Step by Step Tutorial for Beginners. What Can You Dance In?

Gyp­sy dances attract with their incen­di­ary and bril­liance. An extrav­a­gan­za of col­or­ful out­fits, spec­tac­u­lar move­ments of the body and hands, charm­ing smiles will not leave any­one indif­fer­ent. Such dances are filled with cheer­ful­ness and expres­sion. See­ing this charm­ing spec­ta­cle, one wants to take part in it.

For a long time there was an opin­ion that the gyp­sies were from Egypt. How­ev­er, in the mid­dle of the 19th cen­tu­ry, an aca­d­e­mi­cian from Ger­many, August Friedrich Pott, found evi­dence that India is still their home­land. He man­aged to find the ances­tors of the gyp­sies, whom we see in the mod­ern world, in the ter­ri­to­ry of Ancient India.

In those days, a caste called “house” was known. It con­sist­ed of musi­cians and dancers who roamed the north of India. It is worth not­ing that such castes still exist. Gyp­sies began to come to oth­er coun­tries in the 5th cen­tu­ry and this con­tin­ued for 1000 years.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the reflec­tion of cre­ative roots can be observed today. Singing and danc­ing were orig­i­nal­ly out­lets for the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this peo­ple, and then began to turn into a pro­fes­sion. It is note­wor­thy that from a very ear­ly age, kids are already try­ing to dri­ve with their shoul­ders and sing along.

Gyp­sies appeared on the ter­ri­to­ry of Rus­sia in the 18th cen­tu­ry, hav­ing migrat­ed from Poland. Cheer­ful car­a­vans that told for­tunes, trad­ed hors­es, sang and danced, attract­ed from all over the coun­try. Quite often, the peas­ants even let them into their huts for the win­ter to make it more fun. In the 19th cen­tu­ry, the for­ma­tion of famous gyp­sy choirs began, which both Pushkin and Tol­stoy liked. Grad­u­al­ly, the art of the bright nation began to gain pop­u­lar­i­ty among the nobles and mer­chants.

Gyp­sies from camps and cities con­stant­ly kept in touch with each oth­er, which gave devel­op­ment and pre­served the orig­i­nal­i­ty of their work. The best num­bers began to go to the peo­ple, and the move­ments of camp beau­ties began to appear on the stages. In addi­tion, gyp­sy singers and dancers began to adopt what they saw from oth­ers.

It should be recalled that the “gyp­sy girl” dance became famous thanks to Alexan­der Sergee­vich Pushkin, who was inter­est­ed in this peo­ple. Grad­u­al­ly, the gyp­sies began to work not only on the streets, but also in restau­rants, as well as at var­i­ous major hol­i­days. Each event with their par­tic­i­pa­tion was filled with enthu­si­asm and care­less­ness. Over time, in Rus­sia, a wide fes­tiv­i­ty began to be sym­bol­ized with noisy and cheer­ful gyp­sy per­for­mances.

The dance per­formed by bright gyp­sies looks espe­cial­ly charm­ing. It com­bines unusu­al plas­tic­i­ty of hands and com­plex frac­tion­al per­cus­sion. At the same time, women also have time to work with a tam­bourine, a skirt and even a shawl. The dancers move their arms in a very sen­su­al and var­ied way. At times it seems that they are hug­ging some­one, and then, like a blade, cut through the space around them. It is thanks to this that the per­form­ers con­vey all the col­or­ful­ness of emo­tions.

The girl’s skirt is held in one or two hands at once, mak­ing sweep­ing move­ments. Look­ing at this, thoughts about waves invol­un­tar­i­ly come. A spe­cial sequence allows you to lift the skirt due to the cas­cade of frills. Anoth­er fea­ture of the dance is frac­tions, which can be per­formed by both women and men. To under­stand the depth and beau­ty of the gyp­sy dance, you need to get to know it bet­ter.

There were always a lot of gyp­sy dance groups, there was always a lot of com­pe­ti­tion between them. How­ev­er, it had a pos­i­tive effect on the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the artists. In addi­tion to tra­di­tion­al ele­ments, per­form­ers began to intro­duce their own, author’s, based on a spe­cif­ic occa­sion or sit­u­a­tion. Of course, in gen­er­al, the motives and man­ners of per­for­mance remained char­ac­ter­is­tic of the gyp­sies.

