General Liquid Advice


-  step number one is actually believing that you are manipulating some unseen force or energy or whatever you want to call it. If you play along with this idea, you will notice that your mind will feel more free to create and just have fun with it opposed to thinking of what move you want to do next.

- With liquid, you want to cover a lot of area. Liquid does not look very impressive when it is confined to a small space in front your torso. As mentioned in the lpc instructional, bringing your elbows away from sides is where it starts. I find that running strait liquid patterns horizontally across the entire length of the body is a good way to open up your liquid. 
    One thing that helps me expand my liquid; is picturing that I am in a 3 dimensional sphere, and from the point I am standing at I need to bring my liquid to all areas of the sphere.  to my left side, to my right, above my head, diagonally across my body, in front of me, ect ect ect.
And By trying to hit all these different areas you will not only be making the overall look if your liquid better you will be learning new ways to get from point a to point b. New ways to angle your wrists and elbows... which brings me to my next point, and possibly the best practice tip I could give someone.

 - The time that I progressed the most with liquid, was when I was practicing my liquid at half speed or even slower most of the time. If you slow your flow down and really dissect it, I mean really analyze it. You can stop in the middle of a movement and say, "Hey, instead of turning my wrist like this all the time, I could take my liquid over here by doing this instead. And with that one idea, that one second of thought, you may just knocked a wall with your liquid that you would have taken you months hadn't you stopped and looked at your liquid long enough to figure out how to have more then one way to get from point A to point B.

  - Keeping the thumbs tucked in helps me maintain the illusion better in most cases. its really as simple as that, tuck the thumbs while you do your liquid and see how it works for you.

  -  My favorite tip, the one I still think about the most. Tension control.  I find using heavy amounts of tension through-out my upper body helps my maintain the illusion better when im doing certain things. For instance, with rails or any rigid pattern or shape your trying create, tension will help. keep those muscles slightly flexed. (forearms, biceps, triceps, and pecs) The amount of tension you need to use to pull off certain things will vary, and as you get better with liquid, tension control and speed control will be two things you will be playing with alot.
Video example:


  - By altering the speed of your liquid  you can really bring up your level of musicality. maintain a consistent speed with your liquid but if it makes sense to slow it down or speed it up for a short period to match the music, then go for it!
Video example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCg3ujLHRdg

yea the whole story telling ideas and improv our basic needs of performing arts. its vital to have these in order to "create" and have that element of surprise rocky speaks of. ive seen dope lockers do the same blow up moves over and over. what if you are there best friend and see them do it 45 times, not so exciting anymore huh? but when you watch a dancer going off with the music, creating on the spot, thats more impressive i believe.

i understand your wish for power, but as ive said sooooo many times - there is going to be things your already good at, and things you arent so good at. by spending time on those things you arent, you are shaping yourself more rounded BUT dont forget you are losing vital time on that thing you were already good at, and could be excelling and really standing out and known to everyone as "that guy who...."

you can break it down to styles of dance, or elements of a dance.

do i wanna be that guy who has decent digitz, locking, tuts, vogue, waving and popping?
or do i wanna be that guy who is freakin crazy at locking!

do i want to have power, speed control, mimelocks, flexability, character, foundation, etc.
or that guy known to everyone with the crazy flexy arm style?
the first sounds great dont get me wrong. but what cost will you pay for it? how old are you gonna be till you finally get there? and will you still be able to do it all when you do get there? even those who do this as a living dont have "everything"

these comparisons dont have anything to do with development of ego so dont bring it there (KAI). it has to do with studying the hell out of something and truely having an understanding of it

just food for thought yejoon. your a close friend and partner so the influence that gets me moving i thought would get you too.

Talking to kai today, I suggested that we start doing an unofficial weekly thread relating to some aspect of liquid, digitz, and the surrounding community which forces people to think and evolve. ?So, I am hoping that this will be the first of many weekly threads that will involve both older and younger members of the community. ?The goal here is not to come to a right or wrong answer. ?In fact, there really is no answer. ?The goal is to collaborate intelligently and push our dance forward. ?We do not have the luxury of a wide variety of OGs to help inform of us what people have already done. ?Furthermore, liquid is so conceptually vague that even if two people practice liquid founded on the same basic principle there is a good chance that their liquid does not look even remotely the same. ?In fact, there is no sense in looking the same since there are so many things that have not been done. ?So, once again, the goal here is to find as many different basic principles upon which one can build their conceptual interpretation of liquid and a person who serves as a good example of this style if possible. ?And if you have one, which to the best of your knowledge, has not been explored by anyone, list it.

