Roller Skating - Dance Step You NEED to Know - Original

Hey skaters, I'm Dirty Deborah Harry with the Dirty School of Skate, the sugar roller skates. I'm here today at the Fountain Valley Skating Center to talk to you about how to do the original. It is a basic dance skating step that everyone should know. Today's video is brought to you by Wicked Skatewear. Wicked Skatewear is here in Huntington Beach, California, and they're online at wickedskatewear.com. They can get you everything you need for skating, from plates to wheels to bearings to toe stuff, all sorts of accessories and super fun apparel. So feel free, go to their website, browse away, shop. Tell them Dirty sent you. Promise you will not be disappointed. All right, skaters, go get your skates on. Let's get ready to do the original. Last time when we were doing, what's it called? The downtown, I brought you my friend Tati. She was so popular, I thought I'd bring her back. Always like to dance skate with someone else. Don't always want to dance by yourself, so we got Tati again. So exciting, girl. Are you excited? I am super pumped. Let's do it. Okay, we're gonna do the original. Let me explain a little bit about what this dance step is. This dance step is really like the siren call to other dance skaters, don't you think? It's like- They come flocking. They come. If you and I are at the beach, let's say, and we're in the middle and there's other skaters around and they're milling about, but they're not like in with it. If you start going like this, and you're just cruising like this, this is kind of what brings other people, and they start noting, hey, what are you doing? I want to do that too. You're just grooving to the music, right? So if at the rink or outside you see someone doing that, that's sort of like the opener step. International symbol for come and learn how to skate dance. Or come and skate with us. It's the step that kind of brings everyone together. It's the intro step. It's the one that gets everyone on the same beat, which is important, am I right? Absolutely. It is also the step that goes intermittently between all the, let's say you're doing a downtown. So we're doing our downtown. Boom, boom. We're doing this, and then I would throw up this hand signal like this to know that we are going to do the original, original, original, original, okay? Let me say this. Say it. Tati, I know. There is a lot of different dance styles. There's a lot of different dance steps. They are, I think they're fairly regional. I would agree with that. Right? You go to a lot of different places, and there's a lot of different ways to do dance skating, right? Everyone's got their style. So what I'm helping you understand here is something we do here locally. So I want to give you permission right now. You can learn this and say, yeah, well, whatever, dirty, and you could completely change it. Come up with your own hand signals, do your own thing. It's okay with me, okay? So I don't want to say that this is the end all, be all, and you have to do it this way. What I really like about this step though is it not only helps you organize a group in dance skating and get everyone on the same step, but it helps you as an individual learn how to balance better, weight distribution, how to skate on each foot, right? How to get onto the beat, right? Into the groove. You're going to have one person who's kind of in charge. So that person, let's say that person was me. I would be slightly ahead of the other skaters so that they could see hand signals. As you may see it like a, have you ever seen like a whole group and they're doing one step, then another, another, and you're like, how is it that they know? How is it that they know to change? It's usually hand signals or they've been skating together forever and they just kind of have that sixth sense. Okay, so the hand signal again for the original is this. The original looks like this. You are going to push your body weight down and you're going to shift your body weight over to one foot. The reason why we shift it over, why is so we can lift the other. As I've said before, weight on one foot allows the other foot to move. Weight on one foot lifts the other. So if I push my body weight over towards my left leg with my right hip, I can lift my foot and cross it over. What you don't want to do at this point, I always say is look down, right? I think a lot of skaters, when you shift your body weight and you go to lift your hip, the first thing you do when you move your foot is look down to make sure that you've got it in the right place. This will hinder your ability to actually do the step, to stay in time and will also not look as fluid. We want to look fluid, do we not? Yes, we do. Nice and fresh and fluid. How do you look fluid? You know, it's like, this is mechanical. When you go like this and you go like, this is very mechanical. But if you put your foot up and you're breathing and you're like this, this is one move into another, into another, and then you're like, oh, look at me and my fluidity, right? That's fluid, fluid, okay? All right, so we're gonna shift our body weight over onto one side. We're gonna lift with our hip. When we lift with our hip, our heel is going to cock out just a little bit. You're gonna put your weight down. And then you are going to basically go tap, tap. There's gonna be a shift of the body weight, shift of the body weight, shift of the body weight. Okay? Jogging in place helps. Right. And left and right and left and right. So we go up, down, down, down. Up, down, down, down. Up, down, down. Come on, Tati. Lost me there for a second. It's funny because it's one of the most basic things that we do, but it's difficult, right? Because you have to understand that to go this direction, weight has to be over here. Lift the hip, drop it down. This alone, crossing your feet, is not always easy for people. At this point, you know what you gotta do with your thighs there, Tati? You gotta be like, tighten up, tighten up, right there. You