and I'll say what did you do to your left hip or your right knee or whatever and they go how did you know I had an injury and I go well because these things happen in the spine and seeing the spinal movement or lack of spinal movement or how the spine's moving uh not always but lots of times can tell me what's going on in that dancer and why that dancer looks good or doesn't look good if the body has a has a negative tension going on if the body is is uh locked up in any way then some things something's making the body fear it's it's either just coming from a place of like they're afraid because they're there there's a there's a emotional insecurity about their dance or there's something physically going going wrong with their dance if somebody's something's physically going wrong with their dance we can see that because the limbic system which is the lizard brain which kicks into fight or flight right will lock up certain muscles but also the emotional side of things if somebody's just nervous performing dancing in front of people whatever it might be can also lock up muscles and sometimes it's different sets of muscles right so if somebody tends to be nervous or emotional it tends to be a little higher it tends to be a little bit more in the shoulders a little bit more in the neck if somebody's a little bit more fearful of like falling or whatever that actually can tend to be more in the low back as it locks up so yeah so the first thing I do is I look at their spine and I go how are they moving right are they free or does their body feel safe in what they're doing and I can tell that from their spine if their body feels safe in what they're doing then I kind of ascertain their needs from there and then well well then then it's really about you know I have the move and then I I find out you know what they understand or don't understand about movement and I can you know either by talking to them or if I'm watching them dance so I might go well God that person has a really really loose spine but they're not muscularly connected right so then it can tell tend to be a little too loose right can tend to be like are there Parts talking to each other are there legs talking to their hips talking to their exactly is there muscular chain working which is you know from one side to the other side or the muscular sling like is is that working in unison right you hear me in Royston method all the time say mindful muscular movement so are they mindful of their body's attachment and the muscular Journey that's moving the joints as they move through space so I have the term for that inspired or also by you through all this what you just said it's I call it dance Meridian it's the Journey of muscle activity right through the body in order to create some shape right so yeah right we have to remember that our muscles move our joints and our joints create the different lines and shapes right like they straighten the leg they bend a leg they they break at the hip they straighten up at the hip like all of that stuff and so the the Journey of how the muscles move our joints to create our shapes should all feel very purposeful and attached you know what I mean and it's and once you train your eye to to see it you can't unsee it and what is the most common thing what you see that people should kind of let's say correct or be aware of in like probably on professional level will be would be something different than on hobby level but is this something that you like see correcting all the time or pointing to to one specific yeah I mean I would say that if if you were to ask anybody like uh you know what's Robert's pet peeve we would say like what's the thing is I don't think people spend enough time truly understanding how to literally walk forward backward and sideways what does that mean you know uh at The Institute for human machine cognition when I work there one of the scientists there said walking is really about how I control my center of mass velocity which sounds like a big heady like you know how do I control my center of gravity as it moves from one foot to the next right how am I controlling we would say weight change yeah weight change like reduced to this exactly like like so how do I take a step how do I take a step forward how do I take what happens in between yeah and like so I I find myself even with top Pros going back to can we just talk about how you walk backward like and so in the beginning stages If people really really learned how to mindfully move in all directions right and and then understanding you know things like percentage of weight to the strike of a beat so when I strike a beat how much weight is there you know what I mean like if they just start to understand how their body moves forward side and back what they do in between those moments and then the percentage of weight that exists in each one of those moments right to the foot that you're going those things can help drastically I mean dramatically it can help dramatically improve how you control and shape your dance so the management of the yeah like people don't mindfully learn how to just manage their body forward back inside before they start getting into steps and I if I can't perfectly manage my weight in all directions how am I going to ever communicate to somebody else as a leader as a follower right you know what I want from that situation so that's a big pet peeve of mine and then secondarily understanding that so the floor is usable to me the floor is usable to me because of resistance right because of gravity and friction so the Earth pulls me down I push myself up so I'm resisting gravity that's how I move my body right that's how I push myself on this planet right if I was up in space and my leg eggs in a piece of wood it's not really usable to me there's no gravity keeping me to it right but here on Earth because of gravity because gravity is constant the floor is usable to me so but then we have this plane of connection between the two of us once we're touching and that's only usable to me if we if we understand resistance and we understand what it means to create opposition within connection the gravity is constant we don't control gravity but connection between me and my partner where where we're touching the amount of tension within our connection that that's a controllable for me and a controllable for my partner so we can tend to do that wrong right and so