For Students

Expecting a certain outcome puts your mind in a place and time other than the audition and you’ll need to have your head in the present tense to do well. Clear your mind and dance because you love dancing, not because of the pot of gold that may or may not be at the end of this rainbow.

Maybe you are a dance student who just loves to move at a fast pace and find it difficult to slow down. Perhaps you are eager to try the more advanced or faster version and don’t like it when your dance instructor holds you back.

Possibly it annoys you. You wonder what’s wrong with you or what’s wrong with your teacher that you have to work through things so slowly. Maybe you even begin to think he or she is just being mean or controlling.

“I once took six months off from ballet when I was 14. My school commitments were growing and it was becoming seriously difficult to juggle everything. It reaffirmed for me, however, that ballet was my one love and out of everything what I should have been doing.”

For Teachers/Studio Owners

Deb describes her own productive and exhilarating summer adventures as a participant in American Ballet Theater’s National Training Curriculum program in wonderful detail. “The Training is organized as week-long intensives; candidates are asked to obtain certification in Primary Level through Level 3 of the curriculum before being allowed to continue certification in Levels 4 and 5, and then 6, 7, and Partnering (taught as two separate intensives).”

To illustrate this, I ask my students to become aware of how their body feels as it works against gravity. I ask them to put their hands above their heads and then to be still. I remind them, “you are in charge of your body,” “your brain tells your body what to do,” and then we wait.

Instead of actual snapshots I’m sharing some of the thoughts and impressions I picked up along the yellow brick road. I hope you’ll use, think about, or act upon these little nuggets from the Dance Teacher Summit. I had a great time collecting them for you.