Let’s face it, there comes a time in our dance teaching career when we feel totally and completely unmotivated to continue to dedicate time to dance or movement research. We understand it is absolutely vital to our students’ complete education, but we have 100 competition costumes that need rhinestones and detailing. There is no denying the fact that dance and movement research accelerates a student’s ability to pursue dance collegiately and professionally. The details of this research in our classes enables our dancers to fully engage their bodies in ways that are not only precise, but beneficial to the longevity of their dance career.
I get it though, you are exhausted. You wake up early to get all of your personal daily tasks out of the way, and YES, that includes your ability to go to the gym and take care of your body. Before you know it, here comes noon and you’re about to head to the studio. Right before heading out the door, maybe you’re going through some of your music choices for class or recital. Perhaps on the way to the studio you need to stop at the fabric store to pick up last minute pieces of material for Polly Mc Dollywaddle’s headpiece. TIME IS LIMITED. You teach until about nine/nine-thirty, get home, try to stuff your face with any last morsel of nutrients that happen to be in the fridge, dare I say it, even accidentally rolled onto the floor? There is no thirty second rule when you are a dance teacher.
I DO believe we can all agree that we have 5 minutes or are capable of waking up 5 minutes earlier to prepare for our classes.
If you have 5-10 minutes a day, you CAN use that time to dedicate to dance and movement research. My goal with this exercise is for dance teachers to engage in research 5-10 minutes a day for 10 days, that will be incorporated into their lessons for the following 3 weeks.
We all want to be the best teacher. We ALL want our students WINNING high PLATINUM awards. We all want to be the TOP STUDIO. If we didn’t, especially considering the wasteland of COVID regulations and restrictions, we wouldn’t be here today.
So here’s what you’re going to do:
Day 1: Look up a reputable dance tutorial website or channel
Day 2: Skim through posts, videos, articles, whatever peaks your interest and choose one
Day 3: Watch, Read, Listen to your choice
Day 4: Think about how this relates to muscular/movement awareness or how this ‘exercise’ is related to specific muscle groups or movement quality.
Day 5: Google search specific exercises for engaging the body in that particular way
Day 6: Learn the exercise
Day 7: Create a warm-up sequence that relates to the information from the previous days’ research
Day 8: Create a movement sequence or combo focusing on the previous days’ research
Day 9-10: Review all of your information
Day 11: GAME TIME!
Keep in mind this doesn’t have to just be for muscle awareness, it can be a specific style (i.e. Fosse, Graham, Balanchine, etc.) Don’t forget you are probably working with some other incredible teachers. Start a Google drive and share what you’ve done. Imagine within a group of 3 or 4 other dance teachers you can have 3-4 months of research to streamline your studio’s training.
The possibilities are endless!!! Let us know what you’ve come up with.
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