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Do you regularly see your students in the corner of the studio practicing pirouettes again and again (perhaps repeating the same mistakes)? Do they push to increase their turning ability but end up frustrated? Dancers dream of having the capacity to perform multiple turns with ease, but achieving this can be a struggle. Fortunately, there […]
A musical theater dance class used to be very easily defined. The style of movement incorporated specific nuances like outstretched fingers, isolations, and clean, long lines. Combinations often emulated the work of Bob Fosse or Jerome Robbins, or were always danced to the same rotation of well-known golden-age songs. But the landscape of movement on […]
To be a K–12 dance teacher is to be a master of time management, multitasking, and adaptability. Often teaching hundreds of students of all ages and skill levels every week for sometimes less than an hour at most, it’s a juggling act as you need to figure out what to fit into a 45-to-50-minute class. […]
When dance students specialize in a specific style, they often become accustomed to moving in specific ways. However, in today’s ever-diversifying dance landscape, dancers should expect to be asked to move with variety, often blending styles or switching between multiple genres over the course of a single work. Learning to shift weight is key to […]
In flamenco, the hands and fingers play many different roles. Clapping, snapping, body percussion, slower movements that complement fast footwork, and even playing an instrument are all tools of the trade, says Xianix Barrera, a Bessie-nominated flamenco dancer and the founder of Xianix Barrera Flamenco Company. Flamenco dancers also use their hands and fingers to […]
Nearly all the movement a dancer does comes from the spine. And yet, “a lot of dance training can prioritize legs, or port de bras, without addressing where those things stem from,” says Bret Easterling, who teaches Gaga and contemporary at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance. Not only is the spine “the trunk […]
In a spacious upstairs room in his San Francisco home, ballet teacher Christopher Lam gently holds on to an ironing board as he pliés, tendus and dégagés in his socks on the wood floor. He is leading students in a virtual ballet class on Zoom in light of the San Francisco Bay Area’s shelter-in-place order […]
Q: I have an 8-year-old student who is coming along quite nicely in her technique, but I’ve noticed that one foot doesn’t point as well as the other. What’s up? A: Your student may have an os trigonum problem, where a tiny chip of bone from the talus is getting caught in the joint. Initially, […]
Betsy Brandt gets more than a few questions about what, exactly, she offers the choreographers she works with—the likes of Jennifer Monson and Sara Hook, to name a couple. “I help people make dances,” she says simply about her role as dance dramaturg. “Sometimes, it’s like being their composition teacher—except they know more than me, […]
Have you ever looked at a student’s posture and said: “Close your ribs” or “Don’t grip your glutes” or “Use your abdominals more”? While that pinpointed correction may or may not have achieved the desired results in the moment, such phrases naturally raise a bigger question: “But how?” Not all verbal cues are equal to […]