Archive for the ‘2009 | 08 | August’ Category

Columns
Ask Rhee Gold
On My Mind
2 Tips for Teachers
A Better You

Departments
Mail
Thinking Out Loud
Teacher in the Spotlight | Barbara Parren
Humor and Heartstrings
Students Speak Out

Feature Articles
Higher-Ed Voice | Angling for Adults by Maureen Janson
Rediscovering Joy by Diane Gudat
Early Learners: Works in Progress by Debbie Werbrouck
Ballet in a Modern Israel by Mignon Furman
No Studio, No Problem by Lisa Traiger
When Frank and Victor Met May by Cheryl Ossola
For Love of the Body by Bonner Odell
Planning for Success by Brian Foley
Once an Employee, Now a Rival by Vanina and Dennis Wilson
Landing a Commercial Lease by Dale Willerton
Fit to Be Hired by Misty Lown
Anna Halprin by Heidi Landgraf
Gearing Up for Gymnastics by Patti Komara
Full-Service Studios by Misty Lown
Love on the Job by Eliza Randolph

Advice for dance teachers

Dear Rhee,
I recently discovered that one of my students, Joanne (not her real name), who is 15 and has been with me since she was 3, is having issues with drug addiction. This young lady is talented, sweet, and focused when she is at my school. I have taken her under my wing because her parents have had their own problems with drugs and alcohol. Sometimes I see her sitting outside, waiting for her ride home, and it never comes. Her parents forget to pick her up, so I give her a ride. A couple of times she has cried all the way home because she’s embarrassed. I assure her that I don’t judge her by her parents’ actions and that I will be there for her if she needs anything.

I had no idea, but Joanne was also taking drugs, which she was stealing from her parents, and she went into a drug rehabilitation center for 30 days. I visited her right away and I would have been there every day, but the center limited her visitors at first.

Joanne’s predicament threw a monkey wrench into several pieces of competition choreography. We fixed the choreography and, in some cases, replaced Joanne with another dancer. Joanne’s classmates at the school have been very supportive and have sent her cards. I am moved by their kindness and sensitivity. They amaze me with their nonjudgmental attitude toward Joanne, but I know it is because she is such a good kid; you can’t help but love her despite her problems.

Then I received an email from a parent who told me that she would not bring her daughter back to my school next year if I accepted Joanne back in the fall. She says she thinks Joanne is a bad influence on the other children and doesn’t want her daughter in the same room with her. Throughout her email she degrades Joanne, calling her a loser, and I cannot write what she wrote about Joanne’s parents. I felt hatred in her correspondence.

I don’t think Joanne is a loser; she is a victim of her circumstances, and I feel that she needs the support and normalcy that dance gives her. Her studio family is much more supportive of her than her parents are. She needs dance in her life.

I feel an obligation to do what I can to help her, but the mom who sent me the email tells me she is not alone in her belief that Joanne should not return to my school. There is no way I am going to give up on Joanne. Can you help me with some advice on how to respond to this mom and the other parents who feel the same way? —Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,
You are to be commended for being what I think is a true teacher—one who does not judge her students and who is there when a student needs help and support. Some teachers, out of fear of losing students, would give up on the child because of the risk involved. I admire your determination to do what is best for Joanne.

I always tell dance teachers that they have much more responsibility than teaching steps or enlisting new students. The most important gifts they can offer to their students are self-esteem and a sense of belonging. If Joanne develops a passion for dance, I believe it will have more influence on her future than all the negative stuff that her parents are throwing her way. Every child is in your classroom for a reason, and regardless of what happens in Joanne’s future, I am sure that she will never forget the dance teacher who believed in her.

So what to do about the email? Call the parents together for a meeting to discuss how you feel. Explain that you wouldn’t give up on their children if they found themselves in the same circumstance. I have a feeling that the mom who sent you the email will realize that her attitude is wrong and that the majority of the other parents will stand behind you. If she does pull her child from your school, then it will be her loss—and her child’s. It sounds to me like your school is the perfect place for young people to grow up in and that you are a special teacher.

Another thought: Look through your roster of students to see if one of them has a parent who is a counselor or psychologist who might offer you some advice on dealing with the parents. Better yet, maybe you could ask that person to come to your meeting to support you and offer input.

Bravo to you for setting an example for all of us. —Rhee

---

Dear Rhee,
I am wondering what your opinion is on newspaper advertising for registration. I have done very little print advertising in the past, but some of my competitors are taking full-page ads in the local newspaper and I am not sure if I should be doing the same thing. Do you think they are gaining students whom I will never get because I don’t advertise in the newspaper? —Laura

Hello Laura,
Good question! Recently I did a survey of dance school owners to determine their advertising strategies. It turns out that more than 67 percent of respondents are advertising in local newspapers. The only form of marketing that came in higher is a website, at a little more than 71 percent, but many of those with websites are also doing newspaper advertising.

In my research I have discovered that it takes 13 views of a logo for it to sink into a reader’s mind. So my strategy would not be to run full-page ads, because the majority of school owners could not afford 13 or more ads of that size. Instead, I would go with a series of smaller ads, run more often. I think ads that are one-sixth or one-quarter page, running over a series of weeks, would be more effective than a couple of full-page ads.

A few more statistics from our survey: Almost 53 percent of school owners are marketing with direct mail and postcards, but Internet marketing is on the rise. Email blasts are up 15 percent from our last survey at almost 26 percent, and social networking sites (which didn’t even show up in past surveys) are at almost 13 percent.

The bottom line for all school owners is to experiment to determine what works best for their business. Always ask those who inquire about your school how they heard about you to determine which marketing strategies are working best for you.

By the way, my brother’s school is still doing newspaper advertising, but his ads are much smaller than they were several years ago and he has gradually incorporated more Internet marketing to cover all the bases. If you can afford it, I think diversity in marketing is the key. Good luck! —Rhee

 

---

 

Dear Rhee,
I am currently employed at the school I grew up at. Three years ago, I was offered $12 per hour for my classes and I was thrilled to be paid for doing something that I love. Now I am headed into my fourth year of teaching and I am taking on more classes and some of the office work (which I am not paid for). After four years, I feel that I should receive a raise, but the subject never comes up from the school owner.

When I started, the owner taught about 30 hours a week and I did about 5 hours myself. Now I am doing the 30 and she is doing about 5 hours. Frankly, I feel like I am being taken advantage of, but I don’t have the guts to speak up. This school has become my entire life, but I can’t afford to move out of my parents’ house, nor do I have time to take on another job. What are your thoughts? —Michelle

Hello Michelle,
I’m not sure why the owner of the school has not taken it upon herself to discuss your compensation, especially after you have been working at the same rate for three years. She may believe that the increased hours she has given you are compensation enough, but that is just a guess on my part.          

Obviously, you have the confidence and the passion to be a good teacher, otherwise you would not be handed more classes each year. It is time for you to grab on to that confidence and speak up to the school owner (in a kind way). Let her know how much you love what you do and that you are willing to take on whatever she needs from you, but also explain that you would like to be able to afford your own place and make a living by teaching for her.

Hopefully she will understand your position and appreciate that you are standing up for yourself. If not, you may have to do some thinking about whether this is the right place for you to be employed. I wish you good luck. —Rhee

Words from the publisher

They don’t perform grand leaps, not one fouetté turn nor a single pirouette, and there’s no flash at all. Yet you watch them with your mouth open, while that head-to-toe body chill takes over your full being for a few moments as you settle into the greatness before your eyes.

You know the feeling—it’s the one we experience when we see phenomenal dancers or companies perform a masterpiece. Yet the dancers I’m writing about are not the ones who receive rave reviews from the dance critic in the New York Times. Actually, they probably wouldn’t come up on the radar of any critic or some people who think they know great dance. But to me—and I know I’m not alone—Company d, a Memphis-based group that bills itself on its website as “a performing arts troupe of young adults with Down Syndrome,” is capable of taking its audience to the same place any professional performance could.

So what is great dance and who created the meter by which we judge it? I wonder how high on that meter a group of dancers who move you with their spirit or joy would be. Might they land in the same place on the meter as the arabesque in relevé with perfect turnout and a fabulous line? Could the sense of accomplishment radiating from the dancers’ spirits make the meter rise at all? I don’t know.

If a 62-year-old man who always wanted to tap dance finally gets himself a pair of tap shoes, along with the guts to walk into a class, will he feel the same sense of accomplishment as the ballet company soloist who is finally performing the piece she only dreamed of a few years back? I wonder.

Is the student who comes to class once a week, who has a passion that you can feel when she enters the room, at the same place on the meter as the girl who is there every day, taking every class, and has no passion but believes she is awesome?

Would the 6-year-old cancer patient who is in dance therapy, moving her arms over her head, pretending to be a ballerina, land anywhere on the meter? I’m not sure.

OK, so why am I not sure? Because I always hear dance people say, “Oh, she’s fierce,” when they see a dancer execute some fabulous trick, while they pooh-pooh the 62-year-old guy in tap shoes.

I’m not sure because a lot of the dance we see today is judged for its technical feats and passion has nothing to do with it. It happens on our television sets every week; it happens on dance competition stages every week; and it happens in the classrooms where dancers are striving only to be better than someone else.

This I do know: The publisher of Dance Studio Life would pay twice the ticket price to see Company d perform as he would any great dance company.

By Mignon Furman

Tip 1
In teaching pirouettes it is important to emphasize using turnout. On relevé the supporting leg must retain turnout with the working leg placed so that the toe is just below the knee of the supporting leg. The turned-out working knee acts like a rudder of a ship, steering the way around.

Tip 2
The arms must also be used correctly. For en dehors pirouettes, with the preparation taken from fifth or fourth position, the arms should begin in third. Remind the students that they will turn toward the front arm and that the side arm must not go behind the shoulder.

To teach correct arm placement during the turn, have the students hold an object in the hand of the side arm. As they turn, they switch it into the other hand.

During the turn, the arms should be in first position and slightly shortened (closer to the body), with a feeling of width at the elbows. (People who have broad shoulders turn more easily than those with narrow shoulders.)

What you say to students makes a difference in improving function

By Suzanne Martin, PT, DPT

Virtually all dancers treasure their legs and feet. Legs give us the power to enjoy the greatest feeling in dance: flying through the air. In my favorite childhood dream—perhaps a precursor to my love of leaping—the air would flow through my hair as I soared over houses and trees.

Did you know that your arms and legs started out identically in the womb, as “limb buds”? They differentiate as they develop. Notice how a newborn baby’s arms and legs look similar and are almost the same size. Changes occur when the legs begin to bear weight. When a baby begins to walk, at around 1 year old, the pelvic and leg muscles thicken and the feet become tough and desensitized. A dancer’s training imitates that process. Repetitive, precise motions ultimately yield the familiar dancer’s leg shape, and calloused feet result from jumping and prolonged half-toe positions.

Because the legs create our basic dance foundation, they suffer the most injuries. The knees are often the first to give, with such injuries often prematurely ending a dance career. Let’s take a look at proper use of the legs, both functionally and artistically, in terms of elevation and good leg-to-foot biomechanical connections.

Dancers strive to use their legs as articulately as the arms—but moving the long line of the leg is a biomechanical feat, much like the action of a drawbridge. Anatomically the leg is composed of the thighbone (femur), the two bones of the shins (tibia and fibula), and the 26 bones of the ankle and foot (talus, metatarsals, and phalanges). Moving all that requires a function that starts at the top of the low back, deep within the abdomen.

Using language to improve function

The leg
In dance lingo we call the elevation of the leg an “extension,” but what’s really happening? The hip is doing what we physical therapists call a “FABER”: flexion, abduction, and external rotation, as the iliopsoas complex works with the external hip rotators.

Teachers often tell students who are striving to increase the height of the front and side “extension” to lift the leg from underneath. There is some truth to this seemingly counterintuitive instruction. Technically, the deep hip flexors, the iliopsoas and iliacus, elevate the leg past 90 degrees.

Think of the thighbone, the femur, as being shaped like a hammer without a claw. There’s tremendous variation among people in the distance between the hammer’s head and the point where it joins the handle (the femur shaft). This shape and distance determine whether a person is bowlegged (many men) or knock-kneed (lots of ladies). Interestingly, the more bowlegged you are, the greater your potential is for a very high extension due to the longer distance between the hammer’s head and the shaft of the femur (though men tend to be limited by a narrow pelvis).

Two images related to lifting from underneath provide crucial guidance in a développé. The iliopsoas complex, which originates deep within the abdomen, attaches to the leg just below where the hammer’s head meets the handle. So a good cue is to tell students to feel the legs starting at the waist and lifting from where the groin meets the inner thigh.

Also, the muscles on the back of the thigh, the hamstrings, help by holding the weight of the leg, just as the triceps help hold the lifted arms up against the pull of gravity. Muscles work in “force couples”: the ones on top help lift the limb and those on the bottom help hold it in space.

Think of developing the leg like a spider’s, in small segments. This image works because it allows the trunk to stabilize as the lengthy leg telescopes out from the center of gravity.

Knees
Moving farther down the leg, we come to the vulnerable knee. The knee is literally caught in the middle between the hip and the ankle; controlling the leg from these two areas is important in lessening wear-and-tear on the knees.

How often do you tell your dancers to straighten their legs? It’s a common correction when the foot is off the floor, especially in arabesque. Dancers often respond by hyperextending the knee to give the look of a straighter line, when in reality they might not be fully extending the hips. One way to correct this problem is to work on the “pull-up” of the gluteus maximus and of the calf, high up at the knee. You need a combination of hip and knee extension (pulling up from the kneecap) in order to have an optimal neutral line of the leg. Activating hip extension blocks hyperextension of the knee.

Lining up the joints of the lower body gives dancers power in jumps and leaps by directing it from the waist to the foot instead of dispersing energy in diverging directions.

Another common problem is increasing hyperextension by pressing back on the knees when standing or going into relevé on half-toe. This breaks the biomechanical chain of action along the leg and often leads to the problem of sideways-slipping, dislocated kneecaps in young, undeveloped dancers.

One way to find the proper lift is to have the dancers sit on the floor, straightening the legs in front of them. Then ask them to move the kneecap upward toward the hip without letting the heel leave the floor. Developing this coordination takes practice, but it is crucial in strengthening and saving the inner knee, as well as training the kneecap to track properly. Incorrect kneecap tracking grinds away the cartilage behind it. Prudent stretching of the front and sides of the thigh on a foam roller can take pressure off the kneecap and keep it tracking straight.

Ankles and feet
Completing the line of the leg are the ankles and feet. “Pull the foot” is a typical correction when the leg is elevated. But in trying to point the feet, dancers often merely curl the toes under and become confused when their teacher says to lengthen the toes instead.

Perhaps a more effective way to think about foot movement is to note the “wrinkles,” or creases, on the front of the ankle in demi-plié and above the heel when pointing the foot. Creating wrinkles in demi-plié allows the foot to open and soften into the action (dorsiflexion), becoming pliable. When it’s pliable, the architecture of the foot spreads the body weight out into the floorboards, rather than absorbing the stress and sending it up into the leg.

Thinking about making wrinkles helps dancers avoid tensing the front of the ankle, as evidenced by tendons popping out in demi-plié. Making wrinkles at the heel cord (Achilles tendon) allows full pointing (plantarflexion) and full use of the muscles that support the tendon. This action also helps to prevent sickling because true plantarflexion of the ankle uses the peroneal muscles on the side of the calf, which are responsible for the desirable “wing” effect in a pointed foot.

Coordinating hip action
One trick that coordinates hip action all the way down to the foot is to encourage dancers to roll the foot on a tennis ball. This action mobilizes the mid-foot bones and softens the soft tissue that serves as a biomechanical chain from the foot up the back of the leg to the back of the pelvis. It helps the whole line remain supple.

Dancers with hyperextended knees have ankles that are in what we call “relative plantarflexion,” or a partially pointed foot, even in standing. Softening the arch and stretching the plantar fascia (the strappy, soft tissue at the bottom of the foot) help position the pelvis vertically over the arches of the feet.

The arches, especially high ones, become more pliable with this technique, adding power to jumps and enhancing ballon.

A powerful lower body
Lining up the joints of the lower body gives dancers power in jumps and leaps by directing it from the waist to the foot instead of dispersing energy in diverging directions. Try experimenting with the exercises below in your classroom. Watch your students’ eyes open as they reach through their legs and soar into the air.

