TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL: THE WAY DANCE INSTRUCTORS SEE STUDENTS

 Over the years, I’ve come to realize that for many dancers, the most anxiety-filled performances they’ll ever have  are those that are done in front of their teachers. Whether in class or on stage, the thought of performing in front of an instructor that is looked up to is often met with dread.

Oh, how clearly I remember the nauseating waves of pure horror that would engulf me when I spotted one of my teachers in the audience… or even when I was getting coached in a private lesson!  It took me a long while to realize that I wasn’t alone in this experience.  Many years later, after numerous conversations with professional dancers, I discovered that many of my peers- and even those who had instructed me- felt exactly the same. 

 For years, I’ve seen this neurotic –but extremely common- behavior rearing it’s head in my own classes…even though I do everything possible to make my students feel comfortable. But students still sometimes feel  nervous and uncomfortable when the teacher observes them.

During one workshop, the paranoia was so widespread among my students that as a last resort, I taught the rest of the class wearing a pair of sunglasses ... so none of the students would be able to tell who I was looking at!

In my classes I strive to provide a supportive atmosphere and make learning dance fun… and I’m not alone. Of course, there are as many teaching styles as there are teachers; some instructors are a little tougher or more blunt than others. And unfortunately, there are definitely a few crazies in our profession. But for the most part, pretty much all of the of the teachers I know – or have had the pleasure of learning from- feel the same way as I do about teaching!

 So I’m going to tell you a few things about the way we teachers view our students, and hope it will put your mind at ease next time you get nervous about having one of your instructors watch you during class or in performance.  Here goes:

 None of us were born great dancers, we all had to work for it- and work hard- for years, same as you! 

We really appreciate all of your hard work in class, during your extracurricular practice at home, and when you’re on stage.  We want you to succeed and become the best dancer you can possibly be!

 When we correct your technique in class or rehearsal, it’s not to make you feel bad, it’s for a particular reason.

Sometimes we want to make sure that you are dancing in a safe manner so you don’t hurt yourself.  Other times, we want to see that you’re getting the right feel down, finishing every movement, and performing to the best of your ability. As teachers, we want you to learn, and almost nothing is better for us than to see you understand and execute whatever we are teaching.

 There’s a reason the terms  Baby Dancer  and Dance Mamma  came into  use. 

Basically, we teachers see our students as our kids. Handing down our knowledge of the dance is like  continuing a family bloodline- we want  our family  to be healthy and strong in future generations!

We see  many of you “at birth”, we see you taking your first tentative steps- or shimmies, as the case may be! We teach you how to “talk” ( string single movements together into combinations)  and we “diaper” you by  giving you costuming hints!  Sometimes, we even deal with "teenage rebellion"- but that doesn't mean we don't still love you. We  just wanna raise you right!

  When we watch you in performance, we are not judging you.

 Even if we don’t know you very well, most of us can tell right away what level you’re at, and what you’re capable of at this specific moment in your dance training. And though it might surprise you, a lot of us can also see what you’ll be capable of in the future. We love to watch you grow and change, and we respect what you are doing- at any level. Remember that whatever you’re going through before or during a performance, be it pre-show jitters or dealing with onstage mishaps; we’ve all been there! Every one of us has had bad performances, and whether some of us will admit it or not, many of us have failed spectacularly onstage…and we don’t want that for you! We’re with you. We want you to shine.

Nothing makes us happier than seeing our students succeed!  

When we see our students run into the dressing room elated after their first performance, we feel the excitement. Later on, when you kill it onstage, win contests,  get gig offers, terrific reviews,  or start teaching  your own classes, it fills our hearts to a bursting point in a way that absolutely cannot be described to someone that hasn’t started teaching yet. Many of us get teary eyed and emotional.

 It’s a huge deal for us to see you do well; it means we that we did our job and did it well. Lots of of us have taught students that became our peers, or even surpassed us. Seriously, there is nothing better for a teacher than to know she’s had a hand in shaping the career of a phenomenal dancer.

 Feel a little better now?

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    My  brand new book, “The Belly Dance Handbook” is out!  Get a signed copy here:

http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm

  If you live outside of Los Angeles, you can still “attend” my book release party  and see all the performances  on Friday, Feb. 27, 2013- IT’S STREAMING LIVE  at 7:30 PM Pacific Standard Time at www.justin.tv/Iqaat

 If you happen to be in LA, you’re invited to this free event.

