Practice Time 2: How to practice improvisation?
Everything we do in swing and social dances unless it’s a performance or choreography, is an improvisation. We are going to look closer now on how to actually practice it. There is an ocean of things to practice. Again, limit yourself. Don’t practice everything. Everything means you won't really improve significantly in any element of your…
Practice Time 1: General tips
My students very often are interested if I practice by myself: what, how and how often. I am a solo dancer, that’s my life, love and profession. Oh yes, I practice. It’s the best way to discover things and improve. I practice physically and mentally. As often as I can. Normally I work on the weekends: jazz festivals, swing dance festivals, dance…
Jazz Improvisation: Musicality Training
This Jazz Improvisation is the result of 2h musicality training with my husband and musician/ composer – David Duffy and Oscar Peterson 🙂 David was directing my dance by guiding through the music. Teaching me how to listen to music, what to hear and what to accentuate in my dance. A true musicality training! One of the advices that David…
Dance shoes!
Many people ask me about my dance shoes. Which brand I use, where I buy them… I will tell you my secret. I design my dance shoes myself and have them made in a theatre shoe workshop in St – Petersburg. When I started dancing Swing & Charleston in 2011, I was trying to find the most comfortable, beautiful and functional dance shoes,…
Ksenia's Secrets of the Charleston 20s
Are you ready to push your Charleston dance to the next level? In this extensive videos series I will be breaking down techniques and steps from the legendary Charleston dance of the 1920’s. Each chapter tackles one Charleston topic, and will be showing different patterns, variations and styling within that topic. Here’s an example…