I have faith in you.

Visualize, Observe, Exercise

Visualize: Lifting from underneath in développé
Imagine two steps in leg elevation. Think of the legs starting at the waist to flex the hip at the inner groin. Then continue “extending” the leg in segments. Be sure to support the heavy leg by engaging the hamstrings.

Observe: Legs separating from the trunk
Lie on the back and bend the knees. Place the soles of the feet on the floor. Find a neutral pelvis, placing the hipbones and pubic bone in the same flat plane and keeping a small arch in the low back. Lengthen through the waist. Hold the pelvis steady and bend one hip to lift the leg; note the diagonal line of the crease of the hip line. The crease indicates that the leg has found separation from the torso, beginning the iliopsoas complex action.

Exercise 1: Iliopsoas complex trainer
Lie on the back in a half-toe, turned-out first position, knees bent and heels lifted. Prop up on the forearms and tuck the pelvis under. Tighten the abs. Slowly lift the leg by leading with the heel, not the knee, thus maintaining turnout. This trains the leg to lift from the psoas, not the quadriceps.

Exercise 2: Extend the hips to straighten the knees
Lie on your stomach with both hands underneath the forehead. Lift the abdominals up against the spine. Lengthen the tailbone down toward the heels. Tuck the toes and place the weight on the pads of the toes. Exhale and straighten the knees (they will lift off the floor) while making “smile lines,” creases between the buttocks and the hamstrings. Hold for 8 counts, then lower the knees. Slowly straighten and lift the knees again. Then point one foot, then the other, so that both feet are pointing with the hips extended. Hold for 8 counts, then relax.

Exercise 3: Half-toe elevé
Stand with toes pointing forward in parallel, feet about 4 inches apart. Hold onto a barre or chair for balance. Lift the kneecaps up toward the hips. Make smile lines between the buttocks and hamstrings. Lift the toes, then press the pads of the toes into the floor. Shift slightly forward onto the balls of the feet. Feel the arches lift. Then begin to elevé by lifting the groin toward the head. Feel like a space shuttle pressing up off the ground. As you lower, stay forward over the balls of the feet.

Words from our readers

Just completed reading the April/May issue—wonderful and inspiring is all I can say. As an ethnic/world dance instructor for almost 30 years with a ballet, jazz, and modern background, I am excited and thrilled to finally read about our dance forms with integrity and recognition. Your articles are well researched and well written and deserve kudos. I save every issue in its entirety. They are treasures of information.
Morwenna Assaf
Art/Dance Academy, Oceanside, CA

---

 Every day I want to sell or leave the business and the dance teaching world, school-owner business, and teach at my training ground of North Carolina School of the Arts or similar caliber, or go live on a farm and raise Burmese mountain dogs and be a vet technician, and then I read your magazine. (By the way, it is now next to my bible. Yes!) I pray to God to give me strength to continue to bring excellence and integrity to our children and community. Then I read your magazine and hear from others who feel the same way. I always feel better and have a bit of hope when I read your magazine! Thank you!
Terri Lee
Spirit In Motion Ballet Theater
The Pennsylvania School of the Performing Arts
Wrightstown, PA

---

Your magazine is so great because you root for all dance instructors from any background, regardless of credentials or training, and encourage individual growth. I have a college degree in dance and performed in dinner theaters, but I always felt a little insecure in comparison to some acquaintances who performed in professional ballet companies. It took me 10 years to realize that my capabilities in teaching ballet are vast and I have no reason to feel insecure. That professional experience may be a plus for some of those instructors, but it does not mean I am less. I think your magazine played a role in my growth and maturity as a teacher. Thank you.
Shananne Lewis
Move and Groove Dance Academy
Akron, OH

By Julie Holt Lucia

My dear hubby,  love of my life, reacher of things on the high shelf:

You are my steady hand, my calm influence, and my biggest fan. You are the yang to my yin, the voice of reason to my impulsiveness. You remind me that life outside the dance studio is also worthwhile—and quite necessary. I’m still not sure you knew what you were getting into by marrying me, but whoever’s to blame, I am so grateful. Thank you for everything you put up with and all the things you do, from A to Z, morning to night, registration to recital.

You never fail to surprise me with your Ability to handle my freak-outs, so thank you for allowing me to vent. Having you Balance my wrath with logic is the most soothing antidote to a bad day. Also soothing? That you love to Clean—and not only at home. You keep the studio from becoming a minefield of dog-sized dust bunnies.

I know you try to understand how important Dance is to me, even though you don’t know a plié from a chassé or leotards from tights (after all this time too!). But it doesn’t matter when you are the only one who can Erase my doubts, even when they are the ferocious kind that eat away at my self-esteem and snack on my confidence. Feeding my ego was a provision of our marriage vows, right?

Having you Go along with my sometimes outlandish, last-minute ideas means a lot to me. I know it’s not super fun for you to Help me make foam surfboards or run around town looking for the right color gels. I am grateful that throughout the seemingly endless chores you are able to Ignore my nagging and complaining in order to get the work done.

You Juggle your own job plus the side effects of mine, all while maintaining your sense of humor and optimism. You Keep me on the straight and narrow and help manage our household with ease, always taking care to Lead me in the right direction. Like that time I thought I wanted to go vegan and you bought me a chicken sandwich. You are always saving me heartache.

Every spring, you Move the heavy costume boxes 14 times and motivate me to check and re-check all the orders when I’d rather procrastinate. You Nod in all the right places when I spout off about that customer who is once again on my verylastnerve, and I appreciate that you Offer advice, solicited or not.

You Prod me to keep going on the days when buying a one-way ticket to Siberia seems like an affordable, relaxing idea, and you Quiet the voices in my head when I can’t shush them on my own. I like how you Remind me why we’re together, how the things that drive me crazy (like your addiction to the History Channel and all things junk food) are the reasons why I fell for you in the first place.

Each day you Set the bar high with your work ethic. You Teach me how to be more patient with things that are out of my control, like when the phone company customer-service agent can’t read my mind. And I know it’s not easy, but you do your best to Understand that sometimes I need my space and it’s nothing against you; it’s against them.

I love that you Volunteer your time for the studio, especially during recital weekend when it takes a brave man to face the whirlwind of dancers and parents who lose their tickets, forget the No Cameras rule, and disregard everything in their handbooks. And in spite of that, you are still Willing to go to the occasional dance performance, if only to watch me have a good time watching the show.

You look at me with X-ray vision, knowing my strengths, faults, and the best time to Yield to my stubbornness. Your Zeal for life never wavers, not even in the face of roof leaks, rent increases, costume shortages, peculiar customers, or my high-strung-ness.

I may be constantly distracted and sometimes sleep deprived to the point of borderline lunacy, but whichever brand of crazy I am on any given day, you help me come back to earth. You are what really makes the studio tick.

Thank you, honey! You’re the best.

Love, Me

Owner/teacher, The Dancers Workshop, Wall, NJ

NOMINATED BY: Her daughter Erin Pasko: “My dance teacher and mother, Barbara Parren, owns a small dance studio in Wall, New Jersey, where she has taught dance to students for 18 years. She has been through many disasters with her studio landlord, theaters, costume designers, competitions—and with us rowdy, moody, bossy, and needy teenagers. Yet Barbara has always been optimistic and uplifting. She has always put herself second to the students and their families when it comes to money, schedules, and other concerns. Even being a single mother in a rocky economy, she has stuck by her tiny dancers to teach the art they crave to learn. I and all the other dancers at The Dancers Workshop will forever love Barbara Parren.”

AGES TAUGHT: 3 through adult.

GENRES TAUGHT: Acrobatic, ballet, contemporary, hip-hop, jazz, modern, and tap. 

TEACHING DANCE FOR: 34 years.

WHY SHE TEACHES: I love to dance and love young people. Being around them makes me feel young. What better company could I possibly surround myself with?

GREATEST INSPIRATION: In the past I have been inspired by the teachers who have taught me, but now my inspirations are all the great teachers at my studio and especially my daughter Erin. Her drive and ambition help me to continue mine. She inspires me every time I see her dance.

PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING: I give my students praise and criticism, counterbalancing each. I am devoted to my craft and all of my students, and I always try to end each dance class on a positive and happy note, no matter what.

WHAT MAKES HER A GOOD TEACHER: To have someone nominate me is an honor as much as it is a surprise. I think what makes me a good teacher is the devotion and love I have for my students, belief in myself and my knowledge, and my faith in God, who gave me the gift of patience and the talent and opportunity to have such a wonderful and fulfilling career.

FONDEST TEACHING MEMORY: I have so many (as I’m sure we all do as teachers), but to choose just one, it would have to be my 13th dance recital. My very first student was leaving and going off to college. It was a feeling of success, inspiration, and overwhelming gratitude that I had inspired someone to dance for 13 years and had instilled a love of dance in her that would and has carried her through her whole life.

BEST PIECE OF ADVICE FOR STUDENTS AND/OR TEACHERS: I am not in a position to give other teachers advice, but I advise my students to always give more than they think they can, go the extra mile, don’t ever settle.

WHAT SHE WOULD DO IF SHE COULDN’T TEACH DANCE: I would definitely be working with children and teens, perhaps as a therapist.

MORE THOUGHTS ON DANCE AND TEACHING: I would like to say to the young dancers to appreciate what you have now and never take advantage of what is given to you. Dance each day as if there were no tomorrow!

DO YOU KNOW A DANCE TEACHER WHO DESERVES TO BE IN THE SPOTLIGHT? Email your nominations to David@rheegold.com or mail them to David Favrot, Dance Studio Life, 10 South Washington St., Norton, MA 02766. Please include why you think this teacher should be featured, along with his or her contact information.

3, 2, 1
I was teaching a 3- and 4-year-old class and we were doing egg rolls. Since the class was crowded, each student was supposed to do just one. One student proudly announced that she was going to do three and held up three fingers. I held up one finger and said, “No, the class is crowded today, so let’s only do one.” Being the natural negotiator a 3-year-old can be, she held up two fingers and said, “Two.” I held up one finger and said, “One.” She sighed and agreed—and promptly flipped me the bird! My teenage assistant and I were both shocked and tried not to laugh. Just to give the small-fry the benefit of the doubt, I asked her how many again, and she flipped me the bird a second time!

Joanna Furman-Markowitz
Orange County School of Dance,
Monroe, NY

Bathroom ballet
When 3-year-old Madison Sugg’s mother took her into the handicapped bathroom, her eyes widened and she squealed with delight: “Look, Mom, there’s a ballet barre in here.”

Shelia Sumpter
MusicWorks! Studio of Performing Arts,
Waynesville, NC

I thought I had a good bra
I was teaching a 4-year-old class and trying to get them to hold their arms still as they jumped. I did it with them and said, “See how I hold my arms still?” One girl said, “Miss Jeanne, your arms are still, but your boobs sure aren’t.”

Jeanne Szkolka
Columbia Dance Academy,
Columbia, MO

Pole dancing
My 8-year-old niece takes dance from me at my studio. One day she was at my house for a visit, and out of the blue, she said “Aunt Sheryl, next year can you teach me pole dancing?” For a moment I was taken aback—you should have seen the look on my sister-in-law’s face. Priceless! Then it dawned on me that I had recently pulled some props out of the prop room. What she really wanted was to learn a “cane dance.” So I granted her request and am teaching her “pole dancing” this year.

Sheryl Einhardt
Dance Expressions Dance Studio,
St. Clair Shores, MI

Music whiz
I was taking a class of 7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds to see a performance of The Nutcracker. I talked to the children about the ballet and then asked them if they knew who wrote the music. After a few moments of silence a little hand went up. “Gloria Estefan?” she asked.

Joanne Meade
Joanne’s Dance Studio 4,
Castle Rock, CO

Strip tease
During a class with young dancers in one of my first years of teaching, my music stopped and I ran to the stereo to change the CD. When I turned back around, one of the little dancers was skipping around the classroom, pink bodysuit in hand and wearing only tights, while the other dancers giggled. I did learn a lesson that day: All music for the young dancers’ classes needs to be on one continuous CD.

Jamie Lynn Shurtleff
Rosemary’s School of Dance Education, Warren, RI
Greendale Dance Academy, Worcester, MA

Send your funny, cute, or touching stories to Arisa White at arisa@rheegold.com or at Dance Studio Life, 10 South Washington St., Norton, MA 02766. Please include your name and contact information.

Walking out of that studio that day, I felt like nothing could take me down.

By Samantha Rueter

I was 3 years old when I stepped onto a stage for the first time, dressed in a red tutu and tiny ballet slippers, covered in glitter, with my hair in a perfect bun. Since then all I ever wanted was to be the perfect prima ballerina, to sparkle and shine. 

I continued taking classes, juggling sports with dance until I realized that the soccer field or softball diamond just wasn’t where I wanted to be. All I wanted was to be in that studio. The music could take me anywhere I wanted to be, could make me whoever I wanted to be.

Dance became a serious part of my life. At age 10 I was dancing and performing with 18-year-olds. Not only was it hard being with them due to my lack of maturity, but knowing that they had so much more talent and experience discouraged me. Then the director of my studio, The Dance Emporium, explained that a teacher from New York City would be teaching our summer intensive workshop. I was terrified. Little did I know that this one week of dance would change the way I saw things for the rest of my life.

Kristin Sudeikis was small framed, with blonde hair and freckles. She was beautiful, in her early 20s, and her smile gave off so much energy that you couldn’t help but smile back. She pushed us harder than I had ever been pushed before. Nothing was easy. The steps were intense; our muscles were tired, our bodies weak. I remember going home that night in shock. Barely able to walk because I was so sore, I told my mom I didn’t think I could go back. I felt like a nobody. I lay in bed wondering why I began dancing in the first place.

I still don’t know what made me go back the next day, but I can’t imagine how my life would be now if I hadn’t. The rest of that week was grueling. Seeing the girls I had looked up to for so long struggle was difficult for me. Kristin never lost her patience. The last day of the week rolled around and she told us how much we had improved.

Then Kristin asked to see me alone. My heart raced as I walked over to her. “Sam,” she said, “I am so proud of you and all you’ve accomplished this week. Being in here with all these girls so much older than you can be challenging. But you’ve stepped up to the plate and haven’t been afraid. Keep it up and you’ll do big things.” I smiled. Walking out of that studio that day, I felt like nothing could take me down. I had worked all week to improve, and someone as talented as Kristin had noticed it. From that day forward I never looked at dance the same way again.

It’s been seven years since I first took class from Kristin. Each summer she pushes us, giving us more challenging choreography and steps along with more confidence. Every day she reads an inspirational quote for us: “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim to it”; “Never leave lonely alone”; “Work through it.” Those are some of the quotes that kept us going when we felt too weak to take one more step.

I have never heard Kristin raise her voice, even when we misbehave or lose focus. If we don’t understand something, she’ll show us how to do it until we have it down perfectly. If we lose confidence or focus, she’ll remind us why we love to dance. And sometimes when you’re down or too tired to make another move, that’s really all you need.

At competitions I’ve taken classes from some of the most talented people nationwide. I’ve learned amazing things from them, but Kristin has inspired me the most. She has taught me how to free my emotions, release stress, and get through emotionally challenging times in my life through the gift of dance. I’ve learned to forgive, to forget, to breathe, how emotionally straining life can be on the heart, the head, and the body, and how you should never let it keep you from following your dreams.

Kristin has changed me more than anyone, because class is never just about dance to her. She has taught me that dance lessons aren’t just about learning to dance. They’re about life.

University of Wisconsin’s off-campus program lures adults to dance with fun, no-pressure classes

By Maureen Janson

Dancers gather in the hallway, stretching and awaiting the beginning of class. A few students peer into the studio, giggling. When a file of energized, sweaty dancers saunters out, a new group rushes in. It’s a familiar scene at dance studios filled with children. But in this case, all of the dancers are adults.

As part of my job at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I supervise a collection of teachers and dance classes geared toward getting adults into the studio. These off-campus classes provide a noncompetitive atmosphere devoid of pressure. That’s not to say that the expectations aren’t high; the qualified staff raises the bar for learning in these classes. But there are no tests, no grades, no credits—and hopefully, no competition. The only thing at stake is learning. Although these classes accept students over age 13, the majority are post-college age and older.