  Fri. Feb. 7, 2014, 7:30pm  at Studio Iqaat, 3515 Eagle Rock Blvd, LA CA 90039

GET MORE POWER FROM YOUR DANCING

 In the same way you service your car by getting an engine tune up, every so often it’s necessary for dancers to fine-tune our technique.  No matter what level you’re at, from newbie to professional take a little time every few months to make sure you’re not getting too complacent with your dancing. Going over the basic tenets of posture, weight placement and different types of technique will not only help you to become reacquainted with what you are doing, it will give you power that will make you a better dancer.

 Posture And Center Of Gravity

 No matter what kind of dancing you practice, there are certain guidelines for posture. The spine is elongated, the ribcage lifted, the shoulders are held back and down making a beautiful, long neckline. The pelvis is in neutral position achieved by pulling the tailbone slightly down towards the floor.

For belly dancing, we stand with equal weight placement from the balls to the heels.  Our knees are soft and pliable, with our feet and legs aligned just under our hips, without using ballet turnout, because this will inhibit the movements of the hips. For other types of dancing, a turnout may or may not be employed- this depends on your training and what sort of effect you’d like to achieve.

But no matter what genre of dance you’re performing, make sure you know where your center of gravity is. In ballet or jazz, the center of gravity is much higher than in belly dance, African dance, Hula or even burlesque dancing.

Be hyper-aware of your center of gravity, as it will dramatically change the quality of your movements.

Define Your Weight Placement

 Make sure you plant each foot firmly every time you set it down, even if it’s just for a few seconds.  Any hesitation with your weight placement could potentially throw your movement off…or just make it look not quite as awesome. Defined weight placement is absolutely necessary in quick footwork, especially for turns. Check your weight placement frequently, and you’ll start noticing a difference in the quality of your dancing really quickly.

Once you’re conscious of your weight placement, use the floor as a “launching pad” every time you take a step.   For belly dance especially, this is important because there are so many one-sided hip accents and flourishes happening all the time. These movements initiate from the knees or the feet; you can get much more power and definition from twists, circles, and upwards/downwards motions by grounding, or  quickly pushing off the floor with your foot.

 Check For Overcompensation

We all have a dominant or stronger side, and usually we need to drill more on that side to make things “even”- this is natural; it’s like being right or left handed. However, many of us favor our dominant sides…and let the stronger side do all the work! This leads to our bodies falling out of balance.

Once in a while, give your body the once-over and make sure that you are using both sides of your body fully.  If you aren’t, sometimes this might  be due to careless technique, but  it's more likely  that its a sign of weakness in a specific area. Especially if you have an old injury, you’ll notice that certain parts of your body- such as your spine, hips or leg muscles- are overcompensating in order to protect the injured   area.

 This is what usually leads to your body falling out of balance: some areas are really strong, while others remain much weaker.

 If you notice that you have spots that are fragile or not as strong as others, bite the bullet and get some professional training for strengthening and joint stabilization.

 Pilates has worked wonders for many dancers - including me! This form of exercise was designed for injury rehab as well as strengthening. But any sort of cross training can help you regain balance, just by using  muscles that you don’t use quite as often in your dancing. Try swimming, walking, running or Yoga-whatever-just take some time to cross train, you’ll be happy you did!

Finish Each Movement Fully

 Unfinished movements are common in baby dancers, who aren’t fully aware of their bodies in motion…but those of us with more experience are guilty of slightly sloppy too.  Sometimes we can tend to become too comfortable with ourselves and neglect to monitor our movements.

Check yourself for movement completion during drills in class or while you’re practicing at home.  Make sure you know exactly where each movement initiates and where it ends- even in fluid motions.

Check that your hip circles are actually circles, and not ovals, kidney bean shapes or open-ended- unless you are making it that way on purpose.

 Employ Muscular Resistance

 Give your movements more definition  and power by using muscular resistance. This requires strength and concentration at first, but will become second nature with practice.

Play with your muscular resistance when making full-body or limb-only movements, such as a languid sideways body wave or a utilizing a slow motion “dragging” effect with your arm pathways.

 For the legs, experiment with suspensions. A suspension is a long, slow lift, often made while rising up on the ball of the weighted foot. This looks great as a short pause at the beginning of a turn. Your weighted leg needs to be very strong and hyper-stable to achieve this effect.

You can also “punctuate” your hip technique by quickly tightening the muscles of your quads and glutes, or using the abdominal muscles for contractions and locks.

Open Your Chest For Beautiful Arm Work

  Standing with an uplifted, open chest with the shoulders held slightly back and down is an integral part of posture for almost any genre of dance.  It elongates the spine and makes the torso look long and lean, but it also really affects what your arms are doing.

