Photo by Annelise Tarnowski
Napoleon Douglas, Drake sophomore and Des Moines native is teaching students a new way to Move More at the Bell Center with a hip-hop dance class every Wednesday night.
Q:
Tell me about your hip-hop class and what you want to accomplish with it.
A:
So the premise of the class is that I have four dance routines lined up with a warm-up song and a closing song. So we stretch and everything at the beginning, and at the end, and I teach four shorter routines, and then I turn the music on, and we just keep repeating that routine. By that time, your body has been actively moving the whole time and you get the dance down. A lot of people like it because they get to learn new dance moves and get more comfortable in their own bodies. That’s what a lot of it is: being more comfortable in your own body, and getting a good work out.
Q:
How long have you been dancing?
A:
I have just been dancing my whole life. It started at my church when I was really, really young, they had pantomiming and stuff and when I was 6 years old I started pantomiming where I would make up these miming kind of dances to these gospel songs. I’ve always been a mover, and always been a music person. I’m a vocal performance major so I love to perform, I love to move. Every chance I got, I was copying dances, I was the captain of my dance team in high school and we went to state a couple of times. I was in Isiserettes where I started really digging into the musicality.
Q:
What is the best part, for you, in teaching this class?
A:
Just the amount of fun we have, honestly. You go in there and you see the biggest smiles on people’s faces. They just love it. I get to act goofy and people laugh at me, and we just have a great time. I think the interpersonal connection is just fun and people look forward to that every week and I’m glad that I can bring something to campus that people can enjoy. We have free facilities, so why not take advantage of them, and why not have fun while taking advantage of it.
Q:
Do students have to have any kind of dance experience to have fun in this class?
A:
Nope, absolutely not. I make it so that it is very instructional; so you follow me, do what I do. It’s a lot of preparation for me before. I have to know the routines. I have to know what’s going on before hand, so that I can just repeatedly do it. I have been a part-time choreographer for about five to six years now so I’ve been very in tact with teaching people at many different levels how to dance.