While kids’ classes provide the bread-and-butter for most studios, offerings for adults are often limited. Under the umbrella of the university’s Division of Continuing Studies (DCS), these classes fill a dance void for adults in the community. And because DCS provides an organizational structure that allows educators to focus on developing classes and teaching, the program attracts freelance teachers and part-time UW staff. The university handles the rest: marketing, studio rental, scheduling, recruitment of students, and other peripherals. For nearly 50 years, these classes have averaged more than 200 adult enrollments in each session. With the workday in mind, most classes meet after 4:30 p.m.

Through the DCS program, adults seeking to learn a new technique or refine their skills can study a full progression of ballet, modern dance, or tap. They may also choose from introductory courses in cultural dance forms such as African, Irish, or Middle Eastern, or from somatic movement classes, including yoga, Pilates, and tai chi.

Working with older learners offers unique challenges for teachers, so I asked some members of my teaching staff to describe their experiences. All of them bring their personal philosophies into working with adult dancers, although some of their experiences and observations overlap. The teachers echo similarities in adult attention span (greater than kids’), energy level (lower than kids’), and habits (harder to break). Adults bring a mature sense of curiosity about how their bodies work but also can get hung up on how they look.

Darrell Dieringer takes time away from his own studio to teach the ballroom and Latin dance continuing-education courses. He is familiar with teaching adults and enjoys the break from having to publicize and track down students on his own. He finds that his classes work best when he can reduce the fear and resistance some adults bring to learning a new dance form.

“Developing the atmosphere where adults feel safe and are willing to take personal risks is an important part of the classes I teach,” Dieringer says. “Many young people learn to dance very quickly. Adults are sometimes slower and can feel intimidated. If they are able to remain lighthearted about learning, they tend to learn faster and with more enjoyment than those who become self-critical or focus on minutiae. Details are important, but it is more important to embrace the bigger picture.” Dieringer establishes an atmosphere of trust by encouraging humor, fun, risk taking, and athletic discovery.

“Adults bring experience to the classroom, positive and negative,” says Georgia Corner, instructor of DCS’s Erick Hawkins–based modern dance courses. “I appreciate the ability to communicate with adults on a more cerebral level. You can reference other arts and experiences and they get it. On the other hand, they may bring bad habits from previous training to the class.” Corner notes that although children tend to be receptive to new physical ideas, adults can bring resistance.

Irish step dance teacher Heidi Hakseth reiterates Corner’s observations. She reminds herself before each class that her students might be coming to the studio after a long workday, so she considers stress relief part of her curriculum.

Hakseth’s early training came from exchanging steps with dancers in the Irish pubs of Milwaukee. That experience made her feel like part of a community, and she strives to re-create that sense of community in her classes. “I level the playing field by introducing them to a wide variety of dances,” she explains. “That way, I know everyone can have a chance to excel at something.” Over the years, Hakseth has learned that varying the class helps reduce the chance of a competitive atmosphere.

“Developing the atmosphere where adults feel safe and are willing to take personal risks is an important part of the classes I teach.” —ballroom and Latin dance instructor Darrell Dieringer

In the African dance class, Maya Kadakia minimizes competition by making encouraging comments and corrections both publicly and privately. “I try to say something positive to all of the students, not just the best ones,” she says. At the beginning of the session she gives students a letter outlining class goals and emphasizing the noncompetitive atmosphere.

Drawing from her training in Mali and Guinea, Kadakia introduces her students to the history and cultural background of learning and performing West African dance. She feels that adults appreciate the intellectual concepts and cultural contexts of the dances they learn. A frequent teacher of children, Kadakia says that compared to adults, young students need to be given clearer directions, guidelines, and expectations but have less fear and inhibition about how they look doing the work.

After a 30-year break from studying dance, student Gail Brassard is not too concerned about how she looks. Her return to ballet class was “not exactly like riding a bike,” she says. “It was humbling to put on a leotard and tights, but most of the people in my class are returning dancers, and they are around my age.”

Brassard returned to dance in her 50s, after years of working out at health clubs. She decided to revisit ballet when she realized that dance training had provided personal attention and mental involvement, which her gym regimen lacked. “I always loved ballet and wanted to reconnect with something joyful. I enjoy it way more than working out on a machine. Now that I’m older, I think my brain is different. I grasp things in a different way.”

Brassard thinks she’d be intimidated if there were kids in the studio; she says the adult atmosphere gives her a stronger sense of freedom in the class. She credits her topnotch childhood training and her current inspiring teacher, Vivian Tomlinson, for her improvement in the class. “He gives fabulous verbal explanations that I might not have been able to understand or apply as a younger dancer. Now I know what I’m striving for, not just making a shape or an image.”

Many adults come to dance class simply because they want to, even though some may not be prepared for the rigors of dance technique. The teachers agree that making accommodations for their students’ limitations comes with the territory. “Teaching adults often means teaching people who have various injuries and health conditions that keep them from even trying some of the steps,” says Hakseth.

She recalls a student with a foot injury that kept her from participating in most of the class. “She really wanted to dance, but I was so surprised and thought, ‘How is she going to do this?’ ” Concerned that the student might reinjure herself, Hakseth encouraged her to work at her own pace and helped her find ways to accommodate her injury.

According to Dieringer, “the reasons why an adult might be attracted to studying dance are as wide and as varied as there are people.” Some take class for exercise. Some have a boring day job and want to do something expressive and creative. Some have always wanted to learn but never made the time before. Some love new challenges, setting and meeting personal goals. “The participants are enthusiastic, ready to learn, and usually surprised at how much exercise dancing can be,” he says. “The most touching reasons I hear from people involve their personal growth.” He cites examples of people who had been self-conscious about their height or weight or felt shy or awkward but gained confidence through dance.

Hakseth believes that most adults want to study dance because it feels good. “Dancing relieves stress and works the body in a way that is much more freeing and happy than exercising at a gym. I think there is something in dance that makes them feel youthful again,” she says.

Corner’s philosophy is similar: “Adults look for the opportunity to experience the joy of moving.” And like many of the DCS teachers, Corner recognizes the curiosity that adults bring to the studio and works toward providing a more mature perspective than she would with children. “I try to go beyond just dance and make sure my classes connect movement to the wider worlds of culture, nature, science, and art. I feel strongly that our bodies can help us experience those worlds, something that often is forgotten in our contemporary lifestyle.”

Self-esteem shot? Creativity kaput? Here’s how to learn to love what you do—again.

By Diane Gudat

I looked in the mirror the other day. I looked tired. I felt tired. I was never one to count wrinkles, but things just looked saggier than usual. It’s a feeling I seem to have often these days.

Wondering if it was just me, I went to a dance event and looked around at my dance peers. They looked tired too. They sounded worn out and their conversations were filled with frustration.

Later that week I got a phone call from a dance teacher friend who confided that she was scared that she was not “with it” anymore. She felt like she wasn’t “cool” like the younger teachers at a convention she had recently attended, and she worried about losing her choreographic edge. She felt like dance was moving forward without her.

I know how she feels. It seems that the more experience you gather and the larger your body of work is, the less confidence you have that the work is appreciated.

Recently I turned down a job that I knew I would not have the tolerance for or the energy level to do well, and then I was not hired for a job I thought I had in the bag. It seems I had trained my dancers to develop a thick skin, but I had forgotten to teach myself the same thing.

Have you watched your choreography on video and doubted your creative choices (or lack of them)? At studio gatherings, do you listen to your graduates discuss the “good old days” and wonder where they went? Where is that energy and zest for the job that seemed never-ending in those early days? Does your pile of work feel insurmountable? Are you so overwhelmed that you don’t even know where to start?

The good news is that you are not alone. A career in the dance arts is a choice to do what you cannot live without in the hope that it will supply a decent living. Few of us are savvy businesspeople. Most of us have chosen our line of work because we are emotionally motivated creatures. We act under the premise that if we love our art enough, it will love us back.

Dance can’t return our love, yet we must find new ways to love it every day. Our relationship with dance is personal and intense but intangible. We can see only traces of our love for dance, translated by the mirror or interpreted by others’ limited physical abilities. It is an art of compromise. To live it, we must share it. Most of us share it with children who come attached to parents from every walk of life, whose expectations for their children are often quite different from ours. We strive to create little artists; they need to see a score or a class upgrade every semester.

So what do we do? How do we face another recital season, picture day, or competition weekend? How do we find a new, more lasting sense of joy and confidence in our work?

The answer could be as simple as telling yourself to be a happier person. The voice inside your head is what drives you. You can be your own best fan or worst enemy.

Start by making sure that the children entrusted to you are enjoying their experience. My studio has a sign out front that says, “Fun Inside!” It is my job to make that happen. I am the product. Not dance, not the combinations, not the training methods—me. My personality, my love of children, my use of the time I share with them. Are they better people for having spent time with me? This is what the call to be an educator is truly about. It has little or nothing to do with the subject matter taught.

Believe it or not, those children think you are cool—infinitely cooler than their parents. They are amazed that you know the words to a popular song, that you can almost do the splits on one side, and that you can still do a chaîné. Most of them love the studio and look forward to their classes and to seeing you each week. Ask for a hug; you will never go without one. Remind them to smile—it is contagious. Look at their faces and see your efforts reflected.

Learn to thank people on a daily basis. When people feel appreciated, it makes them happy. It will also teach them to appreciate you. When was the last time you stepped into your lobby and thanked the parents for sharing their children? We usually thank parents in our recital programs, but have you ever said it directly to them? Have you told them how glad you are that they chose to come to your studio? A thank-you to those who volunteer often motivates them to help out again.

Happy parents make for a happy lobby. That feeling radiates into the classroom and before long, you start to feel as though you would be missed if you weren’t there.

Let go of that one complaint you heard at the end of a long day and think about a compliment you received instead.

Compliment people, and be specific so they know you are sincere. Do not simply tell students they did well; instead, tell them exactly what was good. Saying, “You are wonderful!” is less meaningful than telling them you noticed that they tried to keep their base leg straight in class. They will know you care and their smile will be evidence of their pride.

Nothing is fun when you hurt or are low on energy. See a doctor if your body is betraying you. As our bodies age they require more maintenance. The wear and tear can be frustrating and sometimes depressing. Remember that the ability to explain a movement, combined with a positive attitude in the classroom, is more important than the ability to demonstrate. Get assistants to help with the physical aspects of class and do what you do best: Take over!

Try to remove toxic people from your life. You know who they are. They are the people who always complain, who never have a good day, whom you can never please, and who blame you for their problems. Your job is not to fix other people but to be a positive influence on those who are open to your input. These might be people you have known your entire lifetime. (They might even be your relatives.) Make a short but sincere announcement that from now on you plan to live your life in a positive way and hope that they will get on the boat or get out of the way. This could mean releasing a staff member from her position or asking a student or parent to leave the studio. The stress of replacing staff or students or rechoreographing numbers will be overshadowed by the joy of being back in control.

Let your emotions show from time to time. Give yourself permission to be human. Everyone gets disappointed. Everyone gets tired and needs help. The people around you need to see your human side and will appreciate it if you let them in from time to time.

You might need to be selective about when to let your guard down, but being an artist means you have a sensitive soul. It is important to remember that to receive compassion you must show it. Be sensitive to your staff and your students. Try to recognize burnout or frustration in them and be ready to support them in tough times.

Control your anger. Try to think about a problem for a few days before reacting, so you don’t explode. Overreacting when tired or frustrated can escalate a problem that is not really catastrophic. Ask the advice of a member of your staff or a dance friend. Make your move when you are calm and in control of your emotions.

Do something new or reinvestigate something you used to enjoy doing but never find the time for anymore. Try guitar, art, languages, shopping, travel, sewing, baking, or reading. Sneak out of the studio and have dinner with your family.

Share your dance victories and problems with a friend who understands. Spouses often want to be supportive, but unless they are dance professionals, they cannot grasp the entire picture. Find a dance support group (if not in your community, then online) and share your frustrations. Sometimes just knowing you are not alone can get you through. Have you ever reached out to the teacher down the street?

Enjoy your successes. Jump off the merry-go-round. Celebrate a great recital. Take a day off after a long dance weekend. Buy yourself a small treat when you have reached a goal or have done a good job. Learn to appreciate yourself.

Keep a file of the positive letters you have received from parents or the pictures colored for you by young students and look at them from time to time. Let go of that one complaint you heard at the end of a long day and think about a compliment you received instead.

Learn to set healthy limits for yourself. Set a “no dance” hour every single day and make sure that everyone knows you are never available during that time. It is good for people around you to know that you have personal limits. Try to honor yourself by not using that time for dance-related activities.

Create a “no dance” zone in your home, where you can go to get a fresh perspective. It could be a chair, a corner, or, if you are lucky, an entire room. Surround it with things you love that have nothing to do with dance.

Mark your calendar with a “dance day off” every month. Choose carefully and then let nothing interfere with your day. You might not be able to take a weeklong vacation, but giving yourself a 24-hour break works wonders toward feeling in control.

Encourage your business partner, if you have one, to set up the same luxury. Set an example by caring for yourself.

We all lack confidence from time to time. Remember that it is usually brought about by stress and compounded by how we let other people’s attitudes affect our daily living. Plan to be happy. Beating the blues could be as simple as that.

Editor’s note: Repeated bouts of self-doubt, discouragement, and depression could be signs that professional help is needed. We encourage anyone who suffers from chronic depression to see a doctor.

Let child development concepts lead the way in teaching young children

By Debbie Werbrouck

I never know who’s going to have the most fun in a brand-new class of preschoolers—them or me. The kids are as cute and excited as can be and it’s my job to make sure they are learning as well as having fun. In order to do that, I need not only dance knowledge but also an understanding of child development. I will be most effective as a teacher if I know what the abilities of my students are, both physically and developmentally.

Teaching early learners
Anyone who teaches early learners must enjoy very young children and the pace at which they work. Teachers need to be flexible and willing to forgo a planned lesson in order to adapt to the needs of the students.

Educating preschoolers is not simply watering down technique or using nursery school music to accompany movement. These children are not merely small people; they are exciting works in progress. A good educator understands what students are capable of learning at specific ages. So how do you gain that knowledge? Libraries and websites are rich sources of information on children’s general physical, social, and emotional abilities. Working alongside an experienced early-learner educator is also a wonderful way to understand the special requirements of teaching young students, as is attending a college class in child development.

Early-learner educators must communicate well with parents. Since parents of these young students tend to remain at the studio during classes (and may even participate with their children) and need to learn about the activities and benefits of dance classes, teachers will have more interaction with them than with those of older students.

Ages
If you are a school owner, one of the first decisions you must make is which ages you will accept. While many schools accept children at age 3 into standard dance programs, some offer the option of parent/child classes beginning at age 2 or 2 1/2. These classes acquaint children with movement while their parents accompany them, allowing for a one-to-one ratio with students. Although students are exposed to basic movement concepts, the material is presented less formally than it would be for slightly older students.

Working with parents
In a parent/child class, I explain that I lead the class but that parents will work one-on-one with their children. I tell them that their children may not participate in every activity or might not complete all of them. Some children may want to observe before participating. I emphasize that their child’s focus, interest, energy, and abilities might vary from class to class.

My only “rule” is that children are not disruptive, which means no touching or interfering with other students, screaming, running around the room, hanging on barres, or touching mirrors. But because the children are so young, it is the parents’ job to make sure that none of these things happen, and if they do, to remove their children until they are ready to participate in class activities.

I explain how we do each activity as well as also the reason for it, such as large or small motor coordination, body identification, or balance development. I plan the classes with a balance of new and familiar activities that range from very active to quiet, and I keep the class moving. I tell the parents how the activities build on one another and how the students will become more independent until they are ready, physically and socially, to be in a class without a parent.

Planning your class
Class length for early learners varies from school to school. At my school, classes for the youngest students last 30 minutes. I chose this length for two reasons: Young children have short attention spans, and I feel that it is better to leave them wanting more. As students age and progress, the class length increases.

For the benefit of both students and teachers, classes for young children need to be smaller than those for older dancers at higher levels of proficiency. Another factor to consider is the best time for these classes. Morning, early afternoon, or Saturday classes that avoid naptimes usually work best.

Keeping kids engaged
Most educators have their own techniques for keeping children excited about class. Children love repetition, both in doing the same movement, song, or story repeatedly and also in reviving a favorite song or activity frequently.

