Dance Advantage Has a New Look

I’m very excited to unveil the new and improved Dance Advantage. There is still much to do and fix up around here and there is still more to come in the future but, this re-design is something that I’ve been wanting to accomplish for some time.

Some things you should know…

The articles and content are still here and at the same URL’s as before. Most of the changes have been cosmetic.

The enhanced navigational elements of this design are the feature that I’m most excited about.

• It seems a simple thing but, when you click on the Dance Advantage logo in the header, now you’ll be taken to the home page.
• Below the header are the primary navigation links which were at the top of the old design. Notice the fancy schmancy drop-down menus for subpages!
• Just beneath the main navigation bar are links to the blog’s major categories.
• The subcategories are accessible too! For instance in the “Toolbox,” you’ll find posts about performance, music, technique, and more!
• The home page now features boxes that display the most recent posts in three very important categories – For Students; For Teachers; For Parents. It’s all about you, after all!

Why is this so exciting?

Because Dance Advantage covers a wide-range of topics within dance education.

Previously visitors to the blog would see the most recent posts but had to dig deeper for posts that were directly related to their interests. For example, parents visiting the site may be looking for tips on finding a good studio or supporting their young dancer. If the most recent posts are geared to teachers or students, a parent, seeing nothing that pertains to them, will leave and miss relevant information. The navigational changes ultimately make the blog more user friendly for those looking for something specific.

So, if you are new to the blog, a recent subscriber, or just passing through. Feel free to explore!

I look forward to your thoughts and comments on the new design below.

Dance Adantage is Back

I sincerely apologize for the sudden “disappearance” of this site last Thursday. I set in motion on Wednesday what seemed like a simple process. In fact, I was not warned that this simple process would knock my site completely offline while it was completed. The task should not need to be performed again anytime soon, (thankfully). Thank you for your patience. It’s good to be back!

Featuring… Yours Truly

For those of you that don’t know, bloggers are pretty social creatures. Not only do we tend to communicate and “hang out” with others who blog about our subject, we have ample opportunity to meet (usually in a virtual sense) bloggers covering a wide variety of topics and representing regions all over the world. In fact, bloggers seek out these opportunities through reading and commenting on other blogs and through various social networking sites. We know that encouraging others strengthens this growing community and, in turn, strengthens our own place or role within that community.

A result of relationships formed online is getting the chance to interact with people and investigate subjects that you might not normally. And some bloggers take it upon themselves to facilitate this by occasionally opening their blogging home to others with guest posts, interviews, or features. I’ve recently been fortunate to share the spotlight at two different sites. You won’t find much about dance or dance classes at either blog, but you’ll find some interesting stuff there! Both are more personal in nature than Dance Advantage, filled with stories and reflections on the everyday and extraordinary aspects of life.

Below, you’ll find a little more about each blog and how I’ve come to appear there.

Citystreams

Citystreams is Cindy’s blogging home. After two years of medical school she dropped out and went on to become a high school teacher. She is also mother to a sweet little girl and the wife of a police officer. She writes about all of these things on her blog, which she says is “cheaper than therapy, easier than scrapbooking and helps me remember the millions of moments, that I would surely forget if I didn’t write them down.” I was first drawn to Cindy’s blog because of her obvious dedication to teaching and because her daughter is around the same age as my son. Recently, she invited other “Blogistas” to answer a few questions about themselves as if they were talking to an old friend they hadn’t seen since high school and I took the bait. It was a fun exercise and may give you a peek inside my life outside of Dance Advantage. Click on the image below to be swept downstream to Citystreams.

Middle Zone Musings

Middle Zone Musings is the blogging home of Robert, a fellow Houstonian whose last name is almost as difficult to spell as my own. Robert has an interesting life story with lots of twists and tuns, ups and downs. His posts are usually his own musings and life lessons delivered in a “down-home” writing style. Each month he hosts a group writing project called What I Learned From…, to which others can submit their own life lessons on a particular subject. As a project for the new year, Robert created a variation of What I Learned – a Blogapalooza, or blogging event that gives others a chance to reflect on their growth in the past year. Participants were to select one post from each month of 2008 and express what it is that they learned from each post/month. This year there are over 100 contributors with their very own guest spot on Middle Zone Musings (and there’s still time to participate). Again, I felt this was a fun exercise and a great opportunity to look back at my first year (well, eight months) of blogging. You can join me in the Middle Zone by clicking on the image below. Be sure to check out what others learned from 2008!

Your Turn?