uh from an amateur level they gotta learn how to walk right from a pro level not only do you have to learn how to walk but you have to learn how to create that sense of a usable plane a usable surface just like the ground is usable to me I have to create a usable surface between our connection and I I feel like that's mismanaged and that Pros don't take the time to understand how to create a usable platform between the two of us right one of the things well one of the the thing that I learned or more I would say were pointed in this direction by you because of your teaching is what you just said usage of the floor and now I cannot unsee it and I'm really trying to find exceptions of that like Rule and I still cannot and I'm challenging everybody all my colleagues when we talk well find me a move where you don't need the floor to do it like properly it works without the usage of the flow it works without the push but it doesn't feel as good as when you do it like mindfully from the floor where the this I just did this dance Meridian right happens what I call right I was working with a couple and um we were talking about moving from the upper body and I said well every movement you do from the upper body should come from the floor like even what looks like a body wave you know still comes and what's interesting is even as we're sitting I did this with somebody recently and you and I are both sitting so I can't use my feet right now what's really based is my butt in the chair right and so if I were to just body roll in place pushing down down in my butt right pushing down to each cheek like moves me if I go don't do that and do that without using the chair at all it feels very Hollow because it feels really shallow so I had somebody standing and I was like try to body roll without pushing in the floor first and they were like well yeah of course I push in the floor but it's really coming from I go no no think about it so I made them go in slow motion they were like oh my God it really does I really push from the floor where my body roll I go of course you do because you're a professional dancer and they're a very very talented person the illusion of always you don't even know something full but maybe we've been no no we've been you you use the floor from birth right gravity exists in your body constantly 24 hours a day seven days a week your entire life unless you're an astronaut gravity exists right in in your life so like you don't even realize uh how much you push on the floor to do any movement that you do right so when people are like oh it comes from your chest it comes from your shoulders no it doesn't comes from the floor right that's where it comes from yes and radiates up through the body yes visually I might see it in the chest and I might see it in the head and I might see it in the shoulder if I told you to stand there and do everything in your power not to use your feet and then wave and move your body you would look bad it would look bad right the first thing what you said is the spine free nests like this yeah so you make the full circle actually the floor connection you're you using your feet and pushing yourself if I'm not using the floor effectively my spine is locked up so I go to the spine because I can see what's going on and then I either go down or out either go down to the legs and the feet or I go out to the arms from the uh or to the head so I look to the spine usually from the spine I go down right and I see what's going on in the feet you know so we have in the Franklin method Eric Franklin talks about the naked spine I use that all the time so the naked spine is the lumbar right and the cervical area so your neck basically and your lower back and if we think about our neck and our lower back they don't have any other they don't have any other skeletal surface uh helping to support it so the middle of my spine the thoracic area has my rib cage right attached to it which helps support it and um the sacral or your tailbone that that well that leverages up or wedges up against your pelvis so that that has other structural support so the lumbar gets to twist and move it's got It's got no other skeleton stops it from doing that and same thing with the neck right the cervical area which is why when you get back injuries usually it's your neck or your low back that gets hurt because it has no other support other than the muscular soft tissue so the reason why we have that is for Mobility right for rotation it's the thing that makes us Propel ourselves very efficiently and move through space it's how we can stay bipedal and stay balanced so the second the lumbar or the serve cervical area the the neck or the lower back aren't free something's going on right because your body has locked up those muscles that are there to protect the back from injury my other coach Tom Slater used to call like the middle of the chest your awareness Center and what he meant is that as the spine moves like it's how people become aware of dance and so like he and Franklin method go very very hand in hand like I kind of put those pieces together like oh wow Eric talks about the limbic system you know freezing up the back and Tom talks about oh we have to make sure our awareness centers were supposed to be and they're really saying the same thing if you're using the floor wrong and your leg wrong if your if your brain thinks it's falling it's going to lock up your spine exactly so like I call it The Bodyguard movement there is like maybe a shot everybody like that happens to your spine 100 that's great it's a great example but it's like protected but the Mr President cannot move that is 100 yes that is absolutely what happens to the lower back when you don't take a proper step and I always say that like the floor fuels my power so my power really exists in my hips you like in martial arts and unboxing and everything they talk about like the powers and the hips whatever so but the but the power in my hips is fueled power provided from the floor so as I push up from the floor into the hips that's what provides me with power and provides my power with fuel I should say so the gas that that that drives the power that lives in my hips really comes from the floor and people just don't use it effectively they don't they don't when they don't know to and then they've been taught wrong you know right and there is this everyday movement where we're not