However, repetition should happen because students are excited to do it, not because the educator wants to drill an exercise. This is where experience and creativity come into play. Doing the same activity in a different way adds excitement. Instead of doing a tendu with students in a straight line, try having them stand on colored space markers, in a circle facing a Mexican hat or with a partner, or with a beanbag balanced on their head. The variations are endless.

Variations promote the students’ enjoyment and creativity as they learn and remember the movement and its name; the goal is not proficiency. For example, early learners cannot maintain a stretched, controlled tendu, but they can learn that “tendu” means “to stretch” and that it looks like a “sharp, pointy pencil.” They will be able to stand on one foot for increasingly longer periods while extending the other forward in their “tendu,” and that is an accomplishment.

Variables in development
Children who are the same age are not necessarily the same in terms of development. Not only do they mature at various rates, but a child who has just turned 3 is much different than one who is 3 years and 9 months old. Over the course of an academic year, you will witness many transformations as the students progress. It might take one child several attempts to enter the classroom without a parent, while another student would love nothing more than to lead the class.

Classes for 3- to 4-year-olds
In classes for 3-year-olds, we do many of the same activities as in our parent/child class, but the students’ independence adds another element. Now the children learn to enter the classroom on their own, find their places, and participate without their parents’ help. Seeing the pride on the students’ faces as they gain confidence in their own knowledge and abilities is gratifying.

For our 3- to 4-year-olds, we have a class called Dance Movement (I & II). Here are some of the things they are capable of learning.

• Behaving in a group class
• Following multi-part instructions (e.g., “Stand tall and make a round circle with your arms”)
• Identifying parts of the body
• Standing briefly on one foot
• Bending the knees
• Jumping
• Hopping• Galloping
• Beginning to skip
• Rising up and walking on tiptoe
• Marching
• Chasséing
• Moving in various directions (forward, back, side)
• Understanding opposites: big/little, fast/slow
• Stopping movement upon instruction
• Following a pattern of movement
• Following a pattern of rhythm (e.g., clapping three times)
• Using and developing imagination and creativity
• Basic dance vocabulary (exciting to parents and students alike)
• Learning and performing a short, simple song and dance

Techniques and tools
We use a variety of techniques and props as learning tools in our early-learners classes. Colorful rhythm sticks or other percussion instruments develop both rhythm awareness and small motor coordination while capturing students’ interest. Bubbles and scarves demonstrate a “light” or “floating” quality that the children can emulate. (Ask them to show you how a bubble or scarf floats to the ground.) Hula-hoops can define a space, provide a path to follow, and illustrate a shape that students can understand. Doing a “freeze dance” while marching develops good listening skills as well as large motor coordination.

Children love surprises, which can be as simple as a new movement (with a new name to learn) that they can demonstrate for their parents.

Defusing unrealistic expectations
Educating parents about what their children will learn is almost as important as teaching the students. If parents have no experience in dance or if they are first-time parents, they may have unrealistic expectations of what their children can accomplish. Demanding more than a child can deliver can do real harm to her self-esteem. Explaining the goals and benefits of activities not only helps both child and parent feel proud of small accomplishments, it also reinforces the fact that this physical, mental, social, and emotional education is an ongoing process. It helps them understand that dance is not an activity to be tried briefly and then crossed off the list as an accomplishment.

Defining dance education
When educators explain that activities like making shapes with arms and legs are actually pre-reading and pre-math skills, parents no longer see dance class as “just playing.” Counting, making, and recognizing shapes like circles, squares, and triangles are activities used in early math. Small motor-coordination skills (such as drawing circles in the air) or large motor-coordination skills (such as physically making the shape of a letter, either alone or with others) aid in early reading.

Most parents understand that people learn in a variety of ways, but they may not understand the concepts of kinesthetic learning and spatial awareness. Telling parents how dance provides learning on many levels—auditory, visual, and kinesthetic—helps them realize how dance influences the learning process and how dance can benefit their children in school and throughout their lives.

Resources

Publications

• By Teresa Benzwi
  Alphabet Movers
  A Moving Experience: Dance for Lovers of Children and the Child Within
  More Moving Experiences: Connecting Arts, Feelings, and Imagination
• By Anne Green Gilbert
  Brain-Compatible Dance Education
  Creative Dance for All Ages: A Conceptual Approach
  Teaching the Three Rs Through Movement Experiences
  Teaching the Three Rs Through Movement Experiences: A Handbook for Teacher
• By Howard Gardner
  Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
• By Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, and Patricia Kuhl
  The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
• National Dance Education Organization Standards for Dance in Early Childhood
• By Sue Stinson
  Dance For Young Children: Finding the Magic in Movement (published by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance)
• UNITY: Early Childhood Philosophy and Goals

Videos/DVDs

• Primary Movers Move Russia (featuring Rima Faber)
• Brain Dance (Anne Green Gilbert)
• Teaching Creative Dance (Anne Green Gilbert)

Websites

• Dance and the Child International (daCi): daciusa.com
• National Dance Education Organization (NDEO): ndeo.org
• UNITY: unitydance.org

The Performance Awards bring teacher education and scholarships to Tel Aviv and beyond

By Mignon Furman

From my balcony at the Tel Aviv Hilton, I watched swimmers, surfers, and the waves of the Mediterranean Sea lapping on the beach below. In Israel for the Performance Awards, my program to encourage and evaluate ballet students, I looked out on this city of contrasts. Its skyscrapers towered over older apartment buildings built on concrete stilts, with bomb shelters in their basements and solar panels on their roofs. I could see the nearby marina, and the biblical Jaffa in the distance.

In the cool evening breeze, all seemed peaceful. But in Israel, suicide bombers might attack anywhere. For security, bags are inspected at stores and cinemas. There was a checkpoint on the approach to the Hilton; a security guard inspected the trunk of our car. At the hotel entrance, I was frisked with a metal detector and told to open my purse for inspection. On my return to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, the police pulled our car over for a random inspection.

Teaching dance in community, recreation, and daycare centers

By Lisa Traiger

Being a great dance teacher or studio owner requires stamina, know-how, and, most important, plenty of flexibility. Sometimes the traditional methods don’t work and teachers must find new images to perfect an arabesque or fine-tune a student’s clunky time step. And seeking out the non-traditional can also apply to where classes are taught. Particularly in trying economic times, leasing and refurbishing studio space may be too risky, making a location with no overhead an appealing alternative. But some dance teachers choose the freedom of teaching for umbrella organizations such as community centers, health clubs, daycare centers, and after-school programs because they find the work satisfying and lucrative.

Swim & Tennis—and dance
In 1997 Jeri Sutter called her friend Sioux Duddy, mom of two of her dance students, on hearing that a dance studio outside of San Diego was on the market. The 21-year-old business, once successful, had lost students as its founder aged. Sutter, a former teacher there, believed that she and Duddy could turn it around.

What they bought wasn’t a traditional building or studio dedicated to dance, but a business based at the Rancho Bernardo Swim & Tennis Club. They got a roster of 50 to 70 students, some stereo equipment, tapes, props, and several boxes of old costumes. Sutter adds they had merely the good word of the exiting director that they would be allowed to continue using the two spacious rooms at the club to run dance classes.

In short order Duddy, a mother of five who is active in the PTA, and Sutter, an elementary school teacher with a then-newborn son, renamed the studio Step by Step Dance and titled its first recital “Brand New Day.” They now teach 320 students, employ eight part-time teachers, and offer jazz, tap, and ballet classes for a revitalizing suburban San Diego community that once attracted retirees.

Membership in the swim and tennis club is open only to residents of certain zip codes of Rancho Bernardo, whose homeowner fees cover membership. But the club hosts a variety of classes open to members and non-members alike. Along with karate and tennis lessons, Step by Step offers more than 50 dance classes a week for tots to teens.

Sutter and Duddy pay a monthly rental fee and yearly they negotiate dates and times for classes, rehearsals, and special events. The facility features two 450-square-foot studios with a retractable wall. Sutter and Duddy installed full-length mirrors and a sound system, but the club takes care of maintenance, cleaning, and renovations, and even installed a sprung wood floor when the worn tile needed replacing. Occasionally, Sutter says, they need to relinquish weekend rehearsals for a club function, but since they don’t offer regular classes on Saturdays, space conflicts haven’t been a big problem.

“We feel like we have such a gem of a situation,” says Duddy, even though she sometimes misses having an onsite office to catch up on paperwork and meet with students or parents. The club allows parents and siblings of Step by Step students to use the outdoor playground or indoor play area while waiting.

The pair works hard to maintain a collegial relationship with the club administration: “We appreciate the club staff so much, and they appreciate us. We help each other out,” says Sutter.

One of the negatives in not operating in a traditional studio space is the perception that their teaching is not professional. “We have faced that,” Sutter says. “That’s what led us to investigate getting our own space. But just because people perceive that doesn’t mean it’s true.”

The partners decided to remain at the club, even after a local boys and girls club invited them to move their entire program to a brand-new facility. “We’ve put our time and energy into Step by Step and we have a wonderful staff,” Sutter says. “We take our dancing seriously but we are not a competition school. We do take our more serious dancers to two to four conferences a year, and I see that our students know how to learn, not just how to do a routine.”

Daycare dance, on the move
DeAnna Stojan ran a studio for eight years in the Wake Forest, North Carolina, area before closing shop to rethink her business model. “Preschoolers have always been my favorite age group and I wanted a job where I could spend more time teaching them,” she says. “They’re little sponges. You can get on the floor and play with them, interact with them.” Stojan also found the typical dance teacher’s schedule of after-school and evening classes cut into time she wanted with her husband.

She shut down in spring 2008 and hit the phones, cold-calling daycare centers and nursery schools within a 10-mile radius of her Raleigh home. Her new company, Dance for Kids Now, offers 3 to 12 classes a week at a variety of locations, including drop-in daycare centers, which are popular in the area. Parents sign up in advance and pay for the course as an elective. Last season she taught 50 children, but for the fall she has 12 classes scheduled, each with 10 to 15 children—a significant jump in enrollment. “So there is definitely an interest among school directors and parents for on-site dance classes,” Stojan says.

When a center agrees, Stojan offers a trial class to give parents and children a sense of what her creative movement experience is like. She then advertises the class at the center and parents sign up their children for 6- to 10-week sessions. “We cater each session to what the daycare desires. Some want a longer program; some want something that goes the whole year. But typically [these centers] want a short, two-month, weekly introduction-to-dance program.”

Each class is 30 to 45 minutes depending on the age of the children, and parents pay the $20-per-month fee to Stojan directly, eliminating paperwork for the daycare center. So far she has taught only one class per week at each site, but one center has asked for two classes per week for the upcoming school year.

“There is definitely an interest among school directors and parents for on-site dance classes.” —DeAnna Stojan, Dance for Kids Now

Dance for Kids Now is still young, and Stojan says she hasn’t yet replicated the income she earned with a full studio—and expects she won’t for a while. “It takes time to grow a business. I didn’t go into it expecting to duplicate the studio income immediately. The great thing about offering dance in the community is that you don’t have the overhead. And at the end of the day I don’t have the mom who has been on my phone all day talking to me. That part is great.”

Taking it to the community
Joy Morris-Rakowski, 23, has been teaching since she was 18, all of it at recreation centers. She grew up in Portage, Michigan, just south of Kalamazoo, where she began dancing. Now, as a prospective dance major at Western Michigan University, she teaches 15 to 20 students per session in 6 classes each week, from Wiggle and Giggle to teen jazz and teen ballet, at the Portage Community Education Center.

“A lot of the kids come to the community dance program because their parents may not be able to afford a traditional studio program,” Morris-Rakowski says. “The community art programs are a whole lot cheaper: Rather than paying $10 or $12 per class, they might pay $6 or $7 per class. That’s a lot more affordable and it’s really nice to offer dance to kids who might not be able to take it otherwise.

“I’m excited because these kids are so excited about dancing,” she notes, adding that at the traditional studio where she also teaches, students sometimes become blasé.

Morris-Rakowski arranges her schedule with the center director, negotiating nights and times. She is paid a percentage of the enrollment, which she sees as a plus. “At the regular studio where I teach, I get a flat rate per hour. Here I might have one class of only 5 students but another with 22, so basically I get paid for the actual work I’m doing and it evens out.”

She also doesn’t need to worry about paperwork. The center takes care of that and takes a small percentage, about 7 percent, as its overhead; Morris-Rakowski gets the rest. As for the perception issue: It’s a non-issue for her because she doesn’t adjust her teaching depending on the day of the week and her clientele. Her recreational dancers at the Portage center get the same classes she teaches at the private studio.

She has become so enamored of her situation at the Portage Community Education Center that she added an end-of-year showcase and volunteers her time each Friday evening for interested students who wish to perform. The extra rehearsal time costs the students nothing, and she doesn’t need to pay a rental fee to the center because nothing else is in session on Friday evenings. She uses the auditorium at the public high school and doesn’t charge parents and friends for the show since so many are on tight budgets. “It’s nice for them to get that opportunity to perform. A lot of community dance-education programs don’t have that chance, but I’m happy that I can offer it.

“I wish there was something like this back when I was in high school,” Morris-Rakowski continues. “I went to Portage public schools and we had a dance team and cheerleading, but it wasn’t the same as what this program offers, giving kids a chance to perform. I’m so excited to offer this to kids in Portage. I definitely want to keep teaching at the community-arts program.”

How a modern dance choreographer in New York shaped a school in Berkeley

By Cheryl Ossola

Fifty-one years: It’s a respectable age for a dance school. That kind of longevity usually means that the teaching comes from the heart, and that’s certainly the case at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, a community school on the border of Berkeley and Oakland in California. It’s also proof of one teacher/choreographer’s long reach—in this case, May O’Donnell, one of Martha Graham’s shining stars, who died in 2004 at age 97. She touched school owners Frank Shawl and Victor Anderson so profoundly that they invoke her teachings, influence, and memory nearly every time they talk about dance.

Shawl and Anderson set up shop in 1958, in a south Berkeley studio above a liquor store. Fortunately, they were teaching only adults, so the less-than-wholesome location didn’t send anyone scurrying away. The curriculum was modern dance and their survival was tenuous. But today the school is a much-loved part of the community. One could argue that 77-year-old Shawl’s sunny persona and 81-year-old Anderson’s gentle dignity have played important roles in the success of their school. But it’s likely that the larger reason is their devotion to dance and philosophy of teaching, which came straight from O’Donnell.

Fifty-one years ago, these partners in dance never imagined that they would one day own a nonprofit school like the homey, bustling Shawl-Anderson Dance Center. In addition to classes in modern dance, ballet, and jazz (42 for adults and 35 for children each week), the school provides budding choreographers and artists in residence with rehearsal space and a performance venue. Dancers from companies ranging from Doug Varone to Mark Morris to Pina Bausch offer master classes, and there’s a teen pre-professional modern-dance program with a performing ensemble. Adult classes in Pilates and Lifelong Movement round out the offerings.

Most mornings, if you poke your head into one of the studios, you’ll see Shawl smiling his way through a ballet class. After barre, chances are he’ll slip out to handle administrative tasks in the glorified closet that serves as an office. Several mornings a week Anderson mans the front desk, his serene air a foil to Shawl’s chatty enthusiasm. (But get him talking and you’ll find that he’s got just as many stories.) They seem like a system of checks and balances, one tempering the other in a partnership that gives the school a feeling of warmth and generous spirit.

Flash back to the 1930s and ’40s and you’d see Shawl growing up in Hawthorne, New Jersey, a one-cinema town with New York City a glamorous temptation in the distance. Across the continent, in Oakland, California, the young Anderson, a Utah transplant, was making his first forays into dance, studying ballet in Berkeley with Dorothy Pring.

Shawl began studying tap at around age 5 and loved it. But even though he spent hours at the movie theater watching Fred Astaire and other stars of Hollywood musicals, he had never thought about dance as a career until he saw a Broadway show. “That’s when I realized there were people making their living dancing very near where I was living,” he says with a laugh. “People could do this!”

After he finished high school, Shawl was working in his uncle’s office when he saw an ad for an audition at New York’s Roxy Theatre. They were looking for tap dancers. “I went and I made it,” he says, sounding surprised all these years later.

