Stepping Documents
STEPPING – MOVEMENT AND RHYTHM
Taught by David Cameron who learned it from Doug Goodkin who learned it from his students.
• Derived from gumboot dancing in the mines of South Africa
• Popularized by black fraternities and sororities in North America during the 1980’s
• Very effective in teaching middle school boys in particular due to its aggressive nature and vigorous movement
• Those with bodily kinesthetic intelligences excel at this!
• Can be combined with body percussion to create complex rhythmic routines
• Investigate Keith Terry and Crosspulse for more information on body percussion
• www.crosspulse.com
• Excellent for teaching pulse, beat, syncopation, synchronization and what I call ‘intent’
• ‘Intent’ meaning enthusiasm, energy, physical release, aggressiveness
• Ways to show intent include bent knees, straight arms, vigour, vocalizations, etc.
• I often show video of the “Haka” from New Zealand in order to demonstrate intent
• Vocalize rhythms as much as possible
• ‘Dung’ is a step and ‘dac’ or ‘a’ is a clap
• Home Sequence
• Dung dac a dac dung dac
• Sequence 1
• dung dung dung, dung dung dung, dac dac dung, dac dac dung, dac dung dac dung
• Sequence 2
• dung dac dac, dung dac dac, dac dac dac dac dac dac dac dac dac
• Sequence 3
• dung dac dac, dung dac dung dac dung dac dung dac, dung dac a dac dac
• Teach the ‘Home Sequence’ first and come back to it as a grounding point
• Try using a drum to sound the pulse when students invariably start to speed up their stepping.
• Feel free to contact me at dcameron@unishanoi.org or teampeacedove@gmail.com. The teampeacedove.org website is still under construction so although it is listed in my bio, it’s not going to do you a whole lot of good right now!
• Good luck!