Cur­rent­ly, there are sev­er­al types of gyp­sy dances.

• The stage is a whole show. It is char­ac­ter­ized by good chore­og­ra­phy, straight pos­ture and placed hands. The dancers, as a rule, wear wide skirts, which are called “two suns”, and the dancers wear shoes with spe­cial step heels. Dur­ing the dance there may be the­atri­cal­iza­tion.
• The tabor ver­sion is per­formed in a free man­ner, which is also called folk. In this form, there are also expres­sive move­ments of the skirt. The per­for­mance is exclu­sive­ly solo. It turns out that the dancers replace each oth­er in a cer­tain sequence.
• Gyp­sy street dance is based on group impro­vi­sa­tion. It is very impor­tant for him to be in con­stant inter­ac­tion with the audi­ence.

Only a pro­fes­sion­al can give real gyp­sy dance lessons. At home, learn­ing the orig­i­nal per­for­mance will not be easy. But there are cer­tain tech­niques in which every­thing is shown step by step and quite clear­ly. Before jump­ing direct­ly into the study of incen­di­ary ram­page, there are a few impor­tant rules to learn.

• Good pos­ture should be main­tained at all times. Only thanks to a flat back will it be pos­si­ble to effec­tive­ly per­form all move­ments.
• You need to work with your feet like a bal­le­ri­nato get cor­rect and ele­gant move­ments. Here the basic clas­si­cal prin­ci­ple in the form of ever­sion comes in handy. The foot is placed on the floor so that the toe is on the out­side, not inside. How­ev­er, do not be zeal­ous: it is enough if the socks are only slight­ly direct­ed to the sides.
• It is impor­tant to com­bine smooth hand move­ments with frac­tion­al per­cus­sion. This can only be learned after many hours of prac­tice. And they usu­al­ly start with basic move­ments for the legs and arms. Only after they are well worked out, do they move on to var­i­ous vari­a­tions.

In gyp­sy dance, hand move­ments are an oblig­a­tory com­po­nent.. They are the ones that amaze and draw atten­tion to them­selves. It seems that they do not stop at all, all the while twist­ing like snakes and recre­at­ing won­der­ful pat­terns. Some­times it even seems that the dancers have no bones, because their hand move­ments are filled with unprece­dent­ed flex­i­bil­i­ty and plas­tic­i­ty. In each stroke, the joint par­tic­i­pa­tion of the shoul­der joint, hand and all fin­gers is vis­i­ble.

To many this seems almost impos­si­ble. How­ev­er, in fact, such com­plex move­ments con­sist of fair­ly sim­ple ele­ments. To mas­ter the gyp­sy witch­craft of the hands, you first need to learn them sep­a­rate­ly, and then put them all togeth­er.

The fol­low­ing basic posi­tions for hands are dis­tin­guished.

1. Rota­tions in a cir­cle are per­formed by spread­ing the arms to the sides and mak­ing flips with the brush­es. In this case, the right hand will be on top, and the left hand is some­what brought for­ward. Coups are made first with the left, and then with the right, and then they change. There are also many oth­er vari­a­tions of this posi­tion.
2. Smooth move­ments of the brush­es first down, and then wave them up. Start­ing posi­tion — arms spread apart.
3. The image of the eight in front of you with the help of brush­es. In this case, one hand should reach up, and the sec­ond ele­gant­ly draws a fig­ure eight. The move­ments are repeat­ed after chang­ing hands.
4. Hands should be in front of the chest with the palms fac­ing up.. Alter­nate­ly, start­ing with the lit­tle fin­ger, it is nec­es­sary to bend one fin­ger at a time so that they approach the wrist. This move­ment is per­formed with a grad­ual increase in tem­po to cre­ate a fan effect. After that, the hands should be spread apart, raised up and turned over with the brush­es, open­ing the fan.

In addi­tion to these, there are still a large num­ber of options for how you can move your arms. How­ev­er, when per­form­ing them, it is impor­tant to observe the fol­low­ing rules.

