Practice for Practice’s Sake

2 CommentsMonday • September 19, 2011 • by Imei

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An observer of my dancing recently asked, “How long did it take you to be comfortable doing those really sharp moves in your dance? I mean, isn’t improvisation built on thousands of hours of practice?” I smiled. Truly, to be good at anything takes thousands of hours of practice. To be truly GREAT at something needs the 10,000 hours rule, which is the magic number applied to any skill of which you wish to master. But really, my answer goes beyond putting in your 10K+ hours. It has to do with practice for practice’s sake.

Try any one of these actions:
* a scale on a keyboard
* a dance step
* a stroke of a charcoal pencil scraped diagonally across paper
* the shaping of the side of a clay bowl on a potter’s wheel
* the tug of a saw as it cuts through wood
* the spin of a tube holding glass in the fire
* the twirl of a PVC hoop overhead

While any one of these skills can be mastered on their own, it’s the familiarity — the love — of repeating it over and over that draws me to string together multiple actions together until they produce a final product, e.g. a song, a choreography, a drawing, a bowl, a frame, a goblet, a hooping routine. The challenge for me is this: when I’m busy practicing for specific events, e.g. preparing a specific choreography for an event, I tend to put out good performances, but not necessarily creative ones. If I want to be creative, I have to return to my love of practicing for the sake of practicing, with no end-goal in mind but the joy of doing what I love.

What does that look like? For dance, that can be:
* listening to music, just because. All kinds of music, not just bellydance music.
* exercising, for the sake of building muscle, not necessarily muscle memory for choreography.
* practicing turns, such as drills across the room until I’m dizzy.
* executing jumps and leaps.
* moving across the floor using emotion more than motion.

What if you didn’t know what the following song was associated with? Click here angry birds clip
How would you move to it? What images might you attach to it? Would it be the opening of a film? What is you moved to this song at super slow rates, while only your face changed expression rapidly?

Additionally, attempting to do something that I only have novice-level skills makes me look at ALL things I do with a little more detailed attention. For example, filming something without filming with a goal leaves with a small mountain of raw footage. What if I wanted to edit the film for an emotional story? How do I move the story like I move it in dance, only without audio, or without movement? How can I take a “mistake” and make it part of the video clip?

Finally, I schedule in time during the week to drop all choreography and just dance through my music any which way I want. Sometimes I end up using some of the choreography I know and love. Other times, I end up doing something completely different, such as grabbing a different prop, moving at half time, or throwing in movement “just because”. Practicing in this way, I end up practicing with much more joy and enthusiasm, and I find I listen to my music with a fresh set of ears, as if the music is new to me. Dropping all anticipation of the beat, I end up falling in love again. When I integrate those joyful practice sessions back into my choreography practices, the choreographies become more creative, whimsical, and energetic.

Do you have an art project that could benefit by “practicing for the sake of practicing”? I’m pairing up with another artist to start an artist’s study hall, where artists can drop in f2f, or drop in online via webcam to spend an hour or two working on their projects. Sometimes our projects involve a lonely journey of self-discovery, but other times, they are projects that can benefit from the energy of others. I’ll post more information on my Twitter page, and list it on the Event page for this site.

Posted in: Art, psychology

Tagged with: creativity, dance, mastering your art, music, practice, tips