The grueling gig threw Shawl into four or five shows a day, seven days a week. Being around other professional dancers, including fellow cast member Lucas Hoving, made him realize his limitations. “I was earning a living as a dancer and couldn’t believe how much I couldn’t do,” says Shawl, who had never studied anything but tap. “I wanted to get good training so I could get other jobs. That first audition was like a fluke, a stroke of luck. I had to continue to study.”

When he asked the Roxy dancers where they took class, “one of the dancers said, ‘I’ll take you to a place where you can get your class and never miss a show,’ ” Shawl says. The year was 1950 and the school was the O’Donnell-Shurr Modern Dance Studio. “May [O’Donnell] had a company—Gerald Arpino was dancing there, and Bob Joffrey. And Gertrude Shurr was with her—she was also in the Denishawn company. So they joined forces to start a school. They had professional classes for all the dancers, even the American Ballet Theatre dancers.”

Shawl, compact and wiry, immediately fell in love with modern dance. “I was overwhelmed at how marvelous it was, and so difficult. [O’Donnell’s style] was Graham derived, but much purer, more lyrical. She used contraction and release, but it wasn’t quite as stylized [as Graham’s]. And so when choreographers saw people trained by May, they thought they had lots of ballet training, which maybe they didn’t; they were very adaptable.”

Modern dance was a goldmine for Shawl, who craved constant new challenges. He says he loved “the range, the unlimited vocabulary; it was less codified [than ballet] in some ways. And yet I love ballet; I take class five days a week because I love the strength it gives me at this point. But earlier in my life I wanted a different kind of body range, body vocabulary. It was like another language. I think studying different styles is like broadening your language skills.”

Over the course of his 11 years in New York, Shawl danced with O’Donnell’s company and studied with José Limón, Pauline Koner, Charles Weidman, and Martha Graham. “[Graham] asked me into her company after the third class,” says Shawl. “She said, ‘Where are you from?’ The minute I said [I trained with] May O’Donnell she smiled. When Martha saw someone trained by May, her eyes lit up.” Shawl found a niche dancing on TV too, spending six and a half years with various shows in New York and Los Angeles, including CBS’ Shower of Stars and the Perry Como, Red Skelton, and Tallulah Bankhead shows.

But in L.A., something was missing. “I didn’t have the satisfaction of studying in Los Angeles like I had in New York,” Shawl says. “I missed my teachers. So I said no to everything and went back to New York with no job. I went back to May and real deep work.” And when he returned to O’Donnell’s company, Anderson was there.

The tall, slender Anderson didn’t dance a step until his late teens. A piano and composition student, he thought he was going to become a professional musician. “Then I went to the ballet and I saw Tudor’s Pillar of Fire,” he says. “When Nora Kaye did a contraction, I felt it viscerally, all the way up in the balcony.” After that, he ushered for dance performances at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House. And when a young girl he met there suggested that taking ballet would increase his appreciation for what he was seeing, he went to Pring’s classes in Berkeley and his life changed.

Like every aspiring dancer in the 1950s, Anderson moved to New York City, where he performed Jerome Robbins’ choreography in Call Me Madam and danced in Alfredo Salmaggi’s operas. But he had never taken modern dance until a ballet classmate’s sister, who told him he should broaden his base, sent him to O’Donnell.

Anderson’s first impression of O’Donnell made quite an impact: “She was seated on a little bench and there was a drum. This woman had tremendous power and energy and movement coming out of her—and she was just sitting on a bench!” Within a few years O’Donnell asked him to join her company.

So when Shawl returned from L.A., the two men started talking. Anderson, who was teaching at the Gramercy School of Music and Dance with Norman Walker, wanted to leave New York to start a company and school. Knowing that Shawl was interested in teaching and choreographing, he suggested that they team up and move to California; with so many established teachers in New York, he argued, starting a school there would be a tough sell.

Envisioning a student body in New York that consisted of “a handful of friends,” Shawl agreed that relocating would give them the chance to “get our own identity.” In teaching, he says, “you learn your creative voice, your teaching style. I was one of those natural dancers who took a lot for granted. When I taught, I had to analyze; I had to transfer and think about movement, create, rather than just do it. And that opened so many doors for me. I never taught the same class twice. I would take some material and build on it; even my warm-ups would change.”

But things in California got off to a slow start. The modern classes the men offered to adults didn’t cover the $100 monthly rent for the studio, not to mention an apartment. They began teaching children, at community centers and Ys, and found that they loved it. So after three or four years of struggling, and with their savings nearly gone, they began offering classes for children. “That’s when the school started to earn its way,” says Shawl.

Victor Anderson’s first impression of May O’Donnell made quite an impact: “This woman had tremendous power and energy and movement coming out of her—and she was just sitting on a bench!”

When a two-story Edwardian house across the street from the liquor store came on the market, Shawl and Anderson saw their chance to build on what they had begun—and without leaving their community. They gutted the building to create two sunny studios, later adding two more. During the renovations they held classes in the new school’s anteroom. When the school formally opened, in 1968, Charles Weidman taught the first class.

The two men quickly found their own roles. Shawl handled most of the business and taught the modern classes, while Anderson taught ballet. Today, 34 teachers handle the school’s curriculum.

In the Shawl-Anderson Dance Company, the two men were equal partners. “He did his pieces, I did mine, and we danced in one another’s pieces,” says Shawl. “And we had guest choreographers. We had Lester Horton; we had several of May O’Donnell’s pieces; we had Rina Shahem from the Batsheva company. We had a good repertory, but we were always in everything. We were the only two male dancers we could be sure of; the others we had to train.”

Shawl’s constant need to learn, to experience new ways of moving, colored the company and shaped the school. “The technique I developed over the years was a clean one that could jump into many different styles. I was very cognizant of variations of the way you do something. If somebody wanted it that way, I did it that way. If somebody wanted it this way, I did it this way. Undogmatic, and I think that’s what we brought here [to Berkeley]—work that was unmannered but adaptable to all different styles and encouraged people to do any style they wished.”

Though Shawl-Anderson Dance Center dropped “Modern” from its name several years ago, modern has always been the heart of the school. “I think if it’s taught properly it should give youngsters a sense of ‘this is demanding and has to be given your fullest awareness and attention,’ ” Shawl says. “You can’t just play at it; it’s deep work. But it’s fulfilling and you should never take the joy out of it.”

O’Donnell’s influence on the two men shows most strongly in the feeling of community they foster. “May was very soft-spoken, with a gentleness and sweetness,” Anderson says. “There was a wonderful atmosphere in the studio, and Frank and I loved that because we’d both been in studios where it was very unpleasant, the competitiveness and intrigue. That impressed us, and we wanted that same kind of atmosphere.”

“If someone who was new to class did something beautiful, all the [O’Donnell] company members applauded,” says Shawl. “It was so encouraging. That was the environment she had there and we have here. We all are doing something that’s a part of a passion.”

After 13 and a half years, Shawl-Anderson Dance Company folded, but the school endures. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in June 2008, and later that year Berkeley’s mayor proclaimed December 16 “Shawl-Anderson Day,” acknowledging the school’s contributions to the community.

In no small part the school’s success can be chalked up to love. “Teaching was a joy, and when I jump in now it’s still a joy, because you never lose those skills,” Shawl says. “One thing I loved about May—she would see potential in people beyond what they ever imagined they had. She nurtured us, but she always said, ‘It’s not about you; it’s about the work.’ It’s about the dance and what you can bring to it, and your integrity, your love of it. You become not just a dancer but an artist. And that made a tremendous impact on me. She was a marvelously wise woman. She was one of those exemplary people who had no ‘stuff.’ It was pure love. And you pass that on.”

Anderson sums it up: “There would be no Shawl-Anderson if we hadn’t known May O’Donnell.”

One woman’s journey from dancer to physical therapist and back again

By Bonner Odell

Perhaps dance studio owners would do well to start posting the following disclaimer on their front doors: “Warning: Dance can change the course of your life.” It’s a truth that Marjie Major, a physical-therapist-turned-studio-owner in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, can attest to firsthand. Prescribed ballet classes at age 3 to correct her severely turned-in hips, Major developed a fascination for the human body through dance that started her on a career path in rehabilitation. She never imagined it would one day lead her straight back to the studio.

Dual passions
Major relished classes in ballet, tap, jazz, and gymnastics throughout her childhood. As a teenager, she taught at dance camps for children. But as passionate as she felt about dance, she knew from the time she was in high school that she wanted to follow in the footsteps of her father, a physician. “I always admired my dad and loved math and science, so I made up my mind to go into the medical field,” she says. But it was Major’s dance background that led her to single out a career in physical therapy (PT). “The principles of PT are essentially the same as those of dance training: balance, coordination, weight shift, center of gravity, alignment. It was a natural fit.”

Major attended Boston University, where she majored in physical therapy. During her undergraduate years she took as many jazz and hip-hop classes as she could cram into her schedule. As her knowledge of physical therapy deepened, so did her understanding of the way the human body acquires new movement skills.

“There’s a progression to the rehabilitation process which also applies to dance,” she says. “First comes range of motion. Both an injured patient and a developing dancer have to start by increasing flexibility. So in both cases you start with stretching. Then comes stability. A stroke patient needs to be able to hold his body in space. A dancer needs to be able to stand on one leg in passé before attempting a pirouette. Next comes controlled mobility, and finally, skill, both of which come through repeated practice. These same principles apply whether you’re learning ‘run, run, grand jeté’ or how to walk with a cane.” They are also principles that would help to define Major’s approach to dance teaching.

Evolution of an educator
Because she had always enjoyed working with kids as a dance instructor, after graduation Major took a position in the pediatric ward of a nearby teaching hospital. “I helped run a preschool for disabled kids,” she says. “It was a great job.” After two years, however, she relocated to Cherry Hill, less than 10 miles outside of Philadelphia, to be closer to her parents. A hospital there hired her to work with geriatric patients.

“What I liked about working with seniors was that they were more personally accountable for their recoveries,” Major says. “My one frustration doing PT with kids was that their rehabilitation was only as complete as their parents’ commitment to it. Once I started doing geriatric PT, I was struck by the changeability of the human body. It was remarkable that I could start a 95-year-old woman on strength training and she would inevitably get stronger.”

Major’s work with seniors came at a time when, she says, “hospitals were discharging patients too early,” so she traveled to homes to follow up on their physical therapy regimens. The flexibility of home care afforded her time with her two young boys, now 12 and 14. It also allowed her to indulge her dance addiction as a member of several Philadelphia companies, not to mention a yearlong stint as a cheerleader with the Philadelphia Eagles. In 1992 she started performing, choreographing, and teaching for Triple Threat Theatre Company in Philadelphia (now Fusion Academy of the Performing Arts), where she later helped found a school and played a pivotal role for the next 12 years.

To accommodate her growing dance teaching schedule and escape the limitations she felt insurance companies placed on her patients’ care, Major broke with the hospital system in 1998 to pursue certification as a personal trainer. She then started her own in-home personal training practice focused on seniors. “I was on a one-woman mission to prevent osteoporosis,” she laughs. “I was constantly telling women in their 50s, ‘Look, you can address this now and be running with your grandkids in 20 years, or you can do nothing and not even be able to reach that cabinet.’ ” Major’s concern for her clients’ futures stemmed in part from the time she spent learning about their pasts. “I’ve always felt our country doesn’t respect elders as we should,” she says. “It was a pleasure just to sit and listen to them.”

“So much of my career has been about teaching people to value their bodies, to take care of them. I am constantly reinforcing to my students how amazing their bodies are, that they are all snowflakes, each beautiful but very individual and unique.” —Marjie Major

But Major was also taking increasing pleasure in her dance teaching, which she would pursue throughout the next seven years, alongside her personal training work. When the opportunity arose to start a studio of her own, she made her most exhilarating career leap yet.

Full circle
Prompted by a friend who encouraged her to turn her lifelong love affair with dance into a full-time endeavor, Major launched Happy Feet Dance Studio in 2005. A small school focused on ballet, tap, jazz, and hip-hop, it has since grown to more than 280 students. Major teaches many of the classes herself, but two staff teachers help cover the ballet and hip-hop curriculum. She focuses mainly on jazz, her personal favorite.

“Our emphasis is on goal setting and working toward personal victories,” Major says. “We’re not a recital school. I’m more concerned about growth than the end product. We do end each season with a presentation for family and friends, though, and I make it a point to ask the girls questions during the demonstrations so the audience can hear what they’ve learned.”

Major says the educational aspect of being a full-time dance instructor isn’t so different from that of therapist and trainer. “So much of my career has been about teaching people to value their bodies, to take care of them,” she says. “I am constantly reinforcing to my students how amazing their bodies are, that they are all snowflakes, each beautiful but very individual and unique.”

She believes that self-esteem is key to promoting nutrition and injury prevention, since students are likely to eat healthier and apply self-awareness to their training if they value their bodies. The conscientiousness Major seeks to foster in young dancers is informed by her study of yoga and Pilates (she holds certifications in both), and is reflected in the structure of her dance classes. “I always make sure that muscles are warm before we stretch by doing a mild cardio at the beginning of class. I am very specific about teaching kids what a good stretch should feel like, and I like to quiz them on where they should be feeling certain exercises to be sure they are targeting the correct muscles and not compensating. These are the same theories used when rehabbing patients in physical therapy.”

Although Major does not step in as a therapist when her students are injured, instead referring them to outside care, she says she does “keep close tabs on what their limitations are and how I can accommodate them when they return to class.”

While her six-days-a-week role at Happy Feet has its challenges, Major looks back and marvels at how her journey has prepared her for her work as a studio owner. Over and above her practical experience in the realms of anatomy and kinesiology, along the way she’s gained people skills that have proved crucial. “Being successful in a small business has everything to do with how you interact with people,” she says. “Years and years of working with patients and insurance companies and administrators gave me the confidence I needed to strike out on my own.”

As for her business sense, Major says she learned a great deal by watching and assisting her father in his one-man medical practice. “I helped him with everything from cleaning the microscopes to billing and bookkeeping,” she recalls. “In many ways I modeled my studio after his office.”

The body bridge
Major is one of a growing number of dance instructors who bring a technical understanding of the body to bear on their teaching. The increasing overlap of the dance and medical fields is arming the dance community against injury better than ever before. Many large schools and companies now offer health screenings, cross training, educational seminars, and in-school clinics. Organizations like the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science continue to add to the growing body of knowledge about safe practices in dance training and injury treatment. Major’s example shows that small studios too can produce healthy, injury-free dancers when the faculty makes body awareness a priority. Her career stands as testament to the interconnectedness of the healing and aesthetic arts, two ancient practices with the human body at their cores.

Major’s personal journey reminds us of the possibilities that can emerge when dancers seek out creative ways to integrate their life experiences. The way she sees it, there are as many unique and meandering paths to a rewarding life in dance as there are dancers to travel them. The important thing is to stay connected to one’s personal passion for dance, then remain open when opportunities arise. The results might just surprise.

“I want my students to understand that movement is beautiful when it is authentic and comes from within their own place,” Major says. “In turn, they can find beauty when they look in the mirror.”

Strategies for dealing with dance teacher defections

By Vanina and Dennis Wilson

It’s a studio owner’s biggest fear: former employees who turn into competitors. When your most popular instructor tells you she’s leaving to teach for the studio up the street—or worse, plans to open her own school close to your turf—it packs a wallop. But if it happens to you, take heart. You can take steps to soften the blow.

Foster loyalty
The best way to keep departing instructors from siphoning off your students is to make an effort to focus student loyalty on your school rather than on individual instructors. Long-established, professional ballet schools, for example, often have this kind of institutional hold on their students. It’s hard to imagine that students at those schools would leave to follow a particular instructor, no matter how popular.

True, this kind of loyalty cannot be generated overnight. But the following practices can maximize students’ emotional ties to their studio and minimize their devotion to individual instructors.

• Rotate instructors at least every year so that students don’t become too attached to any one of them. Explain the need for diversity in learning experiences to parents who want their child assigned to an instructor whom the child liked the previous year.
• If you don’t teach at your school, it’s time to start. Periodically teach every class (or as many as you have expertise in). Parents and students who see an actively involved school owner are more likely to feel a connection to her and her school.
• Be wary of instructors who refer to their classes as “my students.” Remind them that all students are clients of the dance studio and not any instructor’s personal assets. This could be a particular problem when instructors at your school teach students whom they previously taught elsewhere.
• Be alert for instructors who try to develop their own sub-clientele within the dance studio. This could be a sign that they are planning to leave and take those students with them. Take action before the problem arises; move that instructor’s students to another teacher if possible.