we're we're using the floor passively most of the time and falling with our head forward and then using the feet instead of the other way around because it's more effective but still an efficient but not efficient if you need power and control Right Moving the other person we tend to think we tend to think that dancing is exactly like walking but we don't walk the way we would dance of course right so dance teachers we do say it it's normal it's like walking but it's yeah it's like walking it's like walking and then not right no so it's like should I learn how to walk so I'm balanced yes but do I have to engage do I have to be mindful of of the muscles of my forward swinging step when I walk no should I be when I'm dancing yes and can I say there was a Grand Canyon in between right exactly 100 100 you mentioned in the lesson today the four criterias for Jack and Jill the four things the four things I see in a song right right so yeah so you're right so one is we want to see song specific you know and when it comes to anything non-choreographed right so if I'm watching couples dance I watch a lot of salsa on Instagram I watch a lot of Bachata on Instagram like uh and of course West Coast Swing and hustle and in other dances and if it doesn't look like the dancers are attached to the song itself it's it's there's something missing for me now you can dance to the metronome the kind of set Rhythm but there's things that not all music sounds exactly the same if I play Four salsa songs for you or four Bachata songs or four whisko swing songs right there's gonna be different things in each one of those songs that make those songs sound like those songs the things that make that that that artist wants to put in the music that puts their stamp on that song so I want to see that in your body so I call that song specific moment what's the thing that's specific to that song that makes that song sound like that song within whatever basic Rhythm it is so if it's a Cha-Cha Rhythm it's gonna have that Cha-Cha boom boom Cha-Cha boom boom right so as as that's happening is that okay fine so that's the set cha-char with my no this is a Cha-Cha song what else did this artist did Shakira or whoever you know what did they layer on top of all of that that makes that song sound like their song and how can I feel and see that in your dance right so that's a song specific moment then I want to see whatever the foundation of the dances you're doing so I need to see Cha-Cha on top of seeing the song specific stuff any story right I need to know what the I need the historic rhythm of what's going on and then because it's specifically right because because what is what is Shakira doing in her song right like Shakira's putting the basic there's a metronome right there's a metronomic beat right so so that's the first thing that you see right layer and then she has the boom boom boom boom boom boom right then on top of that you know if it's Camille or whatever like uh okay that's something that's specific to that's not in every Cha-Cha but that's but that but I'm gonna put that in Havana does that make sense so then I go how do I as a dancer hit that how do I hit that right on top of still doing the I want the I want the beat but I also want the Cha-Cha boom boom so like they gave me all the layers so in the song so how do I portray all of those layers in my dance so I find the song specific moment I deliver the basics of whatever the dance is that I'm doing if there are words I will try to Accent the words as best I can right meaning of the words well so there's two ways that you can hit lyrics I can hit them literally or lyrically so literally I'm actually like acting out what this what it says so it says she's a good girl and I point to her I'm like lit I'm being literal right but if a song goes she's a good girl and that's and I just hit she's a good and I slide on girl we don't care that the word is girl but I'm hitting I'm healing I'm hitting the melody I'm hitting the feel of the word right so I can hit it lyrically where I'm just moving to the lyric or I can hit it literally like either or right I don't much care and and I think that there's a right combination of both so song specific the basic of the dance that I'm trying to do if there are lyrics through your body let me see the importance of the lyrics right and then I want to see the basic phrase changing the basic phrase changing is going to be some sort of acceleration or deceleration some sort of level change that happens as uh as the song changes phrase so those four things right understanding what's what's specific about that song what's the basis of the dance that I'm doing what are the lyrics and why are they important to the singer like and how do I show that in my dance and making sure that I layer the phrase changing let's differentiate between hobby dancers and and professionals yeah no what is the one Warriors or hobbyists yeah what is the one thing you would wish for their success they should do more of the hobbyist yeah it's pretty easy let me say this I'm gonna I'm gonna steal a quote from uh Brandi Guild so we were working on the movie love and dancing which is a movie with uh Amy Smart and uh we were teaching Amy and I was the choreographer and I brought um Brandi Gilden and running to benedetta to be my assistant choreographers so every day for like six hours we were teaching Amy Smart how to dance and she didn't know how to do West Coast Swing I said to Amy at one point in time like how much of this or that are you doing at home and she's like kind of I'm not like I'm here for six hours a day when I go home I don't practice anything and Brandy said I can teach you to dance Robert can teach you to dance but we can't make you a dancer to make yourself a dancer you have to put dance into your life every day within your life and once you start to do that you become a dancer because a dancer can't help but put dance into their life throughout their day in their normal life getting a cup of coffee how many times when you're at home are you doing something uh some menial task you're doing the dishes or whatever and you throw a spin in or you do some little silly thing or you do something dance oriented story of my life right exactly right you of course you do and I was like wow that was really really good Brandy because when I think about it I say all the time try to find ways in your daily life