Dancer driven teaching...

 When I began taking dance classes as a child, my ballet classes were very much focused on learning the set sequences required by the syllabus. In turn these sequences would be performed infront of an external "examiner" for assessment of our execution and understanding. Well... maybe not so much understanding when the young dancers are pre-teenagers. This model still exists, but I think for adult dancers at a similar stage of learning dance (i.e. children's beginner ballet) there are so many more resources for how I approach teaching classes. 

Leading a class at Peridance in 2018 or 2019.

I recently asked my adult beginner ballet students if they thought it would be helpful to have some kind of documentation to review between their single weekly class. The consensus was that they would like to have an online video where they might be able to follow along and practice movements and sequences on their own at home. Initially, I thought this was a pretty good idea, and maybe I could make the time to film myself demonstating a series of exercises.

Then reality set in. Time is not something I find to be readily available in my week. Just keeping up with the content writing for this blog has become a challenge to carve out, and I am trying to post just once a week at this point. Another reality was that as I watch the enthusiasm of the adult dancers in class, I cater and adjust my exercises to suit the needs of the dancers on the day of the class. And I enjoy being able to create exercises to suit where the dancers' actions tell me what each progressive drill or sequence should be. 

Film instruction for dance was not a part of my awareness as a child. In truth, I imagine that it was on account of celebrities like Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton John making home exercise videos which came out in the early 80's, that "how to dance" learning by video became a thing. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, and suddenly we were teaching by video feed in real time. Most everyone has a smart phone with camera capabilities, and also the ability to play back or stream online content.  Yet the learning that can take place when both instructor and dancers are in the same space, is many times more effective than virtual learning. And yet I still find benefit in how well learning to dance can be enriched through virtual vido learning. But maybe there is also a place to include video learning, or at least video practice.

In the next few weeks I hope to experiment with video-taping myself demonstrating exercises during our sessions, which I will then make available to the sudents in class. At the very least, dancers would be able to practice on their own while accessing a record and guide of what they had done in class at any point in the week. This might also help in choosing the best progression of class goals based on how the dancers are developing and retaining material each week.

I do love watching online dance instruction videos, but they always strike me as requiring that the dancer observing, needs considerable knowledge about their own abilities, to truly benefit and progress.