It’s easy to go into overwhelm at a conference like this–thinking, how can I absorb all this to bring back to my students (or in my case, to you as readers). A good strategy is to focus on one great thing each day. For my money, today that would be Leslie Walden of Illinois State University. She has created a jazz dance syllabus based on 20th Century American music to give her students a deeper understand of the form. “You can’t assume a 19-year-old knows that hip hop derived from jazz,” she said.

 

During the semester she covers:

 

Ragtime

Blues

Lindy Hop/Swing

Musical Theatre

Latin

Soul and R&B

Rock & Roll

Fusion

Disco

Hip Hop

 

The way it works is that she focuses on each style for a week or two. When the focus is ragtime, for instance, she’ll show the Charleston in the movie, “The Great Gatsby.” For the latin focus, she shows “West Side Story.” But the primary influence is the music. For ragtime for instance she’ll play Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and James Scott all through the class, from warm-up to combinations to cool down. She showed us a clip of “Jelly’s Last Jam,” and taught us two short combinations using latin and blues music to demonstate.

 

Later, NDA presented its 2009-10 National Educator of the Year awards to:

 

Woodside High School in Newport News, Virginia

 

Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia

 

Congratulations Mary Ann and Billie!