Let’s Get This Party Started: The Basics of Isolation

Along with the groove and the actual pop, isolation is the most important technique of this dance called popping. The ability to isolate everything from your fingers to your toes, from your neck to your hips, is what separates a beginner from a master.

Almost all dance styles, from ballet to bellydancing, use isolation extensively. But the way we isolate in popping is one of the things that most sets the dance apart. So let’s take a look at what isolation is, how you do it, why it’s important, and how to incorporate it into your dance!

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!

What is Isolation

Isolation is the ability to move some part of your body while another part stays perfectly still. In most cases, even if you get close to perfect it’s good enough, but the top isolators are usually considered the top dancers as well. Whether it’s Madd Chadd doing the robot, PopnTaco waving, or Acki boogalooing, one of the things that makes them who they are is their ability to isolate.

How do you Isolate?

The way that you practice isolation is usually fairly simple. That’s the thing about isolation. It’s easy to understand, it’s just a lot harder to do! Let’s say you want to isolate your wrist, like you might want to do in tutting or waving. What you do is practice moving your wrist–and only your wrist–making sure that every other part of your body stays still.

The best way to practice this is to use your own shadow. Mirrors can lie and if you’re eye is not well trained, even a video camera can be hard to read. But your own shadow does not lie! What you want to see is ONLY the part of your body moving that you are trying to isolate. In this case, you would want to see ONLY your wrist move. If any other part of your body moves, even slightly, you are NOT doing a perfect isolation.

I know from personal experience that this is a frustrating exercise, because at first it seems impossible to get everything else to stay still. One trick that you will discover over time is that if you make smaller movements, the exercise will be easier. Start small and get bigger over time. It’s better to get something down perfectly and then move on rather than just get a jumbled mess of a lot of half-mastered techniques.

Why Is Isolation So Important?

Isolation is CRAZY important! It wasn’t obvious to me at first, but over time, I got the picture, and all that time when it wasn’t obvious was time wasted! The reason isolation is so important is that it makes everything you do LOOK CLEAN AND PRETTY. When you see someone who trips you out with their smoothness I guarantee that they have EXCELLENT isolation.

See, when you isolate well, it’s easier for the audience to see what you’re doing, because fewer parts of your body are moving! All of your movements READ better and whether your audience is your friends and family or the top poppers in the world, everything appreciates that, whether or not they know WHY.

Also, when you isolate well, it means you really understand your body well and it allows you to come up with new movements on the spur of the moment. By learning the basics, you can start making up your own moves just based on the basic isolations.

The Different Styles and Isolation

You might think if you are a popper or an animator that isolation is less important than if you are a tutter, but it’s just not true. Every style uses isolation extensively, but how they use them are different!

Robot–The robot is ALL isolation. In fact, the basic robot, where you only move one part at a time, might as well just be called an isolation exercise. It’s just one isolation after another. The same goes for the styles that come out of the robot, like strobing and animation.

Boogaloo–At it’s core, boogaloo is the ability to isolate the neck, the shoulders, the hips, the knees, and the ankles, and specifically to move them in circles, or what we call rolls. Beginner boogalooers usually look sloppy because their isolation is not strong yet and they try to MIMIC the smoothness rather than ISOLATE to create smoothness. Boogaloo is ALL isolation.

Waving–From a technique perspective, waving is really no more than an isolation exercise. Fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, chest, neck. Just one isolation after another that when put together looks like a wave. If you want to be a good waver, just get in front of the mirror and start isolating.

Tutting–Tutting is no different. Isolating the wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Learning to only move one piece at a time is the essence of tutting.

The Wrap-Up
As I think you can see now, when you look at from the perspective of technique, this dance is ALL isolation. Practice your isolation like crazy and you will find people enjoying your dance more and more, no matter what style you are doing. Practice the same isolation OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER until you really can do it in your sleep.

KEEP IT POPPIN YALL!
Otis Funkmeyer, Ph.D. of Popping