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Dance Improvisation Tips and Activities for Advanced Dancers
Why is improvisation important for advanced dancers? It is increasingly important for...
Recommended Reading: Books on Choreography and Creative Practice
Igniting your creative spark As choreographers, it can be easy to feel burnout or bored...
Dance Improvisation Tips and Activities for Advanced Dancers
It is increasingly important for dancers of all levels and dance styles to be skilled in dance improvisation, as it has exploded in popularity throughout the dance industry in recent years. Dancers – especially advanced students who want to have a professional career – need to be comfortable with improvisation. This blog post features tips for teaching improvisation to advanced dancers, and dance improvisation exercises to use with them in class.
8 Things Your Dance Students Need to Hear From You Right Now
The way we speak to our students can make a big difference in how they think about themselves. They internalize our words, and it can often become part of their own inner monologue. That self-talk becomes extremely important, as it helps them define who they are and their relationship to dance. Choosing the right things to say – about our students’ bodies, appearance, and dancing – can be crucial to their overall feel-being. In this blog post, I will share 8 phrases that should become part of how you talk to your dance students at this point in time, or whenever they are facing challenges in their dance training or personal life. These phrases can have a big impact on your students’ well-being, especially when combined with a conscious approach to our language overall.
4 Creative Ways to Use Dance Improvisation in Technique Class
In a perfect world, all students would have a stand alone dance improvisation class every week. Of course, that is not always possible, as much as I might wish it was! Most students are introduced to improvisation during their dance technique classes. In this blog post, I’ll show you 4 creative ways to integrate improvisation into your dance technique classes, to help students develop their improvisational prowess alongside their technique skills.
Dancers’ Wisdom: Service is Love in Action
I did something that felt a little bit radical back in January: I bought a day planner. Yes, even in the midst of the continued uncertainty of these "pandemic times," I stepped out in faith and spent $25 on a fancy calendar. Things are returning to normal-ish here in...
A Letter to My Dance Students
Hi, it’s me. Your Dance Teacher. As I’m writing this, it’s February of 2021 – but no matter when you are reading it, know that the sentiment remains the same. Maybe it’s been a while since we’ve seen one another face to face in the dance studio like old times. Even if we have been fortunate to gather for in-person classes, you may not remember what my smile looks like behind the face mask. But, I want to assure that it’s still there – beaming ever more brightly every time we dance together, whether it’s in the studio or online. Because, and I mean this with all my heart, I am just so darn proud of you.
Dancers’ Wisdom: The Only Way To Do It, Is to Do It
We are 15 days into the new year, and I've already found my mantra for 2021: "The only way to do it, is to do it." This quote from Merce Cunningham has been on my mind often in the last two weeks .... When I sat down to write lesson plans, and got caught in a...
How to Motivate Your Dance Students in Difficult Times
Even beyond the strange events of the 2020s thus far, there are times when students are unmotivated for a variety of reasons. They may be going through a difficult time at school, having trouble with friends, facing romantic disappointments, or be burdened by family issues. For us on the other side of adolescence, it might be tempting to write these struggles off. We lived through them, and so will our students, right? That may be true, but giving our students some extra support when they are going through difficult times for any reason can go a long way in helping them feel motivated to succeed in their dance training. In this blog post, I will share six strategies for motivating your dance students, no matter what difficult times they may be facing!
5 Ways to Achieve Your Dance Goals
Having visionary dance goals – along with a realistic plan to achieve them – is vital for dancers of all ages and at every stage of their careers. Dance is hard work – there is no way around that! Dance training can be tedious, strenuous, and require lots of sacrifice. You often have to deal with rejection, frustration, and imposter syndrome, and can easily experience burnout and fatigue. Goal-setting can keep you motivated and making process, even when things get challenging or overwhelming. In this blog post, I’ll share 5 ways that you can achieve your dance goals, no matter what they are.
Dance is/as Protest: A Protest Dance Activity to Use in Your Classes
I believe that dance is the ultimate form of protest, especially in our modern world. In a world that seems to unfold behind screens, dance is conscious physical embodiment. In a world that seems increasingly isolated in spite of our digital access to one another, dance is meaningful connection. In a world that seems to hide behind filters and photoshop, dance is raw. In a world that loves the 20-second soundbite, dance is persistent and eternal. In a world that is always looking to what is new, dance is primal and innate. In a world that seems to encourage division and disagreement, dance is universal. In a world that only sees in black and white, dance is vibrant. In a world that forces yes or no, dance holds and honors multiple perspectives, voices, and modes of thinking, moving, and being. This Protest Dance unit is a great way to tackle important issues through dance education. It works well in middle and high school programs, college dance appreciation, history, and culture courses, and conservatory style choreography and composition classes.
3 Simple Interactive Dance History Lessons
These interactive dance history lessons will help your students understand and appreciate a little bit of the rich, complex, and nuanced history of the art of dance. They are designed to help students learn more about important time periods, figures, or masterworks in dance, and also to think about how dance history can relate to what they know of dance today. Students will watch, move, create, and discuss as they complete the activities in each lesson.They are specific to the dance genres I teach: ballet, jazz, and modern, but I believe that you could adapt the main idea of each to other dance styles. They can be used in dance technique classes, dance history classes, or dance appreciation classes with students of all skill levels.
Why We Still Need to Dance – Even If It’s Online
Like author Alice Walker, I believe that “hard times require furious dancing.” I have written, time and time again, that dance has the potential to empower individuals, unite communities, and be a force for good in the world. But when I first learned that schools and...
5 Dance Activities to Support Your Students’ Emotional Health
Now more than ever, with the world recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and an uncertain future before us, it is critical that we address our dance students’ emotional health in their dance training. As we continue to navigate the effects of the pandemic, our students are likely experiencing lingering feelings of fear, anxiety, and a major sense of disruption. Some will be facing additional trauma at home, having struggled immensely without the safe zones of school or the studio or dealing with loss of loved ones during the pandemic. Right now, all of our dance students need us to support their emotional health by using dance to provide tools for coping and resiliency, far more than they need technique exercises or choreography drills. This blog post features five dance activities that will support our dance students’ emotional health.
21 Choreography Adventures to Foster Resiliency
This series of choreography prompts, affectionately known as #ChoreographyAdventures, are designed with resilience in mind. It is my hope that these prompts for choreography or improvisation remind you how incredibly persistent, empowered, and amazing you are. I invite you to share them with your students and use the questions provided to engage them in discussions of grit, determination, and hope for better days to come.
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