LPC style - The majority of us here practice liquid based on the notion that one hand follows the other and that hand flow turns itself over in a looping fashion from time to time whether to repeat the same patterns or not. ?Typically, one hand effects the other and at all times the watery look of flow is maintained. ?Examples: LPE, fu, frequency

Pantomime based liquid - Tinylove is perhaps the quintessential example of what this is. ?liquid is the hands and nothing more. ?the arms and elbows do not play as large a role as in the LPC style of liquid. ?Also, since the liquid appears mime based the actions within the flow itself deal alot more with the manipulation of objects. ?Perhaps this is where builds first originated or maybe the liquid originated out of mimes building things. ?who knows, i don't but it's an interesting thought.

Digitz based liquid - Code Red is no doubt the best example of this particular take on liquid. ?The focus is obviously placed upon the fingers and as a result, the patterns tend to be smaller in scale and more intricate. ?

Geometric liquid - ?The idea here is that your liquid is based on the notion of shapes. ?Any means can be used to portray and manipulate yourself and your flow within that construct. ?Obviously, at this point in time, those of us who practice this style (me, kai, and yejoon) depend largely on the concept of folds introduced to us by lucas. ?However it is my hope that we will expand the ideas within this style and will no longer rely so heavily upon folds or perhaps come up with new and inventive variations on the fold.

Connector Style - This idea was first introduced to me by Shane aka Shenchi. ?He explained it to me by saying that i should imagine my hand flow connecting both directly and indirectly to parts of my body. ?Then, as my hand flow travels it should effect those parts of my body to which it is connected. ?The fucked up part is that the connections are continually changing and thus all parts of the body are moving in different directions alot. ?One might consider the notions of robotics, puppets, and polarity when addressing this particular style. ?You'll have to ask him to elaborate more on this personally as I pretty much suck at it.

Dual Railz Style - Alright, this is one of my originals. ?I'm saying that simply because no one told me about it before i thought of doing it. ?In this particular style of liquid, each of your hands follows and flows along an independent pathway yet maintains some sort of relationship to the opposing hand. ?To pull off the illusions that paths must be primarily asymetrical as symetrical pathways will simply look like a mirror (the concept). ?The difficulty comes in when trying to move both hands at the same time versus simply alternating between them. ?I hate to be so vague in describing this style but i'm still trying to understand it myself. ?Regardless, this is supposed to be about throwing out new ideas and I will certainly add more when i have a chance.  as far as an example, uhh, i guess come find me.  i've only shown a couple people bits and pieces of it. 

This post is incomplete and I will add more to this when i get the oppurtunity....

Just taking a swing at this...I am no break-dancer, however I will relate what I'm trying to say directly to breakdancing...  Everyone can six-step...Everyone can top-rock...But, this style has had time to expand upon concepts and diversify a little.  So, the fundamentals are always present, but the styles and techs always form a little different.  Give liquid time and I'm sure it could happen.  It might be happening now...the point is I really like the idea of this thread, very intriguing.  Positivity~Plus

Explosive Style:(no one cares how I came about this because It has assumingly been done by many a liquid disciples)...Anyway...this form of liquid relys mainly on speed shifts and continuity of your flow.  As per the music, when rising action is occuring or a climax of some kind (I listen to a lot of drum and bass, so you can imagine) you actively change you speed.  So if you were moving one unit of distance per beat, you could maximize it to two, three, or four units of distance per beat.  You alternate between these slow patterns of flow, to the same pattern with the speed shift applyed.  Anyway...the effect whether or not I was acurate in my explanation is that of a re ocurring explosion.  Some patterns repeated give it the effect of a super nova exploding and collapseing on itself.  IF that explanation does not do the trick, ask for clarification.  I think it is a cool concept at the very least...

Axis Digits...I perform these mostly during rails or along the axis points of my flow.  Basicly, I flare my fingers in a spiraling patten toward whatever direction I am shifting to.  This just gives a little spice to an otherwize standard rail or flow..

My assumption is that everyone in the forum could contribute something of value...Hope mine are acceptable...if not i have more...
LIMITLESS LIQUID...what a cool concept

~Prim

The following would be from my own observations:

LPE's style of liquid - it's sort of orbital, but it revolves around dancing with the illusion of the flow. What it lacks in intricacy it makes up for in character and dynamics.

Fu/Freq's technical liquid - Here the illusion of the flow is the focus rather than the dancing around the illusion. Lots of rails and such, and has the opposite strengths and weaknesses as LPE's style.

Digital Liquid - What most new school liquid heads seem to be on these days. It seems everyone does a variation of it, including LPE, Fu, and Freq, but I think this style is exemplified by Code Red (go figure). The new school liquid heads more or less take Fu and Freq's approach to liquid, but add more digitz. Red sometimes takes digitz, but adds more liquid simply by making his digitz cover more space. Digital Liquid is a telltale sign of LPC influence.

Folds/Geometric style - Described above by MKG. Started by Prime, evolved and passed down by Lucas Lock/Relic/Silly/Blunt Asshole. This is based on the folds concept, and looks very planar/structured/geometric/etc.