 Keeping your ribcage elevated, imagine that all of your arm movements initiate from the sternum as opposed to your shoulders. This technique will make your arm paths gorgeous and defined. It adds an elegant quality to every movement your arms make, from floaty to angular.

 Use Your Head

  The angle of your head can really change the appearance of your movements.  Inclining your head towards or away from the audience will magnify the emotional intent of your dancing; using your head to spot while turning drastically changes your technique for the better, and following the paths of your arms with your entire head gives these movements a beautiful, finished quality.  Though it sounds crazy, don’t “forget” about your head while your body is in motion…and this goes double for your facial expressions!

ON BEING A GRACEFUL PERFORMER

Monday’s Child is fair of face, Tuesday’s Child is full of grace…

Since this is a Tuesday, let’s talk about how graceful you are as a performer- and I’m not referring to how well you move onstage, I’m talking about how you comport yourself.

Part of the Webster’s Dictionary definition of grace includes this phrase: "An easy elegance of manners".

In addition to showing up on time for your gigs, being quiet in the dressing room or in the audience while others are on stage, getting your promotional material, photos and music in to a producer by the deadline for which they’re needed, there is one thing many performers either forget, or do not know…and that’s how to gracefully- and graciously -accept a compliment!

What happens when you get complimented on a performance? How do you handle it?

Someone- your teacher, a friend, the star of the show, or a random stranger seeks you out after your performance, and tells you how much they enjoyed it…what do you do, how do you react?

If you are like many people, the compliment falls on deaf ears- YOURS!

The moment that someone tells you they liked something about your show, whether it’s your technique, stage presence, costume- all of that or anything else- is not the time to unleash your insecurities and point out how many things you did wrong.

If an audience member takes the time to seek you out and compliment you, you can bet it’s sincere! Why would they do it otherwise?

They obviously didn’t notice-or care- that you:

Missed sixteen counts of choreography at the end of the second chorus

Tripped as you entered

Didn’t hold a pose long enough

Slid on your veil

Had dry mouth the whole time you were dancing

Couldn’t get that damn glove off on time

Forgot that same part you always do in every rehearsal

Got your earring stuck on a strap

Sneezed when you’re turned your back

Borrowed your costume and it didn’t feel right

Felt so nervous you were hyperventilating before you went on

(Fill In The Blank with your own unique mishap)

And they certainly don’t need to know any of this either! This is for you and you alone to know, and for you to to work on and perfect in the future.

When someone pays you a compliment on your performance, simply smile warmly and thank them… even if you think that you weren’t working to the best of your abilities, or that your entire show sucked!

Evidently, that individual enjoyed your performance or it moved them somehow, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to take the time to tell you. And since they are being enthusiastic about letting you know this, don’t make them feel like an idiot for saying they liked your show!

So even if you don’t think you had a particularly good show, the professional thing to do when complimented by an audience member is to accept it- graciously. If you don’t agree with the compliment, then just consider this moment a part of your performance!

Otherwise, you are basically telling the person who complimented you that they have horrible taste…and how rude is that?

CREATING A HEALTHY DANCE COMMUNITY

Last weekend I had the pleasure of performing and teaching in the Washington, DC area. I was absolutely struck by the wonderful dance community that I witnessed... dancers of all genres getting together on a regular basis to put on shows; students learning professionalism from their "dance mammas", and performers taking the time to give back to the community.

One of the highlights of the entire great weekend was talking shop with Artemis Mourat and my sponsor, Belladonna. We sat around Artie's cozy house sipping wine and feasting on a Moroccan chicken dish she'd prepared, and talked for hours. The conversation stayed focused on dance, but veered wildly between the past, present,and future. We talked about dancers we all admired, the joy of teaching, and Artie's early days in the clubs, when she herself was a baby dancer. She spoke about how wonderful it was to dance to live music, her hippie lifestyle, which at the time was considered "Bohemian", and how she navigated through shark-infested waters, working with dancers who came from overseas, who mercilessly struck down their competition by pulling "Showgirls" type stunts, such as leaving shards of glass in the shoes of a rival dancer.

Mostly, what we talked about was community...and how important it is.

A vibrant dance community affords benefits to all of its members. In a healthy dance community, each and every person is relevant. There is a large pool of talent to choose from for learning purposes, or for gathering a cast for a certain show. Those with specialties and unique areas of expertise can share their knowledge, enriching the individual skill sets for everyone. Creativity becomes contagious, because it is encouraged to thrive.

