Blog
A Letter to My Dance Students: Every Performance is a Gift
Dear Dance Students, Hi, it's me again - Your Dance Teacher. As I am writing this, we are at the...
12 Simple but Meaningful Self-Care Practices for Dance Teachers
What is meaningful self-care for dance teachers? Okay, I'll admit it: the term "self-care"...
12 Simple but Meaningful Self-Care Practices for Dance Teachers
This blog post features 12 simple but meaningful self-care practices for dance teachers that have the power to transform our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Meaningful self-care can help reduce our risk for career-ending injuries, help prevent the stress and frustration that leads to burn out, and helps us find more joy in what we do for a living. They may not be as glamorous as a spa day, but they are important and impactful! When we practice meaningful self-care, we are better able to care for our dance students, our families, and our communities.
Easy and Fun End of the Year Dance Class Activities
The end of the dance season is a perfect time to introduce some playful dance activities and games into your dance classes. In this blog post, you’ll find dance class games, designed for students age 7 and up, to help you celebrate the end of the year. They include dance games to review what was learned, seasonal dance games for spring and summer, prompts for dance improvisation and student choreography, dance history activities, and more! Help your students celebrate a great dance season, and get excited to register again next year, with these dance class games.
How to Overcome Choreography Block
This blog post features seven strategies to help choreographers overcome choreography block. Choreography block can look or feel different to everyone, but may include feeling stuck in your creative process, uninspired to choreograph, burned out, or more. These strategies can be used by choreographers of most dance genres, working in any dance environment, overcome choreographer’s block and reignite their creativity.
Embracing Creative Rest in the Dance Studio
Creative rest can help dance industry professionals reconnect with their bodies, relieve stress and tension, rejuvenate their teaching and creative practices, and reignite their passion for the art of dance. This blog post details what creative rest is and how it can be used in the dance studio. It also provides two creative rest activities that you can use in your own personal practice or with your dance students.
Dancers’ Wisdom: A life lived for purpose yields more joy than a life lived for pleasure
I'll admit it: I love creature comforts. Dinners out, spa days, hotel stays, flannel sheets in the winter, margaritas by the pool in the summer ... I'm here for it all. But I'm also deeply committed to my career in the arts, which of course does not exactly yield the...
5 Ways to Become a Better Dance Performer
If you would like to become a better dance performer, it is important to develop your skills in four aspects of dance performance: musicality, character development, connection, and expression. This blog post include strategies that will help you improve your skills in each of these areas, allowing you to become a better dance performer. Follow these tips to become the best dance performer you can be!
Recommended Reading: Jazz Dance Books
Find 8 must-read books on jazz dance that can transform in how you teach jazz dance! These books honor the Africanist roots and aesthetics of the form, while recognizing its evolution over time. Jazz dance students, teachers, and choreographers should add these book to their reading list.
Dancers’ Wisdom: Respond with More Grace Than Necessary (Especially to Yourself)
Somehow, we've made it to 2022. And unfortunately, we're somehow still ... here. In whatever this is. I think we all know, all too well, the myriad problems in the world right now - no need to elaborate, is there? But what we don't always seem to know is how to...
Simple Ways to Improve Your Dance Improvisation Skills
In this blog post, you’ll find 10 strategies for improving your dance improvisation skills. These strategies will help beginning dancers overcome anxiety or fear related to improvisation, and allow experienced improvisers to find more depth, specificity, and originality in their improvisation. Help your improvisation stand out by using these 10 strategies for improving your dance improv skills.
10 Choreography Adventures that Explore Social Justice Themes
This set of social justice themed Choreography Adventures are designed to help dancers deepen their understanding of some of the terms, themes, and concepts related to social justice issues, while also encouraging their creative growth and personal expression. These choreography prompts are great to incorporate into your personal creative practice as a choreographer, but you can also use with your students in dance composition, choreography, improvisation, or dance technique classes. The Choreography Adventures can be used as prompts for student informal choreography assignments, formal projects, or as dance improvisation prompts.
Simple Ways to Celebrate Fall in Your Dance Classes
Fall is, for sure, my favorite season – and I know I’m not the only one! Even here in Southern Arizona, there is a special magic to the fall season. The air becomes crisper, the nights cooler, and an overall feeling of coziness prevails…despite temperatures that still reach the high 80s on the regular! Our dance students pick up on the fall vibes, too. You can feel their excitement grow stronger and stronger as we slip into October. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah, and winter break start looming large in their minds. Planning some special fall dance activities in your classes is a great way to tap into their excitement and focus their energy, keeping them engaged and learning through the season.
8 Easy Ways to Make the Most of Back-to-Dance Season
The start of a new dance season is one of my favorite things in the world. The energy is electric and the possibilities feel endless. I love the potential that a fresh start holds: the potential for my students to meet their individual goals, for my class to come together as a community, and for myself to establish good habits that can preserve my work-like balance and reduce burnout later in the year. In celebration of the potential that the season holds, here are 8 of my favorite ways to make the most of back-to-dance season, along with tips and resources for implementing each in your dance classes.
Dancers’ Wisdom: The World Needs More You
One of my favorite things about being a dance teacher is helping my students develop their own creative expression through improvisation and choreography. My entire relationship to dance changed when I discovered these two artistic avenues, and I know first hand how...
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