How Do I get My charaters Animation Lifelike?

[BuddyB309]

This is my first year leading the team into animation. (sadly my team mainly consist of me, two guys who are dedicated to work on the robot and not the animation, and two other guys who have an interest in the program. ) So our teams entry is mainly focusing on animation. I want our characters movements to be lifelike (breathing, jumping, rigged hands, lip sync) But I did not ridge the character with a biped because it didn't fit and it wouldn't be that useful since my character is dancing.

So here is my dilemma, Lip sync looks excellent on my character but his movements seem robotic and rough. I've tried everything. I've even gone as far as taping myself doing the dance moves but I don't know how to get the video into the view port so I can match my movements to the character frame by frame. Any Help?