Younger or less experienced dancers have the opportunity to learn the ropes from competent professionals, while more practiced dancers can keep current with the latest developments and newest trends. Community members of all ages and ranges of experience can interact freely and respectfully with each other, gaining insight, while every individual can also pull in new members, who could also potentially enrich the existing group.

In an ideal dance community, every member is considered important enough to have a say, and every individual can make a contribution to the whole.

Nowadays, due to the Internet and with the big umbrella of dance populations from all over the world interacting online, there is even more to learn. Individual dance groups from far-flung areas are no longer isolated and completely self-sufficient; the various communities can experience each other’s triumphs and tragedies with the click of a mouse.

Still, nothing replaces face-to-face interaction, and so keeping a live, local dance community running smoothly is paramount for it to be a nurturing environment for its members.

Like the modern urban model for a city, a dance community is composed of the “city” itself, which is basically everyone involved in that particular dance community. The “citizens” include everyone from nationally or internationally known established dancers to regional professional and semi-professional dancers as well as their students. The “ city council” is composed of the leaders, which would mean the most high-powered community members, or elders. The “city council” can pass certain “ordinances” which would include establishing fair pricing or a going rate for gigs, or creating safe spaces for the community’s less experienced members to hone their craft.

Meanwhile, there are also the city’s various “neighborhoods” (dance schools and troupes, and individual dancers who are not attached to either) and the surrounding “suburbs”, made up of people adjacent to the dance scene, such as musicians, costume makers, club owners, theater managers, photographers, booking agents, dance supply vendors, dancers’ families, fans and the like.

If there is a problem in a certain “neighborhood”, such as an incident of price undercutting, theft of a costume or even a gig, or some other sort of bad behavior, the rest of the community will undoubtedly find out and act accordingly, somehow rebuking the offender(s), sometimes by driving them out of the community.

But though these problems do exist, in a strong dance community- and there are many of them- these sort of things are less likely to happen, because of the community’s sense of ethics. For example, in my Los Angeles dance community, there seems to be less discord and fewer problems with dancers in general, undoubtedly because there are so many world class, name dancers living here. Professional behavior and courtesy are the norm, and instilled in baby dancers from Day One. In LA, as with anywhere else, there are always more performers than gigs, and there is the occasional kerfuffle over real (or imagined) trespasses, but it just seems to be handled a bit more…professionally.

You may be wondering what you have to offer to your community, or how you can help to foster a great community atmosphere where you live.

There are many ways to go about it; but the most significant is to simply get involved!

Volunteer
Offering your services to your own dance community-whatever they may be- will always be helpful. This can be anything from assisting others backstage to donating a few hours of your time at local dance festival.
Consider offering to teach pro-bono classes, even if it’s a just a one-off, maybe at a women’s shelter or for a group of underprivileged children as a form of outreach. Perform gratis at a local hospital, rest home, or at a benefit for a charity organization that you believe in.


Share Your Knowledge
Imparting information is a huge way to ensure your community’s sustainability and continuing legacy. Raise your “children” (students) well; prepare them for their life as dancers as well as you can. Mentor a student or students; take the time to make sure everyone in your classes understands and respects not just technique, but also local dance history, and as much universal history as you know about your particular dance form.
If you teach, verse your students well in professional etiquette, be it onstage, backstage or within the community itself.


If You Don’t Have Anything Good To Say, Don’t Say It At All
Sharing ideas or constructive criticism is one thing. Sharing gossip or spreading rumors is a whole other animal. Slandering or defaming other dancers, whether in “real life” or on the Internet, tears down a community. Put yourself in the other person’s place and think about how you would feel if this was happening to you. Though it may be tempting to pass on a juicy tidbit, post a catty comment on a social media site or stir up the pot with a little hearsay, please think twice about doing it.

Give Back To The Community
Giving back to your community can come in many forms- so give generously of whatever you have to offer. It can be anything from providing advice or a shoulder to cry on, collating programs for a show, or tidying up a dressing room at the end of the night. Maybe you’d consider waiving all or part of your performance fee to help out a friend who is bringing in a guest artist.

Giving back can also be donating used props or costume pieces to a dance studio or a newbie performer, or extending a free service- such as graphic design or sewing- to someone within your community who needs it. It can be offering a scholarship at your dance school, or making sure you show up to support a special event…even if it’s just a student show! It can be going a little out of your way to drive a dancer you don’t already know home from a gig; that could wind up as a friendship or an artistic collaboration. It can be attending shows other than those you are involved with, offering words of support to a nervous baby dancer, and being an enthusiastic audience member. Do what you can.

Whatever you give to your community will always come back to you in some way…often when you need it most.