Fancy Shawl Dance HOW TO SPIN

in this video i will be going over fancy shell dancing with a focus on how to use your shawl my name is dionne hupfield and i come from the ojibwe nation i have been teaching powwow dance in my community for the last 17 years and i want to share all of those all of the best strategies that i've learned over that time with you all so first things first if you are wanting to become a powwow dancer the very first thing you need to do is connect with your people what nation are you from who are your elders who are your teachers if you don't live next to them you can probably just add them on facebook or hit them up on instagram there's so many different ways we can connect with our people nowadays i i love reading the old books because i've always been urban so i read i read basil johnson i read liam simpson i follow james bucklich on social media he provides lots of language teachings the three main songs that you need to learn if you want to be a fancy shawl dancer are a straight song crow hop and a double beat and again i i have done a tutorial on those dances and you can check that out here or there wherever somewhere up there so i've realized that i haven't gone over that much in depth about how to use a shawl or how to dance with the shawl so that's what we're going to be focusing on today if you want to make your own shawl you want to make sure that the length or the width of your shawl it goes fingertip to fingertip and then add another 5 to 10 inches of material and then you want to make the length from your nape of your neck to around mid thigh so mine is around 30 inches by 70 maybe 75 inches and my ribbon is around 24 inches or 25 inches and when you hold it you want to make sure you're holding it halfway down the side and then you're making a triangle here if you make a triangle you can keep it tight around your neck and then it won't fall off while you're dancing you don't want to hold your shawl like a tiny tot holding from here because this way as i start dancing this is going to fall right off my shoulders so this is the best way i like to hold my shell this beautiful shawl was made by my friend garrett henry garrett is gucci he is from winnipeg manitoba so let's go over our traveling spin on the two feet so it's one two one two one two five two one two and full time it looks like this one two one when you're doing your spins you wanna try doing it both ways because one way is going to be more natural than the other way and you want to make sure you're nice and balanced we could do a spin on a single beat so you're just hopping from foot to foot to foot and it's like one one one one one one and your arms are just going up and down so that looks like this one other way one one one one we can do the front cross spin so i take my right leg and i cross it over my front and then i spin forward so it's over spin over spin and whole time it looks like this oh you can do that same spin uh doing stepping back so you just step back spin back spin back spin spin or the other way one of my favorite dance steps to do is like a shawl pop so i'm stepping forward one two one two one two one two and full time it looks like this one two one you can move forward or backwards so the back one backward way you're just leading with your foot one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two you could do a spin on the spot where you just keep your feet together and you're spinning in a circle and your arms are just going all crazy like this it's up and down and that looks like this the grapevine is a really good traveling move basically walking to the side and whatever foot follows takes turns going in front of you and behind you and it looks like this over front over back over front over back i'll go the other way over front over back over front over back and full time it looks like this over front over back over front over back over front over back and the other way over front over back over front over back so now i want to show you how to throw all those dance moves together i'm gonna do the traveling spin the single beat one one one spin i'll do the front cross spin the back cross spin and i'll do a grapevine [Applause] hey [Music] [Applause] that is all i have planned for today if you haven't already hit subscribe hit that bell to be notified when i post new content uh if you've already subscribed thank you so much i want to be here for you i want to support you to get you dancing so just hit me up in the comments let me know what you want to see next because i'm just winging it no seriously though i wanna just do my best for you so just let me know what you need and i will do my best to provide

Channel: How To Powwow Dance

Views: 9,261

Rating: 4.9875002 out of 5

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Id: 2_ZJghlBSkQ

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020