2.2 Week 2

This week for genius hour, Kyra and I have been practicing the Collegiate Shag. This dance is similar to the Charleston that we did in week one. Both dances originate from the 1920's-1930's. They are uptempo swing dances that go with pre-swing jazz music.

This week, Kyra and I practiced on Monday and Wednesday knowing that she would be gone on Thursday for our genius hour. The Shag we are learning is very quick with the step pattern slow slow quick quick. We have improvised our version of the dance from the on we watched and learned from. We aren't as good as the people in the video so we changed it up a little bit to make it easier to understand and figure out. YouTube has been very helpful in finding videos that will teach us the basics of every dance that we want to learn. On Wednesday, we had Cameron come into the West Multi Purpose Room where we practice during first period and he filmed us. We have filmed our first two dances on Kyra's phone so hopefully she will upload them so you can see our progress. We are looking forward to next week and starting another dance. I believe we are going to be learning the jitterbug next so wish us luck.

2.1 Genius Hour

The past week of Kyra's and my genius hour has been successful. We have learned the steps to the Charleston. The steps to the dance are not very hard as you step with your left foot forward then you move your right foot forward and tap it in front of your left foot. You then step back with your right foot and move your right foot backwards and tap it behind your right foot. When you are stepping you are going to be swinging your arms side to side. You are also supposed to be twisting on the balls of your feet when you step moving your heel in and out.

The steps were easy to learn as they were repetitive and just stepping forward and backward with tapping of our feet. We struggled with learning how to twist on the balls of our feet which means moving our heels in and out. We couldn't figure out how to twist and  that was difficult so we spent most of our time focusing on the steps individually and then coming together and practicing the steps while dancing together. We need to learn how to twist our legs and feet together, as we struggled learning that part. I am hoping we will  be able to succeed in learning this dance.

2.0 Shark Tank

Well classmates, its time to begin our genius hours again. For this genius hour, I am going to be dancing with Kyra Oakland. We plan on learning three dances for this project and they are: Swing dance, Jitterbug, and Ballroom. We are hoping to be able to learn the dances in two weeks and then, the last two weeks we will go back to our favorite dance and expand off of it.

Kyra and I have already faced difficulties in this process, with that being we are both very busy people. Our schedules have caused issues, as we were going to try and dance in class for the first week but I have a basketball game in Sidney. These challenges are going to be hard but I believe Kyra and I can make this work.

For us to be able to learn how to dance, we are going to use resources such as YouTube, our classmates or peers, and then maybe even TV shows like Dancing with the Stars and World of Dance. When we presented our shark tank pitch, I believe it went really well. We explained everything that we are going to do and even gave our schedule on what dances we plan to do. It was nice to have a partner to help with the pitch. I am really looking forward to begin dancing.