Most likely, every week when a teacher is saying goodbye to their class, they also say, “don’t forget to practice!” Yes, it’s crunch time. Just a few classes left and it will be time to hit the stage and perform! We would love for our students to all feel comfortable and have a great experience at their performances. And knowing their dances is the best way to help accomplish that. In order to know their dances, they are hopefully practicing them at home!
Here are a few practice ideas:
· Watch and review the recording of their class doing the dance. Then do the dance with the recording to be reminded of steps. Follow that up with doing the dance a few times without the recording to work on memorizing the dance.
· Put on a show! For younger dancers, this could be gathering up an audience of stuffed animals, siblings, neighbors or pets and showing them their dance. Or go all out and encourage your dancers to design and make a recital program, tickets, set up seating etc. What a great activity for a rainy day!
· Videotape your dancer while they are doing their dance and view it along with them after. Along with a lot of positive comments, help them to make some observations~ Are they smiling? Are they with the music? Are their arms strong? Are there steps that they are forgetting and they need to review?
· Play your dancers CD in the car or let them listen to it when they are going to bed at night. A big part of knowing their dance, is mentally knowing the order of the steps. If they just follow along in class, they are not going to be as confident on stage. Simply listening to the music and “thinking” about what is next is very beneficial.
· Have them teach you a section of one of their dances. Showing someone else how to do a step or two is a great confidence booster!
· Start a practice calendar and reward your dancer with a special treat, movie night or outing with you when they reach their practice goal.
We would love to hear any other practicing ideas you might have! Thank you for encouraging practice at home, it can make all the difference in how confident your dancer is once they hit the stage! And a CONFIDENT dancer is our goal!!
Happy Dancing!
Kathy
