Dancing in the kitchen when you can’t go out

Dancing in the kitchen when you can’t go out

Sometimes our caring situations make it difficult for us to go out. So, for a bit of fun in this blog, we cover how to create a safe place for dancing at home and think about what types of dance are on offer. We’ve also included some useful links to free videos online to help you get started. 

If you’re able to add dancing to the activities you can do at home it has so many benefits. Being great exercise, you’re likely to see improvements in your health, flexibility and strength. Also, finding types of dancing you enjoy is a wonderful way of lifting your mood and easing anxiety. Dressing up (including fancy dress) from time to time can all add to the fun – the picture above comes from a time we varied lockdown dancing in the kitchen by wearing clothes we’d previously bought for going to a 1950’s party! 

Where to dance at home? 

Although we’re saying ‘kitchen’, in your situation you may prefer somewhere else in your house or garden. Start by thinking about how you can create the largest safe space. This could involve moving furniture or rolling up rugs – whatever you can do to achieve a smooth (but not slippery) surface without trip hazards or anything you might knock over or bang into when dancing. A rectangular shaped space is useful if you’re likely to be learning dances with set steps. The larger the dance space you can safely make the better – so take your time to think ‘outside the box’ about this.

Consider whether you can make changes that reduce the amount of furniture moving needed each time you want to dance. For instance, early on in the first lockdown, we decided to move the big table which normally would be in the middle of our kitchen-diner. By putting it permanently against one wall, we only needed to turn on the music and we were ready for half an hour of dancing every night. 

What can you do to keep safe whilst having fun dancing? 

Once you have cleared your safe space, make sure that what you’re wearing won’t catch on anything. For example, avoid overly long wide trousers that you (or your partner) could tread on and cause you to fall. 

Carefully try spinning around on one foot on the floor to see how it feels. Make sure the surface and your shoes are not too slippery as you need to reduce the risk of slipping. But you also want to be able to turn sufficiently easily so that you’re not putting any strain on hips, knees or ankles. In addition, wearing low heels is safer. 

Before you start dancing, it’s important to warm up to gradually increase the blood flow to your muscles and this reduces the risk of injury. Here’s a short example video: Lucy Wyndham-Read’s Quick Basic Warm Up (1min 47sec) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM2eOqTtS7Q 

It’s important to gradually build up how much dancing you do so as to avoid damage to any part of your body. If what you’re doing doesn’t feel good or is causing a twinge of pain, stop straight away. In particular, dances like the traditional Jive have a lot of bounce with the knees being raised high to achieve the ‘kicks and flicks’. It’s advisable to only do these ‘high impact’ dances on properly laid wooden sprung floors – dancing a jive on a hard floor can risk knee or other injuries, so is best avoided at home. Fortunately though, if you like the jive, there are a number of ‘Modern Jive’ dances (see below) that blend jive steps with other types of dance steps to produce styles which are kinder to the joints. 

What type of dancing to choose? 

Of course, the easiest type of dancing to break into is the ‘bopping along to whatever music is playing’. This is great for times of spontaneity – it can quickly lift your mood and helps burn off the carbs. ‘Bopping around’ dancing is enjoyed by many, but, apart from recommending you get a good supply of music (streamed, downloaded or CD’s), there’s not much more to say about it. So in the rest of this blog, we’ll be thinking about dance types that have steps that are taught. We’ll firstly consider dances for two people (a leader and a follower) and then turn our attention to versions of these that you can dance by yourself. 

Dances with steps for two people dancing together 

Some ballroom dances, such as Quickstep, Slow Foxtrot, Waltz and Tango, really need big spaces. Fortunately, there are dances that are better suited to smaller spaces, and we’ve chosen four – Modern Jive, Salsa, Argentine Tango and Cha Cha Cha: 

Modern Jive 

As previously mentioned, Modern Jive blends jive steps with other types of dance steps and these can be danced to a wide variety of contemporary (or older-style) regular 4 beats-to-the-bar music. There are a number of different franchises that offer modern jive teaching and so depending on where you live, you might have heard of it as Ceroc, Le Roc or other local variations. This range of 20 beginners’ videos filmed by Ginger Jive provides some great step by step tuition to get you started: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS031Z1m004CHNePRG_-y1rjUKe9xVUn4 

When people are more experienced in this style of dancing, slightly adapting the steps to suit the speed and style of the music makes this a very flexible type of dancing, as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ3sOZ7tAZc 

Salsa 

Salsa music has a very distinctive, lively, upbeat rhythm and it’s easy to get started with a few basic steps. With literally hundreds of short videos available on Salsaventura’s channel, this video is the one for people who’ve never danced Salsa before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV8cDpJa2f4&list=PLt7Alq7QGyFteWCpYi-s8Bc0VN0-l0zWS 

Argentine Tango 

The Argentine Tango is danced in a close hold with the dancers’ chests being closer together than their hips. Once a variety of steps have been learnt, the dancers can improvise with these to suit the expression of the music (which needs to have a particular rhythm and is often quite staccato, intense or melancholic). The following three videos provide very helpful tuition by Viva La Dance for people who have never previously danced: 

Cha Cha Cha 

When we joined a dance class for beginners, the Cha Cha Cha was one of the first steps we learnt. The steps tend to be taught in little sets which make up a move. Some people string a number of moves together in what becomes their routine. A more advanced option for those well-practised in many moves, is for the leader to spontaneously join the moves together in an order of their own choosing. To do this successfully relies on the leader giving little signals (‘leads’) to their partner so that the follower knows what move is about to be danced. Doing this can add much more variety and fun to the dancing. The two videos shown below are for people who have already mastered the most basic steps and want to add more moves to their repertoire: 

Dances with steps for solo dancers 

As previously mentioned, modern jive draws inspiration from a variety of dance genres, and Ceroc Nu-line has developed as a kind of modern jive line dancing. Enjoy the videos (which include the teaching) to see what we mean: 
With thanks to Lucy Wyndham-Read, Ginger Jive, Ceroc, Salsaventura and Viva La Dance for all the great videos.