How To Dance To Drum And Bass

Learning to dance to Drum and Bass is hard, here are some pointers to get your moves smoothed out.

 

Depending on where you are from there are a few ways in which people dance to Drum and Bass. You may not be overly familiar with the term x-outing and even less likely skank stepping, but these are both legitimate and practiced forms of dancing at a rave.

 

We’re pretty sure that most of you haven’t travelled to other countries to go to raves. However, that should change this summer as there are loads of amazing Drum and Bass festivals out there that are the next level of raving. The Amen Breaks team is doing its third consecutive year at Let It Roll in the Czech Republic. We may be a bit biased but it’s probably the best rave we’ve ever been to.

 

The Standard Rave

Go to any club night, UK festival or local event and you will see what is the most common sight in terms of dancing at a Drum and Bass night. Mostly people bopping in time to the beat with repetitive movements, slack shoulders and gun fingers at the ready for when a huge drop comes.

There isn’t much imagination when people dance to Drum and Bass, but that’s okay. It’s about just enjoying the music and having a good time. Releasing any tension you may have in your daily life, feeling the music and good vibes with your fellow ravers. Nobody really cares how you do it or how you look whilst you’re doing it. It’s simply about expressing yourself through the music.

 

Dancing To Drum and Bass In Europe

The Europeans take their Drum and Bass very seriously. Not only do they put on raves that are simply incredible, they put their heart and soul into the dance. It’s as common a sight to see flamboyant, technical and well rehearsed dance steps that leave those who aren’t used to seeing it in a state of awe.

You will mostly find this artistry from eastern European countries. It seems as though the further east you go, the better the dancing gets. People dedicate a large portion of time to learning and perfecting this mesmerizing way to dance to Drum and Bass. You can find numerous competitions, not only at festivals, but at well organised events where X-outing superstars perform.

 

So, what is this mysterious form of dancing?

 

X-Outing

It’s a bit hard to explain this as a definition. You can really only do a good job of describing this dance to Drum and Bass by comparing it to a more popular, and dare we say, an infinitely easier form of dance in the shuffle.

Fancy footwork is what could best describe the method of dancing with a heel-toe basis that literally keeps you on your toes. Bouncing back and forth between the two quickly leads into step overs, twists and other leg bending maneuvers.

 

There isn’t actually a great deal of literature on X-outing which makes it quite difficult to pinpoint any confirmed origin. The general consensus is that it was developed in Hungary and Russia. The disparity of location gives you an indication of how little we know about the origins. However, the fact that it’s widely practiced in Eastern Europe means that somewhere in that locale would be the correct guess.

What makes this type of dance to Drum and Bass remarkable is that it has been passed down in an almost completely video and visual format. There are plenty of forums that discuss this and a few websites that are running tutorials, but they inevitably fall back on a visual format to explain and demonstrate what they are talking about. Even we will add in a video to demonstrate what this is all about!

 

The Steps

There are only a few steps involved in X-outing, however a great deal of coordination needs to go into learning how to do these, especially if you have never tried this style of dance before.

 

• Learning Step
• Basic X-Step
• Front/Back Movement
• Leg Lift Movement

 

The Learning Step

Where the whole routine begins. This is kind of a static, backwards hop where by you lift which ever leg you want to start with and then hop your standing leg backwards, bringing the raised leg down with it. If it sounds a bit weird, it’s because it is. These are unusual movements but once you get the hang of them, quick repetition becomes easy. These are the simple learning steps when you learn to dance to Drum and Bass.

 

 

The Basic X-Step

Things immediately get more difficult now. Not content with mastering the basic movements, we now add in elements that, whilst are still on the basic side of things, make the movements and combinations a great deal more difficult.

The premise of the learning step applies here. It’s still a forward-back motion. The difference here is that the lead leg starts with the toes on the ground, heel raised and inverted towards the body. Upon sliding the standing leg back, the leading foot switches to the heel on the ground and the toes pointing up.

 

 

The Front Back Step

The next steps are a combination of the learning and X-step. They move a lot quicker and bring more energy to the dance movements you have just been putting into place. The front back step is where you alternate between the X-step and heal-toe motion of the learning step in a continuous fashion. It’s probably the hardest part of all of the moves but once mastered, enables you to throw down stepping combos however you please.

 

 

If you can successfully combine all of these things after reading this, then you are a better men than us! The whole Amen Breaks office have been giving this a go and come across as some demented Morris Dancers. Whilst funny to watch, is not so smooth at a rave…

 

The last of the beginners movements is the leg lift. Yes that’s right, these super hardcore dance moves are only the very beginnings of learning how to properly X-out.

 

The Leg Lift

This is the finishing move of any self respecting X-outer. Here you will combine all of the steps and add in a leg lift to bring some more dynamism into your dance style. The premise is simple. As with everything else we’ve covered so far, it’s actually not simple at all. You will throw down your basic learning step, straight into the X-out step and after planting the heel on the floor immediately lift the leg up so your knee is in the air whilst hopping on your standing foot. Sound hard? It is.

 

 

Far be it from us to give you advice on how to dance to Drum and Bass. We are quite happy with the standard rave, but if you fancy bring your raving game to the next level it’s totally worth checking out the plethora of videos online of how to master this incredibly difficult skill.

 

If none of what has been written above made any sense (and we have no doubt it doesn’t), then simply check out this video of how to get the basics down.