I hope you enjoy these little diversions featuring yours truly. They were fun to do! In fact, even if you don’t have a blog, both of the exercises above offer great writing exercises for your journal or just because. Perhaps you could answer Cindy’s questions yourself or write your own mini-autobiography in a conversational style. Or, look back at 2008 and decide what you learned from each month in dance, or otherwise. It will teach you a lot about how much you’ve grown and changed over the years or over this past year.

I hope you are enjoying 2009! Thanks for spending a bit of here with me at Dance Advantage!

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Looking Back, Stepping Forward

I began Dance Advantage in April of 2008. It has been a great eight months and quite a learning process for me. When I began I knew next to nothing about blogs or blogging. This has been a year of learning, watching, reading, writing, trial-and-error, hard work, and TIME (lots of time)! I’ve tweaked the look and the layout of this blog. I’ve tried all kinds of social media forms. And I’ve gotten a really good response from readers and other bloggers. So, I’d like to take a moment to say thank you to a few people/websites that have been a great help.

Thank you!

Some folks that have been especially kind, helpful, and supportive…

Leslea at NJ Dancers and Uptown Dance

Suzanne at Dance Studio Owner

David at Movmnt Magazine

Nancy Wozny at Dancehunter

Angie at Blog Coach

Cammie at Stripes and Velour

Some sites and services that have been a great help along the way

Wordpress.com

ProBlogger

Twitter

BlogCatalog

Google

The Body Series/Dancing Smart Newsletter

My Tweeps and other dancebloggers

Selly at DanceOutlook

Tonya at Swan Lake Samba Girl

Deborah at Dance in Israel and DanceBloggers.com

Maria at A Time to Dance

M. Butterfly at Notes from Upstage Left

… the many others who have been kind enough to add Dance Advantage to their blogroll or links, most of them can be found on my blogroll (so please check it out).

And a huge THANK YOU to my readers!

Readership has increased over 300% since that first month of blogging. Dance Advantage has come a long way, and I recently published my 100th post! Just for fun, let’s look back at the most popular posts this year.

Top Five Posts for the Year

1. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Turnout (Part I)
2. What Is Modern Dance?
3. Creative Dance
4. Encouraging Boys to Dance
5. Improving Pirouettes

Goals for 2009

I have many goals for Dance Advantage but I thought I’d let you in on the biggest one. Plans are already in motion for making the switch from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org. For readers who have no idea, this means that I will have more control over the look and design of the blog, which will translate into a new look and layout, new features, options for navigating the posts, and more. I am very excited about this transition as I believe it will support my mission to provide a quality and useful resource for those involved in dance education.

If you are a regular reader of the blog, I encourage any suggestions or feedback that will improve this site. I’d love to hear from you!

To all of you visiting this, my first post in 2009, I want to wish you a wonderful, prosperous, and…

Misnomer Dance Theater LIVE on Dance Advantage Interactive

On December 14, at 8pm EST (7pm Central), Misnomer Dance Theater will be broadcasting their final performance of BEING TOGETHER online. This performance is  being presented at Joyce Soho in NYC and will include three new works, including Too Late Tulip, Rock. Paper. Flock., and Zipper, a show described by The New Yorker as “Wonderfully strange and unpredictable.” Misnomer was named one of the top ten dance performances for 2006 by The New York Times and as one of the “25 to Watch” for 2007 by Dance Magazine, and recently collaborated with Bjork on her video Wanderlust.

Swan Lake Samba girl recently reviewed the show on her blog, and says of choreographer Chris Elam’s work, “his movement language is so original, something I can’t say of many other choreographers… the creatures he creates can be funny, sad, pathetic, cute, always endearing.”

Here are some short video previews from Misnomer’s YouTube channel:

Good news regarding this special event…

On Dec. 14 you can pull up a computer, watch, and chat about this amazing event LIVE on the Dance Advantage companion network, Dance Advantage Interactive!

Events like this one are a wonderful opportunity for dance students to see live dance which they may not have the opportunity to see otherwise without leaving their own home. Misnomer’s work is accessible but highly creative and displays daring and inventive partnering work. I hope that you will tune in to witness this unique event and chat about your experience as it is happening. And, while you are there, I hope you will check out DA Interactive and join this new community of dancers, teachers, parents, and professionals.

I will be posting reminders on Twitter, so sign up to follow my “tweets.” To watch Misnomer Dance Theater on December 14 go to danceadvantage.ning.com. The show will be broadcast on the front page. Hope to “see” you there!

This performance is made possible, in part, by The Joyce Theater Foundation, which owns and operates Joyce SoHo. www.joyce.org.  Misnomer LIVE

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I hope all of you in the U.S. are having a happy holiday.