Use non-compete agreements
To reduce their risk, dance studio owners may include a non-compete agreement as a part of an employment contract. Such agreements restrict employees’ activities, such as teaching dance on their own or for a competitor, during the time that they are employed and after they leave. These restrictions are ordinarily limited in time (for example, two years after departure) and geographic area (for example, a radius of 25 miles around the employer’s studio). They may also restrict employees from soliciting the students they taught for their former employer or using trade secrets learned during the course of their employment.

Such an agreement helps the studio owner in several ways. First, chances are good that a departing instructor would comply with the agreement, or at least keep a lower profile than he would have without it. Instructors who plan to violate these agreements must contemplate obtaining and paying a lawyer, sitting through depositions or even a trial, and otherwise devoting time, money, and emotional energy to the case. This is particularly a burden if they are simultaneously trying to launch a new business.

Second, instructors who have signed a non-compete agreement know that competing studios might be less likely to hire them since they would be affected by any enforcement litigation. Prospective employers might also wonder whether an instructor who is willing to breach a non-compete agreement with one employer might show a similarly cavalier attitude toward contractual obligations to them.

Finally, the possibility that a court would enforce the agreement gives studio owners leverage in settlement talks with the former employee.

Who can do what, legally?
Without a non-compete agreement on file, school owners can’t take much action against former employees who “steal” their students. Employees are generally free to use the knowledge that they have gained from one employer to compete with that employer. Legally, however, they may not take an employer’s property with them, including class rosters and student contact information, nor may they use genuine trade secrets learned during the course of their employment.

However, former employees can legally use memory and publicly available sources of information to get in touch with former students. They can also solicit the help of former students in getting in touch with other students. Instructors who create a list of students and contact information using employer-furnished information before quitting can claim—if they’re sued—to have used permissible methods to get in touch with former students. Proving that they did not would be difficult.

Although a dance studio may claim trade-secret protection for dance instruction methods (which will be shared with instructors), the odds are slim that genuine secrets exist about teaching a human activity that’s older than agriculture. Finally, remember that “a secret shared is a secret lost” when you contemplate sharing other sensitive information, such as marketing plans, with instructors.

Enforcement
It is impossible to predict when non-compete agreements will be upheld in court; however, it is in your best interest to have each teacher who works for you sign one.

Without a non-compete agreement on file, school owners can’t take much action against former employees who “steal” their students.

During the last century, courts tended to enforce “reasonable” non-compete arrangements. Of course, what a court finds reasonable depends on the facts of the case. A judge might find that the agreement could be reasonable in some circumstances yet unreasonable in others. Courts tend to make judgments in favor of instructors’ need to earn a living and students’ interest in studying with their chosen instructor, rather than protecting a studio’s interest in preserving student-generated revenue.

Attempts to enforce non-compete agreements through the courts can be difficult and expensive. According to one attorney who specializes in employment law, a judgment in a simple agreement-enforcement case might cost $20,000 to $25,000. (A seriously contested case would cost much more.) Since dance instructors are rarely wealthy or insured for the risk of losing such a case, the studio owner might have to garnish wages or bank accounts, or record and foreclose liens to collect a judgment. The former instructor might file bankruptcy. In some cases, it might be possible to obtain a court order to prevent a departing employee from working elsewhere. Instructors who teach in defiance of such an order would not only be in breach of their non-compete agreements, they would risk being fined or even imprisoned for contempt of court.

In any lawsuit, school owners should bear in mind that they might lose customers who resent the studio for suing a departing instructor. But non-compete agreements are valuable because the potential threat of a lawsuit is often enough to deter former employees from violating them. Having the teachers on your staff sign such agreements sends a message that you are serious about your rights as a studio owner.

The strength of goodwill
Courts generally will enforce contractual prohibitions against departing instructors who directly solicit students whom they taught during their former employment. The courts reason that former employers have invested heavily in developing “goodwill” with their studios’ students and that instructors misappropriate that goodwill when they solicit those students.

For the same reason, courts almost always enforce non-compete agreements contained in contracts for the purchase of dance studios. Part of the price paid by the purchaser represents the studio’s goodwill, which the seller should not be able to appropriate by opening a rival studio.

How to draw up an agreement
Utilizing a lawyer to insert non-compete agreements in employment contracts typically costs several thousand dollars. A far less expensive option is to copy a non-compete agreement from a book or website of legal forms, making sure that it has a solicitation prohibition. You can then add any restrictions on activities, geographic area, and time that you believe are justifiable. This option may be as enforceable as a lawyer-drafted agreement.

Although studio owners should do what they can to retain competent and well-liked teachers, they also need to recognize that this year’s popular instructor may be next year’s competitor. By putting appropriate procedures in place, along with a non-compete agreement, they can minimize their losses.

Knowing what to teach and when to teach it helps you deliver in the classroom

By Brian Foley

Teachers, how often do you walk into your dance class with the thought, “What am I going to teach today?” Dance teachers have many responsibilities, but one of the most important is accountability. And being accountable means developing and implementing quality class plans.

The strategies and formulas we use in our class plans help us fulfill our needs as teachers. But more important, they allow us to address the needs of our students in a well-thought-out, progressive curriculum that anticipates their development as dancers and allows for their growth.

Too much too soon
Often, because of our students’ participation in dance competitions or showcase performances, we feel forced to teach steps and tricks that are beyond their technical abilities. We show our students “what to do” and then spend hours of class time watching them struggle as we challenge their lack of technique and physical understanding of the movement. We push our students to improve, to acquire the required skill levels, without taking time to communicate the “how to do,” often creating bad habits instead of good technique. We forget (or ignore) the fact that we must teach an understanding of the technique and muscle memory requirements.

We must constantly remind ourselves that achieving technical excellence in our students does not happen overnight. Technique needs to be taught slowly and with confidence, communicating the “how to” information in such a way that our students understand the physical feeling and muscle memory logistics of each important position or dance move. Teaching in a way that reinforces learning through repetition in every dance class means thinking in terms of a never-ending time line—one that includes the “how to do” technique and steps and pays attention to age appropriateness.

Parental pressure
One of the biggest challenges for dance teachers is communicating to (and then reminding and convincing) our students’ parents that quality training for their children includes technique, repetition, reinforcement, and age-appropriate steps and style moves, all supported with motivating choreography.

Often, when schools participate in competitions, winning becomes the parents’ priority. They compare their children’s competition results with those of other studios. Even in observing daily or weekly classes, they compare their children’s achievements to what other students can do. Instead of focusing on what their children have accomplished, parents question our motives for teaching while challenging our ability to teach.

Part of our role as teachers is educating parents about the importance of quality training. With a class plan in hand, you can sit down with every child’s parents and show them the projected arc of their children’s learning and what they can reasonably expect. Explaining why you follow a dance syllabus will help them understand the strategies and training standards you teach to in delivering age-appropriate, quality dance education to their children.

School owners should implement overall class plans and training-standard requirements. However, if class plan formulation is left up to the individual teachers (as it is in most studio operations), they should prepare the plans early enough to share them with assistant teachers and studio owners.

Though we strive to help our students achieve at the highest level possible, it takes time to get results. Many parents don’t realize that professional dance teachers teach for the future, not for today.

Remember: Plan the work, work the plan, and teach until the teaching is done!

Sample Class Plan

This outline is based on the structure of one 60-minute dance class, held once a week over the course of 36 weeks (therefore, 36 hours of training).

All technique and dance steps taught should be age appropriate, taking into consideration the physical growth, amount of previous training, and the mental focus and discipline of the students.

Barre/center warm-up:
First 20 minutes of each class (12 hours of the 36-week dance season)

• encourages mental discipline and focus
• provides training for correct placement, alignment, and posture
• reinforces stretch/flexibility and muscle strength
• promotes development of muscle memory through repetition

Across the floor:
Second 20 minutes of each class (12 hours of the 36-week dance season)

• allows practice of new steps and dance vocabulary
• enforces use of space
• enforces style dynamics and change of body directions
• trains students in traveling step techniques
• allows for repetition of steps and movements

Combinations:
Third 20 minutes of each class (12 hours of the 36-week dance season)

• allows time to “train the brain” to think and react faster
• prepares students for routine choreography
• teaches the students to dance together, for each other, not just with each other
• enforces style needs and musicality for choreography

Week-by-week breakdown
Weeks 1–12: Show and teach what to do.

Weeks 13–24: Review material from the first 12 weeks, reinforcing the “how to do” process.

Weeks 25–28: Review steps and technique; teach new steps. The goals for these weeks are to have fun, teach new and challenging material, and teach students to be more aware of each other. This segment also serves as a transition period leading into learning the recital dance.

Weeks 29–36: Routine/recital/performance. This is when you can deviate from the structure of the plan.

A recital dance routine (at the recreational level) typically consists of eight combinations. If you follow the plan and teach usable combinations during the first 24 weeks of classes, detailing and working them to make them routine worthy, you will have at least 12 usable combinations to choose from. (A dance combination is usually 8 bars in length; it should not take more than 8 hours to choreograph and clean a routine.)

The last 8 weeks: This is a special time in your dancers’ training. Because there is not much time for technical training, it’s important to continue with the 20-minute barre/warm-up portion of class in order to reinforce technique and placement throughout the dance season.

2-classes-per-week structure
When students take two classes per week, you have some flexibility in the class structure.

Barre
First 20 minutes

Work on root movement and body alignment and strength for steps in dance routine.

Traveling steps
Second 20 minutes

Work on style, flair, and root step technique necessary for the choreography.

Routine
Third 20 minutes

Work on choreography, cleaning, and pattern requirements for the routine.

Tips
If you do not follow through with your class plan, you are being inconsistent with muscle-memory training, which requires repetition of movement and constant technical reinforcement.

If your studio competes or conducts dance exams, you must add extra classes and make them a part of your master plan. You must also develop mini plans for this content within your master plan.

Negotiate like a pro for best results

By Dale Willerton

For many dance studio owners, negotiating a good lease or lease renewal against an experienced agent or landlord can be a challenge. Dance studio tenants may go through the leasing process only once or twice in their lifetime, yet they have to negotiate against seasoned professionals who do it every day.

Whether you are renewing a lease or leasing a new location for your studio, the following tips will help you get the best terms possible.

Negotiate to win. All too frequently, dance studio tenants enter into lease negotiations unprepared and don’t even try to win the negotiations. If you are not negotiating to win, you won’t win. On the other hand, you can be sure the landlord’s agent, with big commissions at stake, is negotiating fiercely to win. Dance studio tenants should remember that negotiating aggressively is OK.

Be prepared to walk away. Try to set aside your emotions and make objective decisions. Whoever needs the lease deal more will give up the most concessions. Remember that a good dance studio in a poor location may not achieve its full potential.

Ask the right questions. Gathering information about how much rent other tenants are paying or what incentives they received will position you to get a better deal. Ask the right questions. Consider that your landlord and his agent know what every other tenant in the property is paying in rent, so you must do your homework too.

Brokers—friend or foe? Real estate agents and brokers typically work for the landlord who is paying their commission. It is not normally the agents’ role to get a tenant the best deal; it is their job to get the landlord the highest rent, or the biggest deposit. The higher the rent you pay, the larger the commission the agent earns. If you are researching multiple properties, try to deal directly with the listing agent for each one, rather than letting one agent show you around or show you another agent’s listing. Your tenancy is more desirable to the listing agent if he can avoid splitting his commission with other agents.

Never accept the first offer. Even if the first offer to lease seems reasonable, or you have no idea of what to negotiate for, never accept the leasing agent’s first offer. In the real estate industry, most things are negotiable and the landlord expects you to make a counteroffer.

Ask for more than you want. If you want free rent for three months, then ask for five months. No one ever gets more than he asks for. Be prepared for the landlord to make a counteroffer and negotiate with you as well. Don’t be afraid of hearing the word “no” from the landlord; counteroffers are part of the game.

Negotiate the deposit. Large deposits are not legally required in a real estate lease agreement. Deposits are negotiable and, more than anything else, often compensate the landlord for the commissions he will be paying out to the realtor. If you are negotiating a lease renewal and your landlord is already holding a deposit of yours, negotiate to get that deposit back.

Measure your space. Some dance studio tenants are paying for phantom space. Most rents are based on square footage, but often tenants do not receive as much space as the lease agreement specifies.

Understand your term. The length of a lease term is not necessarily a bargaining issue. Longer lease terms do not guarantee cheaper rental payments. In these days of economic turmoil, you should either negotiate a rental break prior to start-up for new leases or a rent reduction as you approach your renewal date.

Negotiate, negotiate. The leasing process is just that—a process, not an event. The more time you have to put the deal together and make counteroffers, the better the chance you have of getting what you want. Too often, tenants mistakenly try to hammer out the deal in a two- or three-hour marathon negotiation session. It is more productive to negotiate in stages over time.

Educate yourself and get help. Unless you have money to throw away, it pays to educate yourself. Taking the time to read about the subject or listen in on a leasing teleseminar will make a difference. And don’t forget to have your lease documents professionally reviewed before you sign them. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent at stake, plus personal guarantees, build-out costs, and sizable deposits, you can’t afford to gamble.

In leasing, dance studio tenants don’t get what they deserve—they get what they negotiate.

How school owners and teachers can make the most of the hiring process

By Misty Lown

If you’re like many school owners, you dread hiring new teachers and prefer to get through the process as quickly as possible. Being short-staffed is no one’s idea of fun. But for dance school owners, it’s important to go beyond the traditional interview when hiring teachers. Often the people who take their places at the head of your classes are the most direct link between you and your clients. That’s why it’s important to hire teachers who reflect your values, expectations, and reputation. Taking the time to make a well-informed decision will save you time and heartache in the future.

Researching candidates
Let’s assume you’ve put the word out—through advertising, your staff, or local postings—that you’re hiring teachers. Once the resumes begin rolling in, it’s time to start doing your homework.

The first thing I do is to check out the websites of the studios where the teachers trained and/or most recently taught, in order to get an idea of what you might reasonably expect to see in their classroom performance. Every studio has a culture, ranging from technique to dress code, that is usually easily identifiable on a website.

Often I am attracted to candidates who come out of programs that are similar to mine in terms of scope and content. For example, teachers who come from very competitive studios might have exceptional technique, but they might not share my heartfelt welcome of recreational students. On the other hand, a studio owner with a thriving competition team might be disappointed with teachers whose previous experience doesn’t include competitions, even if they have great personalities.

On those websites, you can pick up more subtle clues about a teacher’s experiences as well. For example, the photo gallery can reveal what the candidate is used to in terms of dress code. A teacher who grew up in a studio where it was normal to wear tank tops and shorts to ballet class might find it a challenge to enforce a dress code of leotard and tights. You will probably find a better “fit” when the prospective teacher comes from a studio culture that is similar to or even a bit more polished than yours.

Of course, not every studio has a website, or one that’s informative. In those cases, if the candidates look good on paper, you will have to move forward with the interview.

When should you check references and verify credentials? I take this step only after an interview, when I am seriously considering hiring a teacher. The first person I contact is the current or previous employer, who can offer more valuable information than personal references can. Most studio owners will be candid about a teacher’s strengths, weaknesses, and salary history.

The interview
Once you’ve narrowed down the prospects, it’s time to meet them in person. I start every personal interview with a studio tour; it helps get the conversation flowing. Since most of the facts about the teachers’ training and experience are on the resume, my job is to find out as much as I can about the people behind those papers. Making them comfortable from the beginning increases my chances of seeing their real personalities.

The first question I ask is, “What prompted you to apply for a teaching job at our studio?” A generic answer might be, “I saw your ad and thought I’d apply.” The best answer I’ve heard was, “My friends showed me your ad in the campus newspaper. They thought about me right away because I am always talking about how much I miss dance and teaching since coming to college.” A response like this tells me that being involved in dance is a fundamental part of this person’s being, not simply a hobby.

I look for people who dance well and love to teach. I am interested in learning details of their dance training and how they got involved in teaching. Whom did they study with regularly? What did they admire about their dance teacher? What made them interested in teaching and what was their first teaching experience like? How are they keeping their dance skills sharp? What is their greatest strength as a teacher? And more important, what do they recognize that they have to work on?

