Crooked Necks

Posts Tagged ‘Don Campbell’

I often get asked what advice I would give to someone that’s looking to get started and learn the locking (Campbellocking) dance style. Here I’ll indulge you in the advice I like to dish out.

The first piece of advice I give out always remains unchanged. That advice is this: go get a locking teacher. A good locking teacher can take you from a complete beginner to an accomplished locker if you be the good student and practise and apply what you learn.

When you learn from a teacher, you will get to learn about how to do the moves and what makes the style work. You also have other benefits such as being able to learn from the teachers’ experience and past mistakes they may have made when learning themselves.

If your teacher is not someone you will meet in real life but a virtual teacher then I would recommend learning from a DVD rather than individual locking tutorials. Tutorials are good for getting started but are never going to be as complete as a DVD will.

A DVD is much more likely to offer you a more complete training, as well as shed some insight into the dance and style as a whole rather than just be centred around certain popular moves.

A locking DVD can be an exciting purchase – for many people this event will highlight the beginning of their locking education. So I’ve decided to compile a list of my top 12 tips when selecting a locking dance DVD for learning purposes:

1. Search for a DVD that will help you learn how you are using your body as you dance, not just do the moves. You want to dance with feeling, not just be a man made robot capable of pulling off a few moves.

2. Aim to get hold of a DVD that will teach you how to be funky when you do the moves. It’s all about the funk, whatever you do in locking has got to be funky and it’s a big part of the dance.

3. See if you can get samples of the instructor’s teaching style to make sure that it suits you. Teachers have different ways of explaining things and you are bound to find some that you are more comfortable learning from than others.