Welcome to 20 moves in 20 days beginning jazz dance. This is day one. And today I am excited to introduce you to the concept of isolations. In jazz, this is one of the very first things that you'll learn. It is part of a traditional jazz class warm up. And although it will take a little bit of time to get used to it, I know you're gonna enjoy it.

And what's great about isolations is that it helps you further down the line, really be able to isolate different body parts, and then be able to put that together in very distinct ways. So that you have the ability to move very precisely and cleanly, which is one of the things that jazz dance is really good at helping you become the best dancer, you can be in that way. So we're going to actually start and I'm going to have my feet a little bit apart in a parallel position. You don't have to have jazz sheets. If you don't have them, don't worry, stocks will do just fine for all of the movements that you're going to learn. So what I'm going to do is have my hands on my hips to start, and I'm going to start by isolating just my head.

So I'm going to look right, straight, left, straight, right, straight, left, straight, then faster. Right, and left, and right, and left, right, left, right, and left and up and down. Up, and straight. In, down, and straight. And up, and straight. And down.

And straight, little faster. up, and down. And up, and down. Up, down, up, and down. Good. Now we're going to tilt her head to the side, we're going to start to the right, ear to shoulder so we have right and up and left and up and right.

Up and left and up faster, right, and left and right and left 567 and eight. Good. So if you'll notice one of the important parts is having very clear stopping times. So it's not that I'm just moving my head side to side, right, it's actually that I'm very deliberately going, right, and I have a stopping point, and then straight back to the front, left front. So even when you go faster, it's still important to have the distinction between the positions. Okay.

Now we're going to do some shoulder isolations. So what we're going to do first and you'll just relax your arms. And you can even bend your knees a little bit if it helps to get a little more comfortable. But what we're going to do is isolate one at a time we're going to go right and down. So it's just going to come up and down. left and down.

Right, down, left, down faster, right and left and right and left. 5678 good. Now we're going to bring our right shoulder forward while our left shoulder goes back. Bright and flat and left and flat. Right and flat and left and flat, faster. One, and two, and three, and 45678.

Excellent. Good job. Okay, we're going to bring both of our shoulders up at the same time. So we're going to go up, down, up, down by 678 shirts, circle them back. 12345678. Good.

Okay, so that last set where I was just rolling my shoulders is not part of isolations however, it is something that you would typically see when you're starting to do isolations in a jazz class. Okay, next, we're going to focus on just our rib cage. I This is the one that takes the longest. So think about pushing your ribs out. So for instance, when I go to the front, I'm really thinking of protruding my ribs straight forward. When I go to the side, I'm trying to keep my hips really still my shoulder still everything else still, but I'm getting pulled, my ribs are pulling out to the side.

So I go to this side. Now I go back, it's almost like you think that somebody punched you right here, right? Because then my ribs can go back. And then side again I'm thinking of it could think about in terms of like a fishing line that's attached to your ribs and pulling in each direction. So it goes Front, side, back, side, front, side, back, side. Good.

Now we're going to try to isolate the movement of just our ribs in a circular direction. So we're going to go around, and around and around and around. Good. Now we're going to go Either way, so we have front and side, and back, and side and front and side and back, inside circle one, and two, and three, and four. All right. So like I said, the ribs takes, I think the longest of any of the isolations to feel like you have a firm grasp on it.

So just give yourself some grace and practice, it's actually usually helpful to practice in front of a mirror. If you have that ability. Sometimes you won't feel if other things are moving along with you. So you want to just be kind of conscious of that. And then the last set of isolations, we're going to do our hips. So we're going to bend our knees a little bit, it feels more comfortable and less awkward if you bend your knees a little bit and kind of get into it.

So just our hips are going to move forward, side, back, side, forward, side, back side and you're gonna make a circle and everybody And to an around, and three, and around, and for no good other side. So we start to the front we go front and side and back inside and front and side, back side circle one, and two, and three, and four. Good. So again normally in a jazz class, what you would do is you would do your warmup and isolations are typically at the maybe at the end of a warm up, depending on your instructor. And so it's something if you have a little bit of practice ahead of time you'll feel more comfortable doing in a class. And and so just if you focus on really being precise about each direction, and each element that you're moving, whether it's your your head, shoulders, ribs or hips, just being precise about the direction and kind of feeling free to really almost exaggerate the movement, especially when it comes to the your ribs into your hips.

All right, good work today. Those are your isolations. We will be back tomorrow with something brand new.