From the moment a prospective teacher walks into the building I am making mental notes. Does she greet people with confidence? Does she maintain eye contact when talking? What message does her body language send?

To optimize the results of the interview, ask specific questions. For example, instead of asking about their experience in general, ask about their proudest moment or most challenging teaching situation. The most reliable indicator of future performance is past performance. Concrete examples of how they have handled situations in the past will give you a good idea of how they will handle them in the future.

Although a candidate’s responses are informative, be aware of your reactions to the person as well. There is a natural tendency to be most comfortable with people who are most like you in personality, race, ethnicity, or social standing; don’t allow that to make you overlook a great candidate. Also, don’t discount the possibility that a great teacher may reside in a body that doesn’t fit the dancer stereotype. In my experience, parents appreciate the opportunity to place their children in a school that includes role models with similarities to themselves.

After the interview, it’s polite to follow up with all candidates. I tell them that I will contact them in three days to let them know if I would like them to teach an audition class.

In the end, remember that all interviews are good experiences—even the bad ones you can’t wait to tell your husband or friends about. If you find a great candidate you want to ask to do a teaching audition, super! If you find someone who is absolutely not a fit for your program, super! At least you found out now.

Supplementary materials
Anybody can look good on paper. Just because a candidate’s resume includes a long list of master classes taught by big names, the fact that she attended them doesn’t necessarily mean she can dance at that level. The reverse can also be true. Just because a teacher didn’t grow up on the convention circuit doesn’t mean she might not have received quality training at her home studio.

Ask prospective employees to bring to the interview a DVD of some samples of their choreography and of themselves dancing. Watch it together near the end of the interview. If you have an enthusiastic prospect, she will narrate the video for you. If not, ask questions: “How old were the kids in this number?” “Was it a class that met once a week or more often?” “How did you pick your music and costume?” I have seen some teachers light up when watching videos of their students or past performances. This is usually when teachers relax and show their personalities.

Teacher auditions
If you decide you like a prospective teacher well enough, it is time to schedule the most important piece of the hiring process—the audition class.

Set up teacher audition classes at times when you won’t be distracted from observing. I let prospective teachers choose two age groups to work with (and two styles of dance if applicable). One group will include performance company or competition team kids; the other will be recreational students. If multiple audition classes are scheduled, I have each teacher work with different students.

During the week before a scheduled audition class, I invite the teachers to observe classes similar in age to the one they will teach. Those who choose to observe class beforehand usually have a stronger audition because they have a better understanding of the ability level of that age group at our school.

Qualities to look for
From the moment a prospective teacher walks into the building I am making mental notes. Does she greet people with confidence? Does she maintain eye contact when talking? What message does her body language send—attentiveness and eagerness or timidity and distractedness? Does her grooming reflect the standards you have at your studio?

Once the teacher enters the classroom, my checklist enters new territory too. I am looking for a balance of qualities: someone who is prepared but doesn’t rely on notes; who can offer corrections to students she doesn’t know but maintain an encouraging tone; who can manage class time between warm-up, skills, and choreography; who can make on-the-spot adjustments according to the students’ skill level. The teacher I hire needs to demonstrate both technical proficiency and a warm personality.

Although I might be the only one taking notes during the class, I’m not the only one forming an opinion. The students’ reactions to the class are important, and I spend almost as much time watching the kids as I do the teacher. Ideally, they should appear focused, learn something new or refine a skill, and leave the room with a smile.

Wait to make a hiring decision until after you have seen all of the candidates. You might be impressed with your first candidate’s class but later see another teacher who is even more impressive. Or you could decide to repost the position to attract a new candidate pool. Watch every audition class with an open mind.

When you want to make an offer, schedule a follow-up interview. This is when you can clarify expectations and discuss wages or salary. Salary negotiations are best left until the second interview; often, what I see in an audition influences what I am willing to pay a particular teacher. Conversely, teachers who are impressed with the quality of the work environment or the work ethic of the students might be more willing to negotiate.

Teacher’s perspective
Now let’s flip the scenario and look at an often-overlooked piece of the hiring puzzle. What should a prospective employee look for in an employer? A good employment “fit” means that the teacher has the qualities the employer wants and the employer has the qualities the teacher is looking for. Teachers should be encouraged to apply to multiple studios before accepting a position.

In addition to finding the right fit for their experience in terms of technique, personality, and studio culture, teachers have practical matters to consider. Does the prospective employer have a policy handbook for teachers or is most of the policy “understood”? Does the employer provide a written contract or are teachers hired at will? How will employer/employee communications be handled? Will teachers be kept informed of important studio updates? New employees have a much better chance of being successful if they know the ground rules.

Prospective teachers should be encouraged to ask questions. The interview process is as much for them to find the right place to teach as it is for studio owners to find the right teacher for the job. I always close an interview by asking candidates if they have any questions. I love it when they show that they have done some research about our program by asking for clarification on something.

For prospective teachers, the audition class reveals much about what working at the studio would be like. How does the studio owner talk to students and parents? How are prospective teachers introduced? Are the students respectful and eager to learn or are they chatty and rolling their eyes? Do the students say thank you and clap at the end of class or do they barrel out the door? Most important, teachers must assess their own comfort level at the studio.

Be yourself
The most important thing both studio owners and teachers can do during the hiring process is be true to themselves. Studio owners should stand by their expectations and be honest about what they can and cannot offer teachers. Teachers should be confident in their experience and honest about what they are comfortable teaching. When the fit is right for both parties, everyone, including students and parents, will be happy.

Feeding the soul and healing the body through dance

By Heidi Landgraf

As I lie on the heated wooden floor of the Mountain Home Studio, eyes closed, Anna Halprin’s voice guides me to let go and sink into the floor. I remember the first time I came here, in 1997, and Anna gave me the same instruction—I felt my body release and surrender its weight in a way I had never experienced in my 25 years of dancing.

Today it is no different. Anna’s soothing instructions guide me into my body more deeply than in an ordinary dance class. But then Anna is no ordinary teacher. At 89, she is as sprightly as ever—her sparkling eyes dancing—and so impassioned by what she does that it’s infectious. We, her students, want to know our bodies as deeply as she does and experience the joy of dance together in the heavenly environment that she calls home.

The Mountain Home Studio is located on the side of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Anna has lived and taught there since 1945. But her journey into teaching dance began at age 12, when she would recruit the neighborhood kids and their mothers and teach them basic warm-ups and stretches that would later lead into improvisational group dances. She was experimenting early on with what would become a life’s work: teaching dance in community, to dancers and non-dancers alike.

Anna was equally avid in her study of dance. As a youngster in Winnetka, Illinois, she took dance classes as part of her public school’s curriculum. By the time she was in high school the dance classes had been replaced by athletics, so she sought out the football coach. “He did the soft shoe. So I’d meet him at lunchtime and he’d teach me soft shoe tap movements,” she says. “I was definitely a natural at dance, so [it could be] anything—folk dance or tap dance; I didn’t care. I even tried ballet, but that didn’t last too long because I was rebellious. I didn’t want anything so autocratic.”

During this time other dancers who rebelled against the rigid structures in ballet reapplied them into another codified art form: modern dance. Anna rebelled against this, too. She says, “Martha Graham used to say, ‘It takes 10 years to make a dancer,’ and I used to think, ‘Now what kind of dancer is she talking about?’ I’ve seen kids who are 4 years old who are dancing up a storm and having a great time and it’s affecting their lives in the most positive way.”

Anna has always taught with this philosophy in mind: Anyone can dance. She learned the foundation of her teaching style through Margaret H’Doubler at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Anna went there after she was denied admission to Bennington College and she says, “it was the best thing that ever happened to me because Margaret H’Doubler was such a great teacher.” H’Doubler focused primarily on the anatomy of the body and how its structure begets specific kinds of movement.

While Anna was in college, her teaching style became more involved with exploring the relationship between science and art. Though that approach can be highly structured, she found plenty of room for artistic freedom and creativity within it.

While pursuing her dance degree, Anna met and married Lawrence (Larry) Halprin. They moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Larry studied landscape architecture, and Anna began teaching children to dance as a way of supporting them both. She continued the practice for decades. Then, when she had children of her own, she formed a children’s dance co-op because she felt that the local educational system was too focused on athletics. She thought it neglected the deeper involvement of the body and the whole person in movement.

Anna became involved in the Sausalito, California, school system in the early ’60s, when the principal of one of the schools noticed a large gap in learning between the white and African American children. He wondered if integrating dance into the curriculum would help. Anna trained 10 people from the co-op in her style and they went into the schools to teach.

“The first thing they did was [have the students] hold hands, and they took partners according to height; everything they did required a racial mix. Within six weeks the learning process had equalized, and it was all done through movement,” Anna explains. “Dance is the fundamental education for kids. They learn how to trust themselves; they learn how to communicate with each other; they learn a creative process for problem solving. They learn a process of learning, which they can later apply to real-life situations.”

Working with this process of shaping learning into a creative process for making collaborative art (like a dance piece), Anna, Larry, and their daughter Daria created a system called “scoring.” Larry was looking for a way to incorporate into his designs the needs of the people who would be living in or using them. Together they found a basic structure: theme, intentions, activities, and “valuaction,” where the score’s effectiveness is evaluated.

Scores are sets of instructions, involving people in time and place, and Anna has used them to create many of her dance pieces. For Parades and Changes, her best-known dance, the basic score consists of the dancers facing someone and slowly taking off all their clothes, then slowly putting them back on again. They repeat this task until a designated time when they gather together and begin tearing large pieces of butcher paper. When this piece was performed in New York City in 1965, Anna and her dancers were nearly arrested for indecent exposure, which reinforced Anna’s reputation as a dance rebel.

Anna wanted her rebelliousness to encourage others to break boundaries and forge new ways of making art. Because of her seminal thinking about dance, many movement pioneers were drawn to study with her, including Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, and Yvonne Rainer, who went on to break boundaries of their own in postmodern dance.

Two beautiful contradictions exist within Anna’s work and personality: While she is known for being rebellious and breaking the mold, she is also highly structured and organized in her teaching and scoring processes.

“When you motivate the use of a particular area of the body, it begins to stimulate feelings, which begin to stimulate images, which begin to connect with your own personal experiences within your life theme. In this way it becomes a total education.” —Anna Halprin

Anna uses scoring in every class she teaches, as a skeleton for creating spontaneous, community-oriented dances. “ ‘Scoring’ is another way of saying ‘choreography,’ ” she says. “The nature of movement is space, time, and force. You can take movements like walking, falling and rising, or closing and opening, and keep layering very simple things [for instructions]—and then everyone is creating, and they love that!”

All of Anna’s classes begin with interior exploration, however, before she moves to the external, collaborative process of creating a dance. As we sit on the Mountain Home Studio’s deck, Anna says, “Just this morning in class we were connecting to the stunning architecture of the skeletal system, and it was interesting to me that this was an eye opener for so many people. There is a universe of unknown information [in our bodies].”

In that morning’s class, Anna had guided us in noticing how the sacrum and breastbone connect to each other in movement. She then let us explore moving on our own, with those basic movements of the spine serving as an entryway to access the universe of unknown information within ourselves. Called “Remembering the Body,” it begins as an exercise in experiential anatomy but progresses to encompass so much more.

Anna says, “Articulating the body as a fine instrument is just step one. When you motivate the use of a particular area of the body, it begins to stimulate feelings, which begin to stimulate images, which begin to connect with your own personal experiences within your life theme. In this way it becomes a total education. I call [what I teach] ‘integrative movement,’ by which I mean movement that integrates all the parts.” It’s similar to the holistic Gestalt concept that Anna was introduced to by the psychiatrist Fritz Perls in the early 1970s.

Take, for instance, the movement of standing and rolling down vertebra by vertebra, as dancers do in many classes. Anna tells us to pause when only the head is down. How does this posture feel? What stories from our lives do we connect to in that slumped-over position? And what about the reverse, in hyperextension? How do we feel with our chests puffed out? Often, we will then draw the images we’ve imagined, give the drawing a title, and perhaps do some writing. Then we might use the images as resources for further movement ideas. This three-part intermodal arts system, known in the field of Expressive Arts Therapy as the Psychokinetic Imagery Process, further integrates the feelings, images, and stories born from Anna’s movement exercises.

The images can reflect what is happening inside of us, as Anna discovered in the early ’70s, when she drew a dark circle with an X through it in her pelvis. This alerted her to the fact that something was wrong. As quoted in Janice Ross’ book Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance, Anna said, “The next day I went to the doctor and asked him to examine my pelvic region. He did so and found a malignant tumor of the same size and shape as the one I’d drawn the previous day—and in the same place.”

After surgery the cancer disappeared for three years, until Anna made a drawing indicating that it had returned. This time she postponed treatment and performed what she later called her “Dark Side” dance. With a small gathering of people, she danced in front of a life-size portrait of her shadow side (the shadow is a Jungian concept for all that is unconscious in us), releasing pent-up rage and any repressed emotions as a part of healing. She then imagined water cleansing the cancer out of her system. According to Anna, her cancer went into spontaneous remission.

This life-changing event was the catalyst for Anna’s focus on the healing aspect of the arts. Also in the 1970s, she co-founded, with Daria, the Tamalpa Institute (tamalpa.org), a nonprofit institute that teaches Expressive Arts Therapy, combining the tools discovered through Anna’s art and dance practices with traditional theories and methods of therapy.

Today Daria heads the institute while Anna continues to teach her integrative movement approach at individual, societal, and global levels. During National Dance Week she holds an annual Planetary Dance (planetarydance.org), a participatory dance ritual with a theme for healing. The ritual began as a need to reclaim Mt. Tamalpais from the Trailside Killer, who had killed several women on the mountain in 1980. Anna and others danced together with the intention of “healing” the mountain. A few days later the man was caught, and the Planetary Dance became a yearly ritual that is now performed all over the world at the same time on the same day.

Anna takes great inspiration from working in nature. In Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance she says, “I collaborate with my environments because I have a strong attitude about the body not being an object. It is part of a total environment in space. That is influenced by Larry’s work.” Last May Anna created an outdoor performance piece, Spirit of Place, to honor her husband. It was performed in the amphitheater that he designed at Stern Grove in San Francisco.

She goes on to say, “As a dance artist I am propelled toward the natural world by three beliefs. One is the notion that the human body is a microcosm of the earth; the second is that the processes of nature are guidelines to my aesthetics; and the third is that nature is a healer.”

Working holistically is the basis for Anna’s process, whether she is making dances in nature, teaching integrative movement in the classroom, or using all the art forms to create a spontaneous collaboration. “I think of dance as the mother of all the arts because it has every other art form inside of it—sculpture, music, meaning, which is like writing—it has everything,” she says. “And the beautiful thing about movement as a basis is that it connects to the whole person, and I think that makes the experience of learning dance a very special process. When you become a student of life through your body and start teaching from that point of view, you are always a student too, and that’s very exciting.”

And so Anna keeps on. Fascinated by her art form and by her students, she is a student of life. “If you think that at the age of 89 I know all there is to know about the body—that’s crazy!” she says. “I just know a little bit, and every time I teach a class, I know a little bit more.”

How to Learn More

Books by Halprin:
Returning to Health: With Dance, Movement & Imagery by Anna Halprin
Moving Toward Life: Five Decades of Transformational Dance by Anna Halprin and Rachel Kaplan
Movement Ritual Created and Developed by Anna Halprin and the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop by Anna Halprin, Charlene Koonce, and Jim Burns

Books by others:
Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance by Janice Ross
The Expressive Body in Life, Art, and Therapy: Working with Movement, Metaphor and Meaning by Daria Halprin
Anna Halprin (Routledge Performance Practitioners) by Helen Poynor
The RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment by Lawrence Halprin

Books recommended by Halprin:
Dance: A Creative Art Experience by Margaret H’Doubler
The Thinking Body by Mabel Todd

How to expand your school’s options with tumbling and more

By Patti Komara

In tough economic times, sometimes one way to survive is by broadening what you can offer to both current and potential clients. Gymnastics is a great complementary program for a dance school. Many youngsters want to be cheerleaders, making gymnastics an in-demand activity.

