I Feel Like Dancing!!

Although Emeline uses partner West Coast Swing style dancing, at a glance watching OP @Bella video, knew she would also be able to effortlessly freestyle dance using some of the same fast dynamic balanced bilateral body movements all advanced dancers have used over the last century.


Much more upper body choreography oriented than my own 3-dimensional style but basically the same. And note, such is quite different than simpler upper body only club dancing movement styles (~Disco) that began to dominate after the mid 70s as she smoothly moves her feet and lower body anywhere she wants.

Many watching me publicly dance may wonder how someone at any age can dance so smoothly dynamically? It is all about neural plasticity. The more one repeats movements, the more such is chemically wired into one's motor brain neocortex connections. And this senior retired person does so a lot.

That is why one sees Steph Curry shooting all those practice 3 pointers before games. Why some billiard players are so precise. Why I can still ski recreational moguls smoothly easily. The more one repeats correct motions, the more such becomes what one is. So you cannot dance well and want to? Copy what there are plenty of Youtube videos showing regularly, over and over for a few weeks, and your body will develop, improve, gaining skill.
 
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The below 14 minute YouTube video presents an excellent summary of Gene Kelly's life, 1912>1996, 84 years. But no film clips, instead many superb images showing a great range of impressive dance pose stills taken mainly from video frames, often with other famous actors in the images. Kelly when young, was also an impressive all around athlete involved in semi pro sports, especially baseball that I also loved.
This morning, I just caught the last half of the 1948 musical The Pirate with Kelly and Judy Garland. I who was coincidentally born in downtown Los Angeles in 1948 when Kelley was 36, don't recall ever watching the movie as it's farcical, satire, and romantic comedy with adult dialogue would have been over may head. In that movie is what is called The Pirate Ballet, an utterly fantastic 3-dimensional dancing display of what is possible for humans to develop.


The following is a short essay on how Hollywood performers used drugs, especially amphetamine stimulants. Although it doesn't specifically state so for public release legal reasons, using substances was about the only way dancers could perform at such a high level and had begun decades before in the 1920s within mostly jazz musician culture. Kelly was also as many other actors of that era, a nicotine addict.

Golden Age Hollywood Had a Dirty Little Secret: Drugs | HISTORY

I cannot ever recall trying to dance while growing up. I'd found girls, especially attractive females due to dominant tall, dark, and handsome, cultural social pressure, absolutely hated due to embarrassment, dancing with short males like this guy, that was always in my small suburban world paired couple styles. However, I did watch cinema films and somehow over years without intent or awareness, absorbed movement styles of Kelly and other famous dancers.

Thus when I began to casually freestyle dance in the Counterculture Era, I seemed to magically absorb dance motor movement from films I must have watched into my body motor brain style without ever being trained. Unfortunately that at age 20 led to my own minor amphetamine experimentation that from tragic choices permanently damaged my body for the rest of my life. Since then have had to avoid consuming any stimulants including even slight amounts of caffeine and many medicines much less rec drugs.

My own sloppy freestyle dance style shares some of Kelly's free form movements especially his sense of 3-dimensional space. In the above Pirate Ballet, that is especially evident during the circling overhead arm sword and spear sequences. Although I never tried tap dancing, like Kelly I can naturally move around my legs and feet in dance without thinking with balance, that also shows in my snow skiing upper to lower body separation style.
 
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One single line drawing of three dancing people Picasso style.
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Two of the best dancers of our generation. Always very impressed. They have danced so much over decades that their whole bodies including most importantly their legs and feet move as a total system with an optimal correct balance and position, effortlessly, with little thinking. Because they are professional trained dance entertainers often for show with a public audience, they also have a considerable number of fancy aesthetic and classic dance moves.

Mikhail, a Latvian, was born the same year as I, also with maternal ancestors from that general region. I sometimes wonder if some of my own ancestors through forgotten millennia also danced? Like this dancer, he is also relatively short and uncommonly for an adult male, thinly built, and his face shows he seems to have also aged relatively well.
 
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