The holiday season is, of course, a busy one for everyone. I wanted to let everyone know that I will be taking a little break from writing new material for the blog until after the new year. In addition to my duties as a mom, which will keep me quite busy throughout this time, I have some other writing projects in the works, and I have decided that as the blog has grown I need use this time to organize my writing and posting habits. Streamlining my process will not only be beneficial for my home life, but allow me to bring you the best possible content here at Dance Advantage. From now until the New Year I will be doing some re-posting of older articles which may be new to readers who have recently discovered the blog, as well as sharing occassional news and events stories that may be of interest to you.

I will not be disappearing completely. You can still find me on Twitter and other places around the net.

To those of you in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, have a very happy holiday season.

Thank you for your readership and support of Dance Advantage. May you have a wonderful and prosperous new year!

How To Create Your Own Dance “Magazine”

Do you have favorite dance, news, or arts sites but forget to visit them and miss out when new stuff is added?

Did you know that you can receive automatic updates to your favorite blogs or news sites and even read them all in one place without having your inbox clogged with additional e-mails?

It’s true! It’s like having your own personal magazine including only the topics and sections you’ve handpicked.  As long as the site has a feed (and many do these days), you’re good to go!

Getting Started

I realize there are many people who don’t know about or understand how feeds work or what purpose they serve. If you are one of those people, here is a quick explanation that will guide you through the steps of adding your favorite sites to a feed aggregator.  Keep in mind, this is just one method using one of Google’s many gadgets, but it’s one of the easiest.  Here we go!

1. Go to the Google homepage and select More>Reader from the navigation list.
2. Create a free Google account and follow steps (or login if you already have one) and that’s pretty much it!
   ** this is not a gmail account but you can set up gmail with this google account
3. Now you just need to add subscriptions. There are a few ways to do this:

• If you know the web address or feed address just click Add Subscription and enter it in the box.  For example, enter http://danceadvantage.net/feed OR http://feeds.feedburner.com/danceadvantage and WHA-LA!, Dance Advantage’s latest updates are at your fingertips.  Click on a post title to read an article. Click on the arrow next to the title and it will even take you to the website so that you have access to all of the site’s articles and special features!
• You can find other sites that match your interests with the Discover link (next to Add Subscriptions).  Click on Browse and type in a keyword and it will lead you to new sites.
• If you are on a website you like, look for buttons or links that say “feed” or “subscribe” or “RSS”  or a symbol that looks like this:

• In some browsers, the above icon appears in the address bar at the top of your browser.  Clicking on these will typically lead you to a page where you can choose to add the feed to Google Reader. Once you’ve done this, the latest updates from the site will automatically appear in google reader.

You have lots of options for feed aggregators, but I use Google Reader because it is…

1. Free
2. Online, so I can access it from any computer, and
3. Because I already use other Google services.

I use a reader in general because it really is like creating my own personal magazine!  I am a dancer but also a mom and I have interests in a variety of subjects.  With a reader, I can view the latest in these topics all in one place.  I can check out news headlines, recipes, and articles from my favorite websites without having to visit them each individually.  For sites with content I don’t want to miss, it is way more efficient than ordinary bookmarking.

Need some more help?

I doubt you’ll need it. Honestly, Google Reader makes it pretty darn easy with tips to get you started. But you might also try reading Subscribing to Blogs 101 at one of my favorite “mommy blogs” SimpleMom.

Get Going!

Visiting the websites of your favorite dance companies and organizations, and subscribing to their blogs is a good way to start your “magazine.” Try the DA Blog Stars in the sidebar to the right or visit our Links page for more great dance resources.

Give it a try and don’t forget to add Dance Advantage to your subscriptions!!

E-mail Subscriptions

On a side note, if you are willing to invite Dance Advantage into your inbox. All you need to do is sign up for the DA Newsletter and the latest post will come straight to your inbox. Plus there are “subscriber-only” benefits as well. You can read more about that here.

Once again, thank you so much for reading! I love to read your comments on posts and hope that more of you will take advantage of this option. It is important to me to build an interactive site where people can not only read my thoughts, but respond and offer their own thoughts and ideas as well.  It will make us all more knowledgable about this passion we share – dance!

Leaps and Bounds: Dance Advantage is Growing

It is hard to believe that I began Dance Advantage just over six months ago!  Last April, the idea that had been loitering in my head became a living, breathing entity.  I had no idea where this blog would take me, how much time I would put into it, or if anyone would even read the darn thing!  My aim was to write about all of the things I never seem to have time to cover when teaching my classes, to pull together useful links and sites, to offer my knowledge of dance and share my passion.  My hope was that other teachers and dance students would take these things, apply them to their work and study, and share them with others.

