Month by Month: March

March is also Women’s History Month so this is a great opportunity to educate your students with a little history lesson. Introduce through books, film, photos, or words, dance visionaries and groundbreakers like Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Martha Graham, Maria Tallchief, Anna Pavlova, Janet Collins, Eleanor Powell… and so so so many others!

Teaching Tap Improvisation: Exercises for Beginners

Begin with a very structured 4/4 song that does not have any strange segues or extra measures. Have all students beat their hands on their legs, clap or snap to the beat. Continue their time keeping, but have them now count out loud – “1..2..3..4″. Be sure you do not have them count “5..6..7..8″. This is a cardinal sin in the music world, as you’ll find out if you dance with live musicians! Explain to your students that each set of four counts is a measure, or a bar. I often use this with my elementary students who are learning addition and/or multiplication.

Five Ways Postmodern Principles Can Positively Impact Your Studio

The exposure to postmodern principles and technique has so positively affected my experience with both commercial dance and concert dance that I would recommend that studios add it to their course roster. Young dancers who gain an early exposure to the world of post modern dance are only at an advantage in today’s competitive dance market. It will prepare them for careers as professional dancers or for success in a college dance department. The reality is that modern dance principles are gaining popularity throughout the dance world.

Relearning and Reinforcing Body Integration

Movement is a layered experience. We develop movement patterns and then continue to relearn them as we get older. Babies learn to crawl, developing the spiral and then relearn and master it as they walk and then run.

S.T.E.P. Your Way To Social Media Success

Social media is about making connections. One of the things we do with our dance studio fan page is to post about local theatre productions and community events. Why? Because we know that the hours of dance lessons that our young dancers have has a potential impact on local theater. We want to spread goodwill to our sister arts organizations. See yourself as part of the thread woven between your arts community.

Teacher’s Top Three: Music for Adult Ballet

“Finding good ballet class music is so difficult. I am hard to please, and I want the music I choose to inspire my students, not just provide accompaniment. To that end, I have gone through a lot of CDs searching for ones that have good length, sound and quality. I use these CDs for my intermediate adult ballet class.”

Maria Is Moving, Creating, Educating

I was immediately drawn to the material over at Move. Create. Educate for its emphasis on creative movement for young children and began interacting with Maria, the teacher and blogger behind it all.

Love is In the Air — Valentine’s Day At Your Studio

With the exception of ballroom or social dance schools, it’s not typically a holiday that gets much attention at dance studios… a candy heart here, a Valentine for the teacher there…
Why not make Valentine’s Day an event in your studio?
Here are a few lovely ideas!

A Prescription for Students Who’ve Skipped the Basics

If you are working with a group and finding that the students have missed some important information along the way, it is not too late to get back to basics and back on track. You can do so without making the students feel like they’ve been demoted to Dance 101.

Tap away those summertime blues…

Tap festivals are everywhere and are probably coming to a city near you! These fabulous wood-shedding events allow tap dancers of all ages, levels, and backgrounds to meet together and share in a non-judgmental and nurturing environment. Hoofers are honored at nearly every fest, giving young dancers exposure to the greats – the masters perform and teach in an intimate setting at most events.

From Page to Screen to Classroom

In 2004, Houston Dance Critic Molly Glentzer in her review of the book for Dance Magazine stated, “Li’s tenacity is an inspiring lesson to any reader, dancer or not. It’s the stuff of which great movies are made. Expect this one soon, and bring Kleenex. But read the book first.” A handful of years later, Li’s story is now a motion picture. It has already done well in Australia but unfortunately distribution in the U.S. is still speculative.

Space: Inside, Outside and Through

When I teach dance I always start with the concept of space. It doesn’t matter if I am teaching 3 year olds or 63 year olds, space to me is a blank canvas. And I want to teach my students how to fill it.

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