-The Melting pot.
The New Gen. knows this very well. As Many new heads start out there only contact with liquid is video, and well this board. So of course there style tends to form around what they see. Many try to mimic the videos they see leading to a mix match of the differet styles ( mainly the diffent styles of the lpc because as we all know when you first start out there all that exist to you ) Often in conversation i hear " my style is a mix of my own original stuff, Fu and Eric's styles" or " i see some eric influence in your liquid and maby a touch of frequency" So we get the melting pot. its like watching all your favorite lpc videos waterd down and crammed into one 3 minute video

Circuit Style Liquid

*note* this is more just a way of thinking about liquid then it is a style different from any other style.

In this "style", or perhaps more just a way of htinking about liquid, liquid manifests itself in its most logical form. ?This ties in with Geometric/Linear style liquid as MKG described above and is more of a way of breaking down what you're doing, when it happens, and how liquid changes. In this curcuit diagram, or any common circuit diagram, you'll notice lines. ?these lines represent a path in which current (electricity) flows. along the way, from the power source through the resistors, diodes, transformers, parallel circuits, loops, and steps, one should notice that the flow that was originally generated has changed. changed in intensity, in amplitude, ?in frequency, etc. ?Let your liquid be this flow, and the music be your diagram. let the beats and time signatures change your liquid just as the resistors and parallels of a circuit changes electricity. Make up wacky and/or intricate paths that have never been conceived. Its your dance afterall.

Martial Arts liquid is another substyle. As far as I've seen, it's best done by Itchy Ballz (HgItch), it's probably the most explosive style I've seen, not unlike a bad case of diarrhea. The way Itchy covers a huge amount of floor space doing his Kung Fu liquid is ridiculous.

Coo thread MKG :) ?hey Kai I had an idea simliar to your's, except using protein and DNA structures for paths of flow travel (I'm a bio/psych major... or at least I hope to finish ;-p). ?The difference I guess is that organic molecule structures require 'dancing around' the flow (almost 360 degrees) instead of the rail that one can hold in front of oneself. ?The problem I kind of ran into is that a lot of the times my back covers the flow when I'm stepping around it... anyone wanna help me out? ;) ?The bends and such in the molecules also make for fun ideas in digitz and such ;) so I guess this maybe constitutes as cookie-cutter style/circuit style? ?I guess in the end it's just guidelines for flow patterns... go buck wild- anything with real-world examples of 'lines' can fall into this style right?

yo mkg.... you did a very good job of descibing my connected liquid style... wich is still in development... i developed this style because i felt liquid seemed very limited in the way that it included the rest of the body and the way it moved the dancer or should i say that the dancer moved with it. alot of the leg movevements(if any ) were taken from popping. ie glides,slides.  i just felt that in order to really be dancing and using as much of the floor as i could and to incorporate the rest of the body there needed to be an expantion of the concept of where liquid could go... plus i felt that if liquid was going to be taken seriously, as a real dance it needed to stop borrowing so much from other dances and develop a more wholistic and inclusive process of logical progression. the idea is based on the concept that the body is not just divided by the right and left hemishpere but also a front and back, a up and down, and then the central hemispere or axis... the all inclusive hemisphere... then it is divided into smaller points or articulation. in other words the joints. and the major points of connection the hands... the hands and the connection they share i call the knot... now as the knot orbits it passes through the various hemisperes it developes a sympathetic connection with the various points of articulation and thus is joined in it's movements by these points... for example the knee is tied in the knot, then say the shoulder, or the hip and so on. the combinations are pretty various... also this connection exists not just verticaly and horizontally but also diagnally... now this comes most in handy when connecting your feet with your flow so that the flow moves the feet.. the invisable connection lifts the feet, it rotates the feet ,it sets the feet down .... so that the foot movements are directly connected to the flow this means that your feet are liquid too...infact the whole body is part of the flow... and thus not dependent on other dances for it's source of movement.... now i'm sharing this with people even though i'm still mastering it because i want to participate in the expansion of the comunity not so that people can take these concepts and claim they are theirs... one thing i've noticed in this community (and this may be due to a lack of og's and tangable creators) is that people
tend to take a move or a style and then never credit the person who either created it,influenced them, or showed it to them... if your doing something that you know is someone elses, or a style that you know isn't yours then please credit the person who either created it or who showed it to you.
if someone compliments me on say my digitz i always mention red and lucas cause most of what i learned is from them... maybe it's just me but it's just a matter of respect to those who came before you and who spent alot of time and thought coming up with and perfecting these concepts... respect for your elders as they say... this will also help to develop a seperation between the generations,and add too the richness of our culture... after all every culture or tribe has elders and inovators... without them there would be no dance to do and nothing to write about. i'm not saying that i don't want people using this style just give credit where credit is due, so that we can start writing our history wich has been (up until recently) vague and mysterious.