As you can see from the chart above, Dance Advantage is growing!  More people are commenting and responding, and the number of hits this blog receives has been steadily rising.  I expect that it will continue to do so in October and beyond.  The numbers are nothing compared to many sites but I wanted to share this small success with those of you who regularly read the blog.

Using This Site to Your Advantage

Since I’m taking time out to talk about the blog itself, I’d like to point out some important features you may not be aware of. Read more

After the Storm – Evacuee No Longer

I want to briefly thank all who expressed their concern for myself and my family during and in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike which hit our area the Saturday before last. We were without power since that time until Monday and my internet service is now back up.  We spent over a week in Austin with family and are trying to readjust and reclaim some normalcy.  The Houston area is facing a long recovery and some are still without power.  We were truly fortunate to not have had damage to our home and to be able to return to life as it was.  Many have lost their homes and businesses due to the storm and my thoughts are with these folks as they attempt to put their lives back together. I hope you will keep them in your thoughts and prayers as well.  It has been encouraging to watch neighbors helping neighbors in the wake of uncertainty and loss.

I am sorry for the lack of posts during our time as evacuees.  I am playing catch-up and will resume posting as soon as possible.  Thanks for your continued readership and, if you are new to the blog, be sure to look back at previous posts you may have missed.  The category links make it easy to find topics of particular interest to you.  They can be found in the right-hand column under Quick Topics.  Also, try the keywords in the Tags section further down the page.

We don’t like Ike!

As most of you probably know, there is a hurricane approaching Houston (where I live) so I thought I’d do a quick update.  We have decided to weather the storm at home, 50 miles or so from the gulf coast. Our area will likely see high winds and rain from the storm which may result in some downed trees and power outages.  Ike will hit the coast around midnight, probably as a category 2 storm.  We have taken precautions and have provisions for a few days.  If it looks as though outages will be long-term then we have made arrangements to head northward and stay with family members elsewhere. Read more

Thanks for a successful Teach-a-thon!

Thanks so much, everyone,

for your participation and for reading! Students, I hope that you discoverd some fresh information that you can take with you into the new school year. If there is something that really hit home, something that you would have liked to have seen here, or you just want to say “hello,” please take a moment to leave a comment.

I would like to thank all of the wonderful dance bloggers who took the time to write or add their work to the listing. There are some really wonderful and generous people within this community and I am so glad to have “met” all of you.

In case you missed any of them, here are the links again.

Organize Your Life and Nurture Your Spirit: Dianne from Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes offers tips on dancewear, visualization, journaling, and getting back into class!

Scholarships for Dancers: Heading to college? Seniors, now is the time to start working on applications for school and financial aid. DanceHere offers great advice!

Strengths and Weaknesses: Everyone has them. Here are some tips and encouragement as you attempt to master your strengths and overcome your weaknesses!

Sarah at What a Wonderful World! writes about one of her favorite belly dance students. A heartwarming reminder that you’re never too old to learn something new!

Challenges In Professional Dance: DanceHere offers the first in a series about dance careers. If you are thinking about a career as a professional dancer, don’t miss this post!

Why The Competition?: A post about the reasons dancers compete. Carl, a lindy hopper, competes in partner dancing but his post is applicable to all forms of competitive dance.

Start The Year Off Right: Leslea, assistant director at Uptown Dance shares with students how to be prepared and productive in the coming year of classes. Written as though you were right there in her classroom, she hits all the highlights of the first month of classes.

Jobs in Dance Companies: Considering or researching a career in dance? Performing professionally is not the only option open to dancers. Check out this post from DanceHere.

What to expect from your first ballet class: If you are taking ballet for the first time, Selly from Dance Outlook offers a thorough article on how to prepare and what to expect, complete with some great video.

Negativity: Could your complaining, insecurities, and negativity affect others in your dance class? My experience with a student whose negative attitude was turned around with positive reinforcement.

Careers for Dancers in Media and Communications: Continuing their series, DanceHere highlights careers in film, photography, and more that combine an interest in or knowledge of dance.

Improve Dance With Your Eyes Closed: Sanna, a performance specialist who blogs with dancer, Janie at DanceMind, expresses the importance of sleep for dancers who want to be at their best.

Vertically Challenged: My own tips and suggestions for improving your technique, height, landing, and musicality in vertical jumping (or, sauté).

Additional posts for students can be found under the “for students” category!

Thanks again!

The Back-to-School Teach-a-thon is here!!

Read more

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