• The head should also react to the move­ments of the hands.. The hand that works, as well as the chin, should be con­nect­ed with an invis­i­ble thread. For exam­ple, if the hands fly up, then the chin should also rise. With the hand going to the side, the dancer’s gaze should fol­low it.
• Brush­es and fin­gers are moved with a cer­tain ampli­tude and expres­sive­ly. The move­ments should not feel like they are mechan­i­cal. In this case, the fin­gers must be held so that air flow is felt between them.

A tem­pera­men­tal dance can­not do with­out a frac­tion, which grad­u­al­ly also accel­er­ates. The gyp­sies sur­ren­der to this extra­or­di­nary rhythm, which is able to put the audi­ence into a real trance. At its core, the frac­tion is some kind of trick designed to attract atten­tion and show the skill of the per­form­ers. The com­bi­na­tion of this type of move­ments with the simul­ta­ne­ous weav­ing of pat­terns with hands is espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult.

The frac­tion begins with the fact that the right leg ris­es and hits the floor with it. After that, you need to take your leg back. Next, you should raise your left leg, make it the same blow for­ward, and then remove it. For a knock, alter­nate kicks are made. In this case, they start with the left, and then add the right, and so on.

Gyp­sy dance orna­ments are beau­ti­ful turns. At the same time, they can be seen in any chore­o­graph­ic per­for­mance. You can also catch a vari­ety of rota­tions, slow or rapid move­ments. More­over, they are per­formed both stand­ing still and mov­ing around the stage. To fill the dance with expres­sion, when turn­ing, they addi­tion­al­ly move skirts or arms. When cir­cling, you should not wan­der with your eyes around the audi­ence, but fix your head at one point as long as pos­si­ble. Turns for begin­ners are best done in one direc­tion: left or right.

To turn in one place, it is nec­es­sary to trans­fer all the weight to the left leg, while the hands are removed from the hips. After that, the right leg opens slight­ly and is placed behind the sup­port­ing leg. To make the turn smooth, it must be done while stand­ing on two legs. At the same time, the hands are locat­ed as fol­lows: the right one is in front of the chest, and the left one is at the top. When the twist­ing to the start­ing posi­tion has been com­plet­ed, you should close your hands on your hips.

The col­or­ful dance cos­tumes of the gyp­sies are also part of the unique show. The most pop­u­lar acces­sories are a tam­bourine and a shawl. For dancers, an impor­tant ele­ment of the image is a large width skirt. More­over, it is impor­tant that it has a lot of frills, ruf­fles and oth­er lush dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments.

The length of the skirt should be ankle-length or slight­ly high­er so that move­ments are clear­ly vis­i­ble. The tra­di­tion­al per­for­mance of the dance assumes that the girl will be bare­foot, but on stage the option is cho­sen in shoes.

It is impor­tant that the stage cos­tume includes gold jew­el­ry. So the woman looks lux­u­ri­ous. How­ev­er, along with this, the cuts on the shoul­ders and sleeves of the jack­et sym­bol­ize pover­ty. A char­ac­ter­is­tic fea­ture of the clothes were also bright col­ors, includ­ing red, green, blue and yel­low shades. Often there is also black, espe­cial­ly in men’s suits.

Pol­ka dots and flow­ers will be pop­u­lar prints, and recent­ly even drag­ons and snakes have appeared. At the same time, it is impor­tant for dancers that when using the pat­tern, the con­trast between the shirt and trousers is vis­i­ble. This rule is typ­i­cal for wom­en’s suits.

It is impor­tant that the clothes are not only col­or­ful, but also com­fort­able. It should not be exces­sive­ly close to the body, but it is not good when it weighs in a bag. For exam­ple, a skirt should be cho­sen so that it can make a vari­ety of tilts or swings.

Often, girls com­ple­ment their image with a bright hair clip, and men with a hat or cap. The stage cos­tume must be in per­fect con­di­tion. All clothes must be ironed, and shoes must be pol­ished. Only in this way the dance will be unfor­get­table.

The fol­low­ing video shows a vari­ant of the gyp­sy dance.