Teaching Tap Improvisation: Exercises for Beginners

After years of slightly embarrassing moments in front of peers and master teachers, I decided the time had come to develop a thorough improvisation syllabus based on advice from as many great hoofers as possible. I’ll be sharing some of that work with you. Here are the first exercises I present to my students.

Beginning Improvisation Exercises

(Appropriate for students of all ages and levels, unless otherwise noted)

Exercise 1: Group Nursery Rhymes

Goal: Get feet connected to brains, and get students moving!

Choose a song that everyone knows. My suggestion is “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for the first time you try this. Remind them that there are no rules except to dance one sound for each note in the song. Sometimes this will take more than one try, especially if you notice dancers adding extra sounds. Encourage them to leave space during the silence in the song.

If you have very young students (I start them at age 3 with this exercise), have them sing and dance at the same time. If you have intermediate dancers or adults, they can dance without singing.

Exercise 2: “Fancy Dancing”

Age/Level: Beginning Students, ages 3 to 7
Goal: Learn how to dance in an improv circle

All dancers begin in a circle. Choose a fun song that the kids can relate to, with a steady tempo and a good beat. One by one, dancers enter the circle and “show us their best moves” and dance as long as they want! Encourage them to do ANYTHING they want, not just tap dance. This gets them thinking about moving things other than their feet!

Exercise 3: Toes Only, Heels Only

Ages/Levels: Beginners of all ages
Goal: To eliminate the pressure to come up with impressive footwork when a beginner doesn’t have a big vocabulary

Once again, make a circle. You have two variations that you can try with this exercise, both of which help relax self-conscious beginners.

Variation A: Repeat Exercise 1 as a group, but using only toe drops or heel drops. This can also be done one at a time so they can hear their taps, though you’ll need to pay careful attention to their self-consciousness and be sure to encourage them!

Variation B (ages 6 and up): Have each student choose their own nursery rhyme and tap it out with toes or heels. Make the rest of them guess! This is challenging, but fun.

Exercise 4: Pass the Buck

Goal: To learn how to “pass” to the next person

All dancers begin in a circle. Choose a fun song with a steady tempo and a good beat. One by one, dancers either enter the circle (young kids and advanced dancers) or dance in place in the circle (ages 6 to adult) and “show us their best moves” and dance as long as they want! Encourage them to do ANYTHING they want, not just tap dance. This gets them thinking about moving things other than their feet!

When they are finished, they must gesture with a foot, hand or eye contact to the person they choose to go next. If the “passing” is too complicated for your little ones, you can verbally prompt them to pass it to someone, or simply progress one at a time around the circle.

Exercise 5: Bars, Meters & Counts

Goal: To create music awareness while dancing and practice structured improvisational trades around a circle

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. They love when they know the answer to “How many counts are in four measures?”

Once you have explained the concept of bars/measures and counts to them, try dancing four measures. If this is too tough, they can even use toes and heels like before. Have them help each other by counting out loud and holding up fingers for the number of measures that have passed. Everyone loves a little help from their friends!

Note: Remember that each student should begin on count 1 of their first measure and end on count 4 of their last. This will help with students transitions to one another. You can also require them to “pass the buck” once they’ve finished their turn.

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I hope these beginning exercises give you some ideas for your own classes, or even your own individual improvisation work. Let’s find that creative genius hidden inside your students (and maybe even you)!

For more information or to purchase a complete copy of the syllabus, please feel free to comment below or email me at sarah.mason@PennAcadArts.com.

Class Planning Part One: Developing a Curriculum Outline

When I visit forums or other areas online where dance teachers congregate, I find many questions regarding how to plan lessons and design curriculum. There are certainly a variety of methods for doing both and many teachers work from a codified syllabus. For those of you who may be searching for new ideas or needing some pointers in outlining your own lessons or program of study, I am sharing my methods for doing so.

Lesson Plans will be discussed in Part Two of this series.

Designing Curriculum

Approach for Young Children

There are many approaches to teaching young children, in all methods the objectives are generally the same: To introduce and practice age-appropriate movement skills, to prepare students for working and functioning within a classroom environment, and to instill a love of dance. Though it can vary, young children generally reach similar levels of motor skill, muscular, and cognitive development at or around the same time. If you are planning a curriculum for these younger age groups it is essential that you have some familiarity with childhood development. Pushing students to perform skills that are beyond their muscular control can damage their bodies.

Mastery Approach

After age six or seven, age-appropriateness on many levels is no longer as crucial (exceptions would be pointe work or other extreme physical activities prior to growth maturity, appropriateness of choreography and music subject matter). Instead, development is better measured through prerequisite skill mastery. Though advancement may occur at different speeds, a new student at 15 begins and progresses in much the same way a seven-year-old who is new to dance does. Designing a curriculum, then, becomes more about appropriate sequence of learning.

Moving Backward

When designing short-term curriculum, I generally work backward. In other words, I begin with the goal, the endpoint, the ideal, and then decide how to get there. If I am designing curriculum for a workshop the aims may be fewer and less grand than if I’m planning curriculum for a full year of study.

Let’s say one of my final goals is to present a dance, I try to decide which skills I’d like to include or which performance qualities I’d like to see, and give special attention to these in the classes leading up to the performance. In fact, for ease in preparation, I often create entire phrases or combinations of movement for class with the intent that these (or something very similar) will go directly into a final performance work. I do the same in lesson planning, making sure to include exercises featuring movements found in the final combination.

This backward method of planning is not that original. After all it is difficult to figure out how to get somewhere until you know where you are going. The whole idea may even seem obvious but it is a process that I’ve neglected myself at times (regretfully). If you’ve ever found yourself trying to pound a skill into your students and wondering why they are not improving, this is a good time to reassess your goals and determine if perhaps they’ve missed some key building blocks along the way!

To build curriculum for a class or course of study, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do I want the students to be able to do by the end of the year(s)/month/semester/session?
2. What skills are necessary to reach each of the above goals? (List them all, even obvious ones)
3. What skills must the students have familiarity with (if not mastery of) to accomplish these goals?

The above image contains samples of various goals. Your opinions and experiences may often dictate what is considered necessary, though some skills have inherent prerequisites.

Moving Forward

When I’m working on curriculum that spans multiple years of training, I often work in a more progressive manner, though the end goals are always in the back of my mind:

1. I list skills in the order I think they should be learned (including variations like facing barre, then one-hand on barre, then from 5th position, then in center, etc.)
2. Then, I place these skills in two columns, according to level: Essential and Overlap. Essential Skills are those requiring mastery in order to move on to the next level. Overlap Skills are those of which students are developing a working knowledge. Overlap usually appear in the Essential column of subsequent levels.

Abstract Skills

Some skills are more abstract than others (for instance musicality, performance quality, etc.) but I like to consider these when focusing on curriculum planning – setting a few goals in these areas which I will strive to incorporate into daily/weekly classes. I do this simply because I don’t want to forget them. They may seem obvious to me but not to a less experienced dancer. “They” say that certain things can’t be taught – but I believe even these less tangible skills can be improved through thoughtful practice and encouragement.

*These tables are not intended to be used as curriculum. They are just rough examples of how a chart might look. Your curriculum would be more thoroughly planned and would probably make more sense!

Have you ever designed your own curriculum? How did you go about it? Can you think of other methods or tips to share with readers?