Art Post: Dance and Animation

Hello everyone.

For today’s post, I want to mention something important about animation: the contribution of dance. My animation muscles haven’t been used in a long time, so I am also giving myself a little nudge to start working on it again.

Dance inspiration and reference seems to play a big role in animation. But it’s funny: even after learning from (carefully selected) online resources for several years, I never heard about this. I only learned this information from lessons at an online animation class taught by an animation professional at a local art school that offered night classes.

At first, I thought, “Huh. Dance, huh?” Then it hit me just how important movement, true love/passion/soulfulness/understanding towards movement, is to animation and art in general. I’m a clunky person, not much of a dancer, so this was a blind spot for me that never intuitively clicked like some art things do.

It’s funny. It’s crazy how much information is out there, but how difficult it is to find knowledge or a teacher. It’s almost worse, because you are getting only a fraction of the information. But it’s not put together, soulless, discombobulated, untrue, or misleading. And there is so much that hurts your confidence for no good reason. It’s unnerving to think about.

I still don’t know a lot yet about the contribution of dance to animation. But I think the best way to understand will be to do it.

Hmmm... What sort of dance should I take inspiration from? Right now, I am feeling something more conservative and classic. What would be a good find?

How about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?

Thank you for reading! It was a pleasure to share what I know, although I don’t know too too much.

Asya