tighten up those inner thighs. Right there, you push down and the foot comes down, down. This part is super important, this second down, because this now is where your center of balance is right here so that you can pick up this foot, cross it over, down, down. Over, down, down. Over, tap, tap. Now, I feel like when people do it, a lot of times they go over, then they're here, and then they go over, and then they're here. And they forget. The dance move. They forget the move. They forget the dance move. In my head, the way I have always processed it is once that left leg comes back out, I have to reset and get this grounded and keep my weight on it, otherwise I cannot lift that hip to transfer. It's transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer. And I know it's scary, too, I think, for people to lift up and, but depend on the leg, the main leg for the weight. Yeah, so again, two things to remember. No, I love it. Thank you. I love it. I love you. Two things you absolutely have to remember are this. Weight on one foot moves another. When you set it down, push your body weight down, tighten up your thighs, and say one and two, okay? So we're gonna go over, one, two. Over, one, two. Oftentimes, when you're with a group, too, you may be very close to somebody else. So this ends up looking more linear. So you're gonna go, ready? Five, six, seven, eight. We're gonna go one, two, three, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three. You're gonna be like this real close to somebody. Hey, Deb, what's up, girl? How you been? I haven't seen you at the rink lately. Right? Okay, so it's gonna look like this. We're gonna work it into a downtown. So I like to start to the left. I go left, right, left, right, and then we switch steps. So what we're gonna do is an original, and then we're gonna do number five, which is the downtown with the push-push, okay? Ready? So we're gonna go five, six, seven, eight. We go, this is one, two, three, four, and then push, push, push, push. Down, down, down, down. We go original, original, original, original. Now, I don't know if you saw it, but I did the original to the left. I did the original to the right. I did the original to the left, and I put this hand signal up, which is number five for the downtown with the double push. Right there, we finish this, and then we go straight into downtown with the double push. That's how she knew that's what we were doing. Here's number three. I put up the original so she knows we're gonna change. Change, right? I always say it's one more, when you throw the hand signal up, it's one more time of the dance move you're doing, and then you transition to the next. So basically, to make it super simple for everyone out there, do it in groups of four. When you hit the third time that you're doing it, throw up the hand signal, finish the fourth one, and go on, all right? So let's do, how about this? How about we turn around and show them what it's like from this side too? In case you're following along and you wanna see it from a backyard view. Okay, here we go. I'll be slightly in front of her. Imagine that there's many other skaters with us. Ready? We're gonna go five, six, seven, eight. We go original, original, original, original. And then we go, boom. Back to the original. Ah, there's. I didn't see the hand. I didn't see the hand signal. We might have to redo that part. All right, from the top. All righty. Can we? Oh my God, did you just see what happened? I mean, Tati just messed up. I mean, I just had to cut her. I just can't have that level of unprofessionalism in my videos. You know, God, send me some people I can work with. I'm not going anywhere. God help me, please. Let's do it. You guys, let's just do it. Okay, you've got one more chance to do this right. Turn yourself around. Follow me. I'm giving you hand signals and everything. I'll watch, I'll watch this time. Five, six, seven, eight. Original, original, original. Let's go down, down. Come on, baby. Do it, Tati. We do original. Next, ready? Here's that hand signal. Original, original, original, original. Okay. Tati just might have redeemed herself. Maybe. We'll see if she returns to us in a future video. Off you go, Tati. I'm gonna go practice. Okay, skaters, you know the drill. I just need you to practice. You guys have no idea how much these simple dance moves can help your overall skating. Also, it gives you something that you can practice with someone else, which is really fun. Practice on your own, practice with a friend. It's not a bad idea to take video of yourself so you can kind of look and see what you're doing, but please be careful on the self-critiques. So many skaters I talk to are very hard on themselves, and it crushes my heart just a little bit to hear how hard they are on themselves. Please understand that when you're doing something like this, you're learning something new, and there's always gonna be a learning curve. Give yourself kudos for showing up, putting on your skates, trying, these are all good things. With practice, you will get better and better at it. The other thing I'd like to say is, please help teach other people how to do it. When you do that and you're watching them do it, you get a lot of different cues on how to do it better yourself. Once you start developing an eye for it, you're like, oh, I see that they're not transferring their weight properly. Let me do it again, let me make sure that I'm transferring my weight properly. Oh, now I can have more of a discussion with them because I can show them what I'm doing. Skating can, is, is inherently social, and it's a collective behavior, really. Skating really comes alive when you do it with other people. So, with that being said, I need you to go practice. Please leave me your comments, send me your messages, and let me know if you have any kind of questions, and I will definitely be back to bring you more dance skating videos. And if she's a good girl, I'll bring Tati back too. All right, skaters, now go practice.