The Liquid Digest

Foundation Fridays #3: Rolls

Today’s article explores a bit of the practical side of body flow. Yesterday’s article analyzed how a flow of shape can be created with boogaloo roll techniques, so this Foundation Friday is dedicated to the boogaloo roll.

Youtube has a ton of boogaloo roll tutorials, and I would encourage anyone with the motivation to look at them as many of them as needed to observe variations in method and form. My favorite tutorial for rolls, however, is one that is not in English. Fortunately, dance is a universal language, and my Korean is passable enough to relay some of the points in a rough translation.

• 0:15 – you can roll head, shoulders, chest, hips, legs
• 0:50 – you can start the roll from the front, from the left, from the back
• 1:00 – you can roll the shoulder from front to back, back to front, both together, and both going opposite directions
• 1:20 – for the chest, front, left, back right
• 1:48 – combining the chest and shoulders
• 2:05 – for the hips, think of keeping a straight position, and then bring them forward, left, back, right. keep the legs straight. later, you can start from a bent leg position and maintain the hip roll.
• 2:50 – for the legs, use the knee and the ankle. start with a straight leg, and like with the hips, roll and make a circle. you can also roll from inside out and from outside in. you can do single leg rolls or double leg rolls in all sorts of directions.
• 3:50 – music can dictate how you do the rolls, slow, fast, etc.
• 4:05 – demonstration. holy shit.

My own notes:

• Be mindful of the shape your arms create in relation to your rolls. This note is liquid-specific, of course, but so important to body flow. Keep them up away from your sides, give that shape some room to breathe and move. The only exception is when your arms are at your sides with the intent of not creating any lines or shapes with your arms.
• Slim pants are in style, but loose pants create liquid shapes. This note is also liquid-specific. Plenty of poppers can pull off slim pants or even shorts with their dance, but in the context of liquid body flow and shapes, you need pants that will soften the angles of your knees and create fuller lines without masking too much of your movement. I would say no slimmer than Levi’s 569 cut (maybe even size up) and no baggier than UFO unisex basic.
• If you are doing leg rolls, lead with the hips. This prevents knee injury; I don’t know why the tutorial doesn’t teach this. The hips should be on the same side of the roll as the knees. If the knees are out front, so are the hips, and so forth. This keeps the knees functioning as a hinge joint rather than a ball-and-socket joint, while maintaining the roll illusion.
• Rolls that take you to the ground, a.k.a. shootdowns, can be risky to the knees. Dance careers have been stunted from knee injuries, including some of the biggest names in popping. I don’t bother with shootdowns, but then I’m no spring chicken and it’s not worth the risk to me. If you choose to incorporate shootdowns, make sure your leg strength (squats) and flexibility (the “W” stretch) are up to snuff, and wear knee pads if you choose to do this.

Practicing rolls:

1. Practice each roll individually and slowly, both clockwise and counterclockwise. Pay special attention to isolation. Only the part that you are rolling should be moving; the rest of your body should be dead still. Also, be sure to make full, complete circles.
2. Connect rolls. Important basic connections include the following: head and chest; chest and shoulders; head, chest, and shoulders; chest and hips; chest and hips with legs; and the full boogaloo roll from head to toe. Practice the connections both sequentially and simultaneously. Sequentially, the chest roll would start and then stop while transitioning into a hip roll. Simultaneously, the chest roll would happen at the same time as the hip roll, and they would be at opposite ends of their circles (front vs. back, left vs. right, etc.).
3. Old man roll. The old man roll will show you how to travel with rolls from side to side. This video shows how to do the roll. Sorry, no translation for Chinese, but the breakdown is pretty easy to figure out.
4. Continuous rolls. Once you are able to connect the rolls smoothly, practice having an endless succession of connecting rolls. Here is a video of the exercise.

As always, practice with a mirror and a camera if possible when you are getting your form down. I can speak from experience that feeling like you are doing the technique properly is way different from actually doing it properly.