to do the things we want you to practice for dance and um so the hobbyist I think the hobbyist has a hard time putting aside you know two hours a day or an hour a day or whatever impossible it's not they're not going to do it they're not they don't have a ballet bar in their house exactly so they're not they're not going to do that so and most of them most of them they take their lesson and then other than social dancing that's it right so but if we could get them if we could get the hobbyist to understand that that sitting and standing in your favorite chair doing the dishes vacuuming the house taking a shower brushing your teeth crawling into bed crawling out of bed right that uh walking to your car getting in your car getting out of your car like all of those things and and way more are all opportunities to mindfully practice how your body moves all of them are dance opportunities every one of them and so then they're not having to find time to put aside to practice their dancing they're practicing dancing through life movement and if you if we could get the hobbyist to understand that they would improve drastically um how they dance how their lessons go and more specifically do you because you're all about mindful muscular movements yes every day and of course while dancing because dancing is so easy it not so many things happen while we dance we don't need to watch about music a partner for the sound the sarcasm the sarcasm reading podcast and the podcast the sarcasm read here and there right that's just terrible um so we do need to bring it on the dance floor and have automated it already before we started dancing um but allow specifically for that do you mean by that like the way you open the door of the car the to really mindfully engage your muscles or you really think that you could attach some like Dance Movement to this uh like to trigger some right micro drills right so where your neighbors are like uh what were you doing with your cardio or like you did a pirouette right exactly into your SUV so so the way you use your muscles right so I think when I say that they're all dance opportunities and dance practice opportunities whether it's a whether it's a uh uh a movement that to the naked eye would still look like a Dance Movement or it's just you being mindful as to how you sit and stand leg wise all of that is practice right so what do what do dance teachers ask you to do they ask you to be mindful and put into the front of your brain how you're moving your body if you're not used to mindfully um controlling your body like controlling how your body moves you know when people say that person's not coordinated most of the time people who aren't coordinated um have never done anything in their life where they had to mentally think about an adjustment to normal life right they know how to walk they know how to sit they know how to stand but they've never had to learn a skill other than what they're wired to do so we're born wired to walk we're born wired to stand we're so we're born wired to do those things so but at a very young age if you learned football baseball basketball I mean name it dance uh martial arts like the list goes on and on of any sort of movement modality so if at a very young age you learned anything like that or you were even outside playing a lot and you were just in playgrounds playing dodgeball or any of those things where you had to learn a movement skill outside of walking sitting standing sleeping you know laying down like the things that were kind of built to do so if you've never had to do that before to start to do that as an adult is very difficult right so if you took some of the things that are the illusion of always like walking and then you mindfully put put your brain into going how do I control my walk and do I have the ability to alter my walk while I'm doing can I speed it up can I slow it down can I take bigger steps smaller steps wider steps and more narrow steps you know what can I do and how can I control that in my regular life then when you go to a dance lesson and a teacher asks you to mindfully do something you have your conditions to be able to control your body so sometimes I want it to be Musical on what they're like if you while you're brushing your teeth can kickball change and do you know syncopations and play and dance because you have music playing awesome when you're getting in and out of your car I just want you to be mindful about you know what I lift my leg from my hip and my knee as my foot goes out when I put my foot outside of the door I my heel hits first or I'm flat footed first or wow I didn't realize that I strike the ball on my foot when I whatever that is that you're mindfully moving and you go like oh that's interesting tomorrow I'm gonna try to do this instead and alter that because then we're training our brain you're training your brain to let you drive the car a little bit does that make sense of course yeah so so a yes it'd be great if it was like Dancy stuff with music but even if whether that happens a lot or a little mindfully moving through space as a means of understanding how you can control what your body does will help you learn dance better right and faster and let me guess where the pros is not much different is it no well the only thing about most good good Pros for me bad Pros are just are are just I know bad talented bad Pros bad Pros are and I hate to use the word bad not as good Pros um are usually just uh glorified hobbyists to me right so they so they are missing the same exact thing the hobbyists are missing they don't practice they don't put it into their daily life they don't right and lots of them uh either that or they're natural dancers talented dancers who learned maybe very young who who then become teachers uh most of the time when they took lessons coming up they only took lessons on for their own dance and so if I'm a really talented dancer and I come to and I come to dot o and I go hey like I really want to learn how to dance and I want to become a better dancer and I don't tell you I have any delusions of teaching and maybe I don't want to teach right I just want to become a better dancer what are you going to teach me you're not going to teach me the things I already do well you're not going to teach me why I do the things that I do well you're just going to you're going to fill in the holes of the things that I don't do