For Omari Wiles, Teaching Musicality Is About the Rhythm, Not the Counts
For many teachers, the counts of a song are the starting place for developing students’ relationship to the music. But not for Omari Wiles, Founding Father of the legendary vogueing house, House of NiNa Oricci, and founder of the Les Ballet AFRIK company. He prefers to start by encouraging dancers to feel the rhythm of a song instead of “drilling a bunch of numbers into their heads,” as he describes it. “When I’m teaching, it’s about understanding the music first, instead of ‘This is what we’re going to do to this music.’”