5 Steps to a Better Robot Through Isolation

When I started dancing, I didn’t understand the importance of isolation. I saw waving and boogaloo and liquid and thought that the point was too be loose and floppy and look like water. What I discovered over time is that in order to look like water, you actually have to have a lot of CONTROL over your body. You have to be able to ISOLATE different parts really well.

Hey guys, I’m Otis Funkmeyer, the professor of popping! I write an article about popping here at WCP every Sunday. I have lots of lessons, articles, DVDs, downloads, and music at my website www.funkmeyers.com!

The best way I have found to learn isolation is through practicing the robot. The robot teaches you to be still. In order to have a good robot, you can’t move around too much. In the same way, in order to isolate well–at least at first–you can’t move around too much either.

What is Isolation?

So what exactly is isolation. Well, simply put, it’s the ability to keep some parts of your body perfectly still while others parts of your body move around. It’s not really a natural thing for a human to do, so it takes some practice!

How Isolation Makes a Better Robot

When you think of a robot, it’s really ALL isolation. Turn the head. Turn the feet. Slide forward. The reason a robot doesn’t look human is because it’s so isolated. That’s it. As robots become more human, it will be because they are able to move multiple parts of their body at the same time. So that’s a big part of what being “human” is. Moving multiple things at the same time. That’s what we DON’T want to do.

We want to start by just moving one part at a time!

Five Steps to Better Isolation:

1) Muscle Tension
In order to isolate well, you need to have muscular control. What this means is that in order to smoothly move a part of the body, it helps to have some muscular contraction going on. If you want to turn your neck, it helps to slightly flex your shoulder blades. This keeps the neck still so that it can move more smoothly.

The same is true of moving the arm. If you slightly flex your core, your arm will be more stabilized and move in a more isolated fashion.

Most of the best robotters are generally fairly tense in their core while they robot. This helps gives the effect of being a robot. When your core is flexed, everything moves less. So when you move your arm or your leg, ONLY your arm or your leg moves. Without a tight core, it looks too human! So work that core.

2) Relaxation
At the same time, you need to be really relaxed. I know it sounds crazy to say you need to be tense and then say you need to be relaxed, but it’s true. Think about it. A robot is not stressing out, working really hard to be a robot. They are just robots. You need to be like that.

That’s why I said SLIGHT flexing. You just need enough tension for the system to be stable and mechanical feeling. Then you relax and just feel like a robot. Move slowly and with control.

3) Speed Control and Rhythm
Once you start feeling like a hotshot, you can play around with speed control and rhythm. It’s like this. You can move your arm from your side to above your head in 1 second or in 1 minute. To do it in one second is a really fast movement. One minute is REALLY slow. When you change up the speeds of your movements, you get a really cool effect because no one knows what’s coming next.

You can do this in rhythms as well. You could go slow, slow, fast, slow, slow, fast or fast, slow, fast, slow, fast slow or even just fast, fast, fast, fast. All of those are rhythms that engage the people watching you dance.

Just make sure each individual movement is at the same speed. For instance, don’t start moving your arm slow then speed it up then slow it down again. You want, slow arm, fast foot, slow bend forward, etc.

4) Multiple Movements
Now you are getting into the realm of tricks and crowd pleasers. When you move two things at the same time, at the same speed, and make sure both movements start and stop at exactly the same moment, it makes it look like those movements are connected. The most famous example of this is if you turn your wrist while you bend forward, it looks like your wrist is a crank, cranking yourself forward.

But this works for just about any movement you can think of. You could lift your leg and turn your head or raise your arm while your leg turns out. Really anything works as long as you do it well. Make sure both movements start at the same time and end at the same time and that the speeds are coordinated. Meaning, it’s a much bigger movement to bend forward then to turn your wrist, so you need to turn your wrist more slowly so that it matches up with your bending. Just practice it and you’ll get it!

5) Twists, Pivots, Spins
OK! Now we move into territory that most people don’t associate with isolation or robotics, but it’s the 21st century and we can start doing some more crazy robotting. Try doing isolated pivots, isolated twists, and isolated spins and you can come up with some really cool moves. This is also how you can start blending styles. Your robot can lead into a wave which moves into some boogaloo and back into robot. By keeping things isolated, it makes your transitions more understandable and enjoyable to watch.

Wrap-up

Aight yo! We doin’ the damn thang and we’re really getting down to business now. Isolation is such a crucial part of this dance that I’ll probably end up writing hundreds of articles about it eventually.

If you ever feel like you’re in a slump, isolation is a great thing to practice. Just stand there or sit there and try moving something you’ve never moved before. Just lifting one shoulder. Just turning out from the hips. Just bending to the side. Just moving your ring finger. The better your isolation, the more impressive your dancing, and the beauty is that you can always practice it, no matter where you are!

SO KEEP IT POPPIN!!!
Otis Funkmeyer, Ph.D. of Poppin’