well you're going to fix the things that don't work so that's how you're going to teach me isn't it so you're going to teach me the step and then you're going to teach me the things that I'm missing so now I'm going to become a teacher years later I become a teacher because I move away from you and I'm out social dancing one night and somebody says they want to learn dance well I'm going to teach them the steps and then I'm going to teach them the things that you taught me that filled in the Gap correct correction and then but I I don't know how to teach and maybe this person doesn't do the other things naturally that I did well I don't know how to break those down and teach them so now I'm just going to guess right I'm going to take an educated guess as to maybe what's going on and chances are I'm going to guess wrong and I would say 99 of the time I'm going to guess wrong because nobody really knows how the body like like unless you've been taught what muscles do what unless you've been you know in a biomechanics class or a physiology class or whatever you don't you don't know the the tendons and the ligaments and the muscles that are all firing and when they fire and to what level to move the body so you're just gonna guess for me when I say bad teachers sometimes bad teachers are amazing dancers but they they didn't go back and like learn how to teach right so they teach from their dancing standpoint right right and most the time what they're teaching is just they were teaching what they were taught and most of what they were taught was to fix their dancing which most of what they were taught had nothing to do with the stuff that they already came to the table possessing right so like you you as dance teachers and as dancers like the top Pros who also happen to be the top who who sometimes are the top teachers as well have taken the time to go back and even learn why what they do well happens so that they can teach that too right but most dance teachers most dance teachers uh the only information they have is information they were missing um but they don't most of the time they don't have the information as to how to get to the point uh where they are if it didn't come natural when we come to Grand Canyon again and I'm Bridging the Gap between the two sides right this is also some some listen I I learned how to step backwards and run backwards through martial arts I started doing martial arts on this nine and then you know football wrestling track and then dancing as a teenager so like running backwards walking backwards moving backwards just was a thing that I learned how to do very very young but nobody like took the time to teach me the biomechanics of it they just did it so as a dance teacher when I was young and I was in my you know 18 19 years old and I'm teaching dance and somebody's telling me you know your Center goes first and then your foot follows and which is all like just not the way it happens but the um so I just taught that even though that wasn't what I did wasn't what I did yeah it wasn't it was yeah it wasn't what I did in sports it wasn't what I did you know and until I learned the science of oh wow like but now I had to seek the science nobody presented it to me I had to go get the science right so um and I was like oh wow that's not what happens oh I didn't I didn't know that like you know we we're not falling backwards and catching ourselves with our feet that's not a thing because I used to say that that was a thing you know so um that we push ourselves where we're going it's crazy right so then um and then but then you look at it and you look at the science and sometimes you go like how did I not but we're just regurgitating what we were taught right and I didn't know I didn't know I was doing it right like I was doing it right well before I taught it the right way yeah so it's okay to admit it and yeah to say Okay I I thought but now I'm 100 learned actually as dance teachers as dance teachers one of the greatest things you can do is be fluid to to change a technique you've been teaching even if you've been teaching it for 10 years to change the technique and say to your students okay listen I have this great new technique I didn't know it now I know it and I I become the Catalyst to to give you all the newest information so if if if students believe that anything new any new science that's out there you're going to go get and bring to them they'll stay with you instead instead what happens is Teachers go like oh my God this goes against everything I've been teaching for 10 years I I have to speak against it right or not teach it or shut up about it because I because I'm so fearful the problem is is there are students are going to find out students are going to find out the truth internet right yes and and and traveling like we now did and they're real right they would eventually they will find out and then when they do and when they do then you lose them as students where you keep them as students if they believe that you become the Catalyst for all the information they need and that you're open-minded to finding the new information that makes them better dancers then they're going to hang with you because they're they're they're hobbyists they're not going to want take the time and energy to go find the new techniques but if you're doing it if you're constantly reanalyzing your science your students will stay with you well on that note we are going to finish this although I could go on and on and you we already have a class we have a flight to catch yes exactly yeah we need to do it I just want to say how much I appreciate you and all you do both of you you and Connie first of all as my friends I love you both very much and I really enjoy our time together um but also I I I so appreciate who you are as a as a lover of dance and a lover of being a dance educator because it really like I love teaching and I can tell you love teaching and I want people to get it and I can tell you what like it really it feeds your soul to to not only learn how to be a better teacher but it feeds your soul to then go run and deliver that knowledge to students and uh so it's it's a it's a magical thing to watch you just you know it's boats so yeah the love and everything each other's Mutual admiration Society probably it's perfect probably thank you so much no problem I love you we need to do it one more time yes more yes okay