Through the Locking Glass
Master teacher Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiñones, was a member of Soul Train, a founding member of The Lockers, has starred in film, Broadway and television, and has been called the “Bob Fosse of the Streets.” He has worked with such icons as Madonna, Bette Midler, Michael Jackson, Lionel Ritchie, Bill Cosby and Frank Sinatra. On top of being a star performer, Shabba-Doo has a unique approach to bringing the best out of his students.
Born to a Puerto Rican father and an Ethiopian mother, Shabba-Doo grew up in Chicago, and has been a dancer for as long as he can remember. "I got my dancing from James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and old tapes of the Nicolas Brothers, also old MGM movies with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly," Shabba-Doo says. "I used to perform during the holidays for aunts and uncles in our living room."
One of his earliest inspirations was the music he was exposed to as a child. “Growing up, I listened to a lot of James Brown and soul, and the Puerto Rican side would come in, and there were Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, salsa.” It was within this mixture of sounds that he first began experimenting with different styles of dancing, which eventually led him to his unique style.
Reflecting on his own life and career, Shabba-Doo admits he didn’t set out to become a performer. “I wasn’t supposed to have a dance career,” he says. But, through a series of events—including winning a dance contest with his sister—he fell into it, as one opportunity led to another. “The next five minutes can change your life. A lot of people think about where they are right now, and where they were yesterday, and don’t realize that we are all in a constant transition to the next step.”
So what does a typical class with Shabba-Doo look like? “I have a unique way of starting class, I think. Kids don’t just amble in and take their place. I don’t have to build their energy up. We start my class at a ‘10.’ If a class starts at 7:00, my class starts at 6:59—in the elevator! When I get into the classroom, I sort of give a soul dance party class, or what I call the ‘DNA of the hip hop dance culture.’ We start very high energy, there are no dance steps involved at this point. It’s about total kinetic energy; it’s about letting go, about a total release. People start screaming, stomping, writhing and wiggling on the floor, bouncing off the walls—it’s crazy!”
While most instructors will teach a routine to a particular song during class, Shabba-Doo insists that the most important thing a student gains from his class is learning how to move well, regardless of the steps or the music. “I have a methodology similar to what Bruce Lee says, which is to be like water—you can fill any container. That means going in without a pre-planned notion, to help people understand how their bodies work, how their technique works.”
Shabba-Doo avoids teaching choreography in his classes, and finds that only teaching choreography can be limiting to a student’s training. “Most kids rely a lot on choreography, but there is a problem with choreography. Can you imagine living your life like choreography? You wake up, and you know you are going to brush your teeth, but you only have 100 strokes. You only drink a certain amount of water that day. You can only take a certain amount of steps in that day. That would be choreographed, and that wouldn’t be living, would it?” Shabba-Doo asks.
“I empower dancers by giving them the technical tools to master a dance, a particular style, by teaching them in a more modular way. I don’t teach you to do four of these, then five of these, and hope they magically get it. Usually, choreography is taught to a particular [piece of] music, so they go out to an audition, and they can’t really do the choreography unless it fits that tempo or a similar song.”
It is this kind of flexibility that Shabba-Doo insists will lead his students to success. “If you want to be a professional in the entertainment industry, and you walk into an audition and the director or choreographer says, ‘Can you do this to a Country Western song?’ You had better be prepared to do what you do! But if you only learn choreography you couldn’t do that!”
He often jokes with his students about his methods. “If you come to my class looking for choreography, this class just got real expensive,” he tells them.
“That doesn’t mean that I don’t give them a specific technique or a specific form,” Shabba-Doo says. “What I do is introduce what are called ‘momentum and biomechanics’; there is a scientific approach to this as well. I reconcile science with spirituality. So at the end of the class, my kids often come to me and lay their heads against my chest and cry. There is lots of crying in my class. They are tears of pure joy, because they have never felt this way before. When you feel that release, there is nothing like it.”
One of his biggest challenges, Shabba-Doo claims, is his ongoing battle against narrow-mindedness in teaching. “When a person comes in and teaches a class and says, ‘Oh you can’t do that dance to this particular type of music. You can’t do this type of dance unless you wear this type of shoe.’” While he admits there are some forms that require stricter rules, he feels creativity and individuality should be embraced, not discouraged. “It stifles young dancers’ minds and prevents them from growing, if you tell them they can’t do a certain kind of dance.” Shabba-Doo instead focuses on the possibilities, and challenges his students to explore how they move, regardless of the music, phrasing, style or tempo.
One example of this is that Shabba-Doo will often pick music that doesn’t seem to fit with a locking style. One of his favorite ways to illustrate this is by asking his students to dance to the music from the popular classical piece “Little Swans (pas de quatre)” from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” He points out the rhythmic pattern, and how it can provide impetus for any movement style. Then, he has his students lock to the piece of music, as they discover the strong rhythmic qualities in the music. “The funk rhythm pattern—it’s always there no matter what song it is.”
Shabba-Doo prides himself on having a unique teaching style. He often challenges his students in unorthodox ways to get them to be more musical and more grounded. “I switch your listening and hearing ability. I challenge my students to hear with their eyes and see with their ears.” He has even been known to use a blindfold as a teaching tool. This can allow students to gain better understanding of their dancing, he says. “You see yourself with your inner eye. What that does is give students a strong sense of themselves and their musicality.”
Shabba-Doo emphasizes the importance of becoming more grounded and aware of the floor, another arena where the blindfold comes in handy. “I think the biggest problem with dancers today is how they move their feet. They are so unstable, like they are going to fall over! When you are blindfolded, you develop a really good relationship with the floor.”
Shabba-Doo’s most important goal in class, he says, is for students to leave with “a full sense” of themselves, both “physically and internally.” For students who are interested in a career in dance, he advises, “Don’t ever, ever forget how special dancing is, and how special you are in relationship to that… Never relinquish your power.”