Why should you use play as a teaching method in the dance studio?
Incorporating play as a teaching method into the dance studio can have many benefits for your dance students. Play keeps dance students engaged in their learning, helps them to grow in dance technique, artistry, and social-emotional skills, creates a strong and supportive dance community in your classes, and fosters a lifelong love of dance for students. There are many unique ways to incorporate play and playful dance teaching methods into the dance studio, including gamification, dance games, imagination-based activities, creative movement and improvisation, story dances, experimentation, visualization and imagery, and races, challenges, and competitions. To learn more about using play as a teaching method in dance, check out this blog post: The Holistic Approach to Using Play in the Dance Studio
5 ways to use play in the dance studio
There are many ways to use play as a teaching method in the dance studio. We often incorporate play in the form of dance games as a reward for good behavior or as a time filler at the end of our dance classes. However, there is so much more to play as a teaching method in the dance studio! Through play, we can make meaningful connections with our dance students, facilitate team-building and team bonding, celebrate seasons and holidays, teach dance technique, and help dancers improve their artistry and performance quality. Discover more about each of these ways to use play as a teaching method in the dance studio below!
Use play to help you get to know your dance students
One of my favorite quotes is, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” (Side note: This quote has been attributed to many different people, with Margaret Tyson being a top contender for popularizing the saying.) One important way that we can show our dance students how much we care is by getting to know them. Learning about your dance students’ individual backgrounds, circumstances, needs, and goals can help us foster genuine connections that make the teaching and learning experience more effective. Try the get-to-know-you dance games in this blog post: My Favorite Introduction Games for Dance Classes.
Use play for team-building and team bonding in your dance classes
Play is a great way to help dance students make meaningful connections that will support their overall wellbeing and lead to lifelong friendships. Through team-building and team bonding dance games, we can build supportive communities in our dance classes, companies, and teams. Team-building dance games help dance students develop collaboration, communication, and creative skills as they work together to meet a shared challenge. Team bonding dance games help dance students get to know one another and develop strong, healthy relationships. Combined, team-building and team bonding activities can help dancers perform better together on-stage, get along better in class, and potentially prevent drama out of the dance studio. The Holistic Dance Teacher Team-Building & Team Bonding Dance Games and Activities Collection includes 8 fun, unique, and educational dance games that make it easy to facilitate team-building and team bonding in your dance classes.
Use play to help celebrate seasons and holidays
One of my favorite ways to use play in the dance studio is to celebrate seasons and holidays. Seasonal and holiday-themed dance games connect what dancers are doing in their dance classes with what they are experiencing outside the studio, making dance feel like a relevant and important part of their lives. They can keep dancers engaged in what they are learning and eager to keep coming back to class. Seasonal and holiday-themed dance games channel the extra energy dancers may be experiencing at exciting times of the year like Halloween and Valentine’s Day. You can find some of my favorite dance games for seasons and holidays in the Celebrate! Dance Games & Activities for Seasons & Holidays collection.
Use play to help dancers improve their dance technique
Playful teaching methods ensure that dancers remember what they are learning in their dance technique classes. Play can be a form of novelty – a break from the typical exercises and drills that we use to teach dance technique. When we use novel experiences in learning, we can activate the dancers’ dopamine system and speed up the learning process. Because of this, playful teaching methods are a great way to teach or review dance technique skills. Three of my favorite ways to use play to teach or review dance technique skills are:
- Exploring dance technique concepts, like head-tail connection, suspension, or plíe through improvisation
- Gamifying drills and exercises (learn more about gamification in dance at this blog post)
- Playing dance games that allow dancers to practice their dance technique skills, such as the ones in the Classics Reimagined: Dance Games & Activities Collection
Use play to help dancers improve their performance skills
Artistry, including dance performance skills, is an important part of The Holistic Approach to Dance Education. We believe that artistry can be taught and improved with practice. One way that we can teach artistry is through play. We can use story games and imagination-based activities to help dancers learn to embody a mood, emotion, or character in their performance. We can use visualization and imagery to help dancers explore movement qualities and textures. We can play dance games, like the ones in this blog post, to help our dancers develop performance skills related to musicality, facial expression, story-telling, and more.
Let’s connect!
- What are some of the ways that you use play as a teaching method in the dance studio? I’d love to learn from you … share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!
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