Giving students, teachers, and parents an edge in dance education
Dance teachers, have you ever had a great piece of music, but for some reason, your dancers’ timing just always seemed to be a little off? Armed with an iPod Touch or an iPhone, and an application (app) that costs less than $5, you can dial in the perfect tempo, matching your routines to your dancers’ ideal pacing.
How dance students feel, interpret, and react to competition, is often a reflection of how competition is perceived and valued at home. Learn how to discuss the purpose of competition with your child, encourage excellence and debrief after a competition, and offer unconditional positive support so that his/her experience is a healthy one.
Tornadoes can be deadly but there are a lot of things a teacher or dance studio owner can do to protect students in the event of severe weather. Nichelle’s husband Mark, an experienced meteorologist, makes his DA debut with severe weather advice and studio-specific ideas for following the D.U.C.K. rules of safety.
From fueling the body, to proving yourself from the back of the room, to the independent work required of a professional, Miami City Ballet’s Rebecca King recaps the lessons she’s learned in her five years of company life.
Dancers in particular burn many more calories and expend far more energy than the average person. In order to thrive, you need to learn how to prepare healthy, balanced meals that are specially formulated for your rigorous activity level. Learn about sources of complex carbohydrates, protein, and calcium, and take away a couple of quick recipes too.
Now widely accepted and taught in university dance programs, at first Kenneth Laws’ writings connecting physics and the art of dance were accused of “reducing ballet to a science.” Learn more about Laws, his late start in dance, and his books in this introductory post on his pioneering work in the dance field.
Dr. Renee Rothman, a dancer and cultural anthropologist, share 13 books that address the human meaning and experience of dancing in cultures throughout the world. Selected because they are easy for general audiences to read, these texts cover dance throughout history, Modern Dance, Jazz Dance, and Social Dance in America, Latin Dance, Middle Eastern Dance, and dance in China. Expand your dance library or your horizons with this reading list.
The multi-talented Adult Beginner pays us a visit again. AB is …umm… a ballet beginner who began as an adult, hence bypassing the costume chaos that most studio teachers, parents, and students associate with this time of year. However, as a professional costumey smarty-pants, I thought she’d have some super smart costume altering advice to share with us… I wasn’t disappointed and I don’t think you will be either!
Did you catch “I Sacrificed Everything for Ballet” in the March issue of Seventeen? Guest Melanie Doskocil helps balance the view with some straight talk about ballet training for a career, inviting readers to weigh in with their thoughts on sacrifice, crossing the line, and how to prevent the pitfalls of elite training.
If you are a parent with an aspiring dancer, nothing is more exciting for both of you than getting all the necessary apparel, including a first or new pair of ballet shoes. However, for little feet, it is very important to get the right shoes at the right price. Consider these 5 points before you buy ballet slippers for a young student.
Melanie Doskocil is the director of a busy ballet school. Stressed? How could she be stressed? Many of you can relate, I’m sure. In her first guest spot here on Dance Advantage, Melanie shares how she mistook her symptoms for something else and gives 10 manageable ways to restore your usual vim and vigor.
As Artistic Director of Ballet Memphis, Dorothy Gunther Pugh is one of only a handful of women at the helm of ballet companies in the United States, where leadership roles (particularly for large budget organizations) are primarily filled by men. In her contribution for Dance Advantage, Ms. Pugh addresses what she’s witnessed as a woman in the field and points out imbalances during the training years which discourage young women from looking beyond the corps and moving into leadership roles.