Contrary to what you might think, even schools with studios as small as 875 square feet can put together a great program that offers the whole gymnastics experience. All you need are the proper equipment, a motivated and educated teacher, and ideas for lesson plans. Also, make sure to notify your insurance company that you plan to add gymnastics to your curriculum. You want to make sure you’re covered, and there might be a premium increase.

Starting a series of gymnastics-only classes in your studio has economic advantages. Once-a-week gymnastics classes are more lucrative for most studios than multiple dance classes for students who get volume discounts. By taking a close look at which classes are helping to sustain your school, you can consider options that might increase your profits.

Options
There are several ways to approach adding a gymnastics program in your school. One option is to set aside an entire day for gymnastics and tumbling classes; another is to sprinkle the classes throughout your schedule. Once you’ve set the schedule, determine whether you’ll include the entire range of gymnastics skills or only tumbling, whether you’ll incorporate gymnastics training into dance classes (making them combo classes) or let it stand on its own, and which levels to offer.

Your facility will help determine some of your choices. Square footage is an issue, but more important is ceiling height. If you want to teach kids 12 and older, you’ll need ceilings that are a minimum of 10 feet high. If you plan to use a trampoline or Tumbl Trak™, ceilings must be at least 16 feet high.

Three essentials
The three keys to a successful gymnastics program are staff, facility, and curriculum. Almost any dance teacher can learn the necessary skills to teach preschool gymnastics classes. If you or your teachers don’t have a background in tumbling, consider hiring a specialty teacher to instruct the older children. USA Gymnastics, the governing body of the sport, recommends an 8:1 ratio for school-age tumbling and gymnastics and a 6:1 ratio for preschool classes (ages 3 to 5).

Staff members who teach gymnastics classes need an outgoing personality, self-confidence, a strong back, and a desire to learn. With their experience in teaching movement to children, dance teachers already have an advantage in acquiring the necessary skills.

The learning modalities in gymnastics are the same as those in dance: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Teachers need to explain how to do the skill, demonstrate it (or have a student demonstrate), and then spot the students while they learn to feel the movement. Ask them to repeat each skill at least three times so that they understand their mistakes and have a chance to improve.

Teaching skills that are both age and developmentally appropriate is important. Using skill-based guided progress sheets, which can be purchased from USA Gymnastics, ensures safe learning for each age. You can create your own progress sheets, but if you were involved in a lawsuit, your background and qualifications to design a program would be called into question. It’s better to buy professionally developed skill sheets. 

Equipment
If you have a studio of approximately 1,000 square feet, for roughly $4,000 you can provide almost everything a gymnastics school can offer. In a studio of this size you can include the following equipment:

• junior swing bar
• floor balance beam
• babyzoid (small trapezoid)
• 24-inch octagon
• 4-foot-wide incline mat
• 12 rainbow panel mats (4 x 5 feet each)

With this equipment you can teach all the events in gymnastics, including bar, beam, and floor exercises, plus vaults. You can add an Air Trak to offer all age groups a little trampoline fun. (It can be deflated and stored when not needed.)

You probably already have some fun music CDs for warm-ups and might want to purchase a selection of small props for teaching, such as poly handprints and arrows, cones and ropes, and hula-hoops.

If storage space is at a premium, after class you can stack the equipment along studio walls that don’t have barres. It will stick out about 18 inches, so caution dance students not to run into it. 

Music
As with dance, music plays an important role in a gymnastics program. The younger the children, the more songs you should include in each class. For instance, with a class of 4- and 5-year-olds, you can do the warm-up and ending activities to music. Adding at least one more song in the middle of the class helps break up the activities. Playing background music throughout the class is not recommended except in parent-and-tot classes (which seem to flow better than others) or for timing the rotations at various stations.

Tumbling should be included in every lesson plan. In addition to traditional gymnastics skills, you can vary the curriculum with props.

Activities
Tumbling is the basis for all gymnastics and should be included in every lesson plan. In addition to traditional gymnastics skills, you can vary the curriculum with props such as balloons, ribbons, lummi sticks, wands, bells, balls, scarves, or a parachute. Repeat lesson plans two weeks in a row so that students can master new skills. Self-confidence is an important factor in a gymnastics class. Remember, repetition is the mother of skill.

Sample Lesson Plan for Beginners (45-minute class, ages 2 to 6)

1. Enthusiastic greeting to welcome the students to the class (1 minute)
2. Warm-up exercises to music with students on carpet mats in a circle (5 minutes)
3. Review positions: tuck, pike, straddle, lunge, and V-sit; handstands in a circle (4 minutes)
4. Tumbling (8 minutes)

• Animal walks: camel (on all fours, straight arms and legs) and bear (bent arms and legs)
• Rolls: forward, backward, and log rolls
• Cartwheels and round-offs

5. Balance beam (7 minutes)

• Walks: relevé, plié, and développé forward, side, and back
• Positions: V-sit, arabesque penché, lunge, and dance poses
• Turns: squat and relevé

6. Vaulting (7 minutes)
On a trapezoid piece or on stacked panel mats, using rubber dots to indicate placement of hands and feet:

• squat on (place knees on)
• straddle on (straddle in second position)
• flanking (swinging legs) around the trapezoid

7. Junior swing bar (7 minutes)

• front support (jump into the bar at hips)
• cast three times (swing legs and torso under bar)
• forward roll dismount

8. Ending activity: Balloon toss with paper-plate rackets (6 minutes)
9. Challenge: Ask everyone to practice back rolls at home with their parents.
10. Closing: Clap five times and yell, “I did great today!” 

Equipment Companies

Mancino Manufacturing: 800.338.6287; mancinomats.com
Ross Athletic Supply: 888.600.7677; rossathletic.com
Oriental Trading Company (props): 800.875.8480; orientaltrading.com
Flaghouse (small equipment): 800.793.7900; flaghouse.com
Tumbl Trak (trampolines and Air Trak): 800.331.4362; tumbltrak.com

Going beyond the basics can help your school thrive

By Misty Lown

A couple of years ago I did a survey to find out what my clients value about my studio and why they decided to bring their children here. It revealed that most people chose the studio because of its facility, location, and reputation, which are probably common priorities for anyone choosing a dance school.

More interesting, however, was learning that families stay with my program because of its staff, service, and opportunities. I once read that the easiest way to get a customer is to keep a customer. Here are some simple things you can do to give great customer service to yours.

Staff

Front desk
Your desk staff is your front line in the customer-service department. Going the extra mile here makes a huge difference not only on registration day but every day.

Don’t overlook the importance of the obvious: Return messages promptly. Greet parents by name. Ask students how class was today. Look for opportunities to pitch in. For example, one day I helped an overwhelmed dad put his 3-year-old daughter’s hair in a bun. Being willing to step in saved the day for him and allowed the little girl to get to class on time.

Anyone who works at your front desk should be willing to let the phone ring in favor of taking care of the people right in front of them. It doesn’t matter if it’s tying tap shoes, distributing Band-Aids, answering questions, or directing traffic; what happens at the front desk has a big influence on your customers’ perception of the quality of your service. 

Teachers
I ask some simple things of my teachers: “No pointing,” “Give an answer,” and “Greet first.” Sound strange? It’s easy!

“No pointing” means that when a student or parent asks where something is, my teachers don’t point and say, “Oh, that’s in Studio 1 down the hall.” Instead they say, “I’ll show you,” and then walk them there.

“Give an answer” means never answering a question with “I don’t know.” Nothing leaves clients feeling less taken care of than being unable to get information. Even if my teachers do not know the answer to a question, I want them to say something like, “That’s a great question. I will find out for you and give you a call after class.”

“Greet first” reminds teachers to be the first one to say hello to a parent or welcome a student to class. After hustling to get to class, people appreciate being greeted by name and with a smile.

You!
In the movie Remember the Titans, there is a line I love. The captain of the team has accused one of the players of having a bad attitude. The player’s response is, “Attitude reflects leadership,” meaning the attitude of everyone on the team is influenced by the attitude of the leader. As a leader, I want to make mine a good one. I can’t tell you much else about the movie, but that quote keeps me on my toes.

As a studio owner, some of the best time you can spend is being visible. Walk the hallways, visit classrooms, greet people by name, and notice improvements. Return your calls personally if possible. Make time to listen, even if it’s not about class. None of this is on your to-do list, but it sends the message that people matter. Local dance studios are one of the last businesses in town where people can still be greeted by name. I don’t want to lose that, and neither do my families. 

Service

Conferences
When most parents ask their children how their day was, they get this in response: “Fine.” Dance students are no different. They get into the car and their mom or dad asks, “How was class?” Unless the child got a solo or was passed over for getting pointe shoes that night, the answer is probably “Good.”

Sometimes the only way for parents to find out what is going on with their dancers is to talk to a teacher. Every January we host conferences for students in our Graded Technique Program (ages 9 and up). Parents can meet with teachers, review skills tests, and ask questions. Students can get individual pointers and a game plan for progress. We don’t offer conferences for our Children’s Division classes because most parents observe the younger students’ classes through viewing windows.

Email newsletters
Communication is one of the best tools for keeping students and families connected to the school. When we converted our newsletter communications to email format, we received rave reviews from parents. Many of them get the newsletter at their work email and like being able to add important dates to their calendars right away. Others like being able to file the information electronically for later reference. And some are happy not to find last month’s newsletter at the bottom of a dance bag.

Still, print copies of the newsletter can come in handy. We keep some at the front desk for those who don’t have email or who want to read them while they wait for classes. 

Dancewear store
Convenience can be a commodity for busy families. Stocking the supplies you require students to have for class and recital is a valuable service to your customers. The most obvious things to keep on your shelves are shoes, dancewear, and tights. Less obvious, but perhaps even more valuable to busy parents, are the little things: hairnets, bobby pins, toe pads, moleskin, tap ties, undertard straps, and the like. The last thing a mom wants to hear the night before a performance is that she has to make a midnight run in search of a hard-to-find dance accessory. 

Costume construction day
Getting kids ready for recital used to seem so obvious to me: Parents simply need to have their child in the right makeup and hairstyle, add the proper tights, and attach all the costume straps. Easy, right? Well, it’s easy if you grew up dancing, specialize in cosmetology, or have a history in costume design. But for many parents, their child’s first recital is also their first.

To make things easier, we set aside one Saturday afternoon about four weeks before our recital for Costume Construction Day. A couple of teachers and parents bring in their sewing machines and set up stations: hems, straps, seams, and “special situations.” Simple projects are taken care of on site; complicated ones are pinned and tagged for later distribution.

We fully service our costumes so that parents never have to sew anything unless they enjoy doing it themselves (a nearly extinct breed). 

Steaming and repairs
Even costumes that don’t require any sewing can benefit from some finessing before hitting the stage. Beginning on Costume Construction Day, my mom sets up a steamer at the front desk and attacks a steady stream of wrinkled costumes. She keeps at it all through dress rehearsal week, stationing herself in the orchestra pit, which also holds a sewing machine for last-minute repairs and alterations. Our goal is to make getting ready for the show as hassle free as possible for families. 

Hair and makeup day
On the same day as Costume Construction Day, but in another room, we hold our Hair and Makeup Day. A parent who owns a salon teaches students and parents tricks for getting any kind of hair into a bun. Members of the Senior Company serve as hairstylists when we get very busy. Another parent, typically an Avon or Mary Kay representative, heads the makeup station. The result? Students leave looking beautiful, and parents leave with confidence for show day. 

Give it away
One of the best ways to build a reputation for great customer service is to give away your services. You can donate unused studio space and time to play groups, youth groups, and civic organizations, or donate your time to Girl Scout groups and after-school or daycare programs; they love having a guest teacher.

People associate a spirit of generosity with great customer service. They will talk about the time or attention you gave them even if they don’t sign up for classes, and someone who hears them might be inspired to come to your school. 

Opportunity
Provide opportunities for everyone to get involved, whether they’re once-a-week students or live-at-the-studio kids and regardless of age or ability. Everyone likes to feel like part of a team. When you encourage kids to get involved, everybody wins. Here are some of the ways students got “plugged in” this year at my studio: performing at community and charity events, nursing homes, schools, and churches and in parades and competitions; pitching in as classroom assistants; giving private lessons; mentoring younger students; assisting with Hair and Makeup Day, playgroups, or dance-themed birthday parties; hosting Daddy & Daughter dances; and leading Girl Scouts to earn their badges. If you look around, you’ll find that every person at your studio can feel like part of the team—even those who don’t make the competition team. 

Little things add up
Now more than ever, attracting and keeping customers is about offering more than dance classes. Start with the little things and you will be amazed at how quickly they add up to great results.  

$$ Saving Tip of the Month

When is the last time you looked at all the invoices that cross your desk or computer screen? Keep an eye out for automatically renewing memberships that you don’t need anymore, and cancel them. Why pay for services you don’t use?

Four couples talk about combining marriage and business

By Eliza Randolph

Here’s a familiar story: Boy meets girl. They take a walk by the lake. They hold hands, kiss, and fall in love. Boy and girl get married. So far, so good. Now, what happens when boy and girl end up not just living together and having a family, but working in business together? Does boy drive girl crazy? Or vice versa? And what if that business is the complex, often emotional roller-coaster of running a dance studio? Does the marriage reach new heights of cooperation, or does the whole thing explode in a shower of sequins and beribboned tap shoes? Dance Studio Life spoke with four couples who have navigated the wild waters of studio ownership together and figured out how to make it work—both at the studio and at home.

Mike and Kim Semmel: Best of both worlds
Dance With Kim School of Performing Arts, Lehighton, PA
Mike and Kim have been together for 25 years. While Mike was still in college, studying to be an engineer, Kim made her dream of opening a dance studio come true. “After we got married I was involved a little, as emotional support,” says Mike. “When she had good days she shared them with me; when she had bad days she shared them with me. As she grew her business I thought, ‘How can I help her do the things she needs to do?’ ”

Mike’s support of Kim’s work has grown over the years, even though he works full-time as an engineer. “He helps me with payroll, with the financial end of the studio,” Kim says. “He’s there for the year-end production; he does a lot of the running around for our shows, making sure that the ushers are where they have to be, that the sound system is set up, that kind of thing. Anything I ask him to do, he is there, and I feel very lucky that I have him as a support.”

Any relationship has its pitfalls, perhaps more so if the partners are working together. But, says Kim, “The only pitfall I could think of is that he has to deal, unfortunately, with my stress around the show times. I hate to put that on him, but he knows when I start to feel stressed and he does try to jump in wherever he can.”

Mike seems to take it in stride. “I just react to the things that she needs,” he says. “I get satisfaction out of helping her because it makes everything as a whole go so much better.”

The Semmels must also deal with the fact that they live above the dance studio, which sometimes means that work intrudes on family time. (They have a son and daughter.) In dealing with this, Kim says, “the entire family sticks together and knows that this is our livelihood, this is what we do, how we get along in the world.”

Mike and Kim find that the rewards of their partnership outweigh the stresses. As Kim says, “Running a business together offers the best of both worlds. I’m pursuing my dream, and I have someone that loves me and respects me and supports me while I’m doing it. I think it’s actually been helpful in our marriage.”

And Mike, with no dance background at all, describes his satisfaction in helping his wife pursue her passion and fulfill that of others: “Even though I’m not directly involved with teaching in the classroom, when I hear her former students say, ‘Thank you so much,’ that makes me feel good. Because it’s something my wife did to touch their lives in a positive way.”

John & Diane Reynolds: “Miss Diane” and “Mr. John”
Diane’s Dance Center, Lindenhurst, NY
Like the Semmels, John and Diane Reynolds seem in some ways a marriage of opposites: Science man falls for dance woman. John describes their business relationship like this: “We started in the fall of 1982 and the division of labor evolved. At that time, Diane was working with another woman in partnership to open her first dance studio and I was working full-time for the telephone company. Over time the other woman moved out of state and Diane incorporated under her own name. In 1995 I retired from the telephone company and started to work for Diane. Diane handles the teaching; she’s the artistic director. And I tend to handle the money and the moms.”

Was John involved in the arts at all before he met Diane? They both laugh at this question. “Most of my career at the phone company was in the engineering department,” John says, “where it was 95 percent men. And now as the receptionist here [at the studio] I’m dealing with 95 percent women, so it’s a total turnaround.”

Despite John’s lack of arts experience, his skills seem to mesh seamlessly with Diane’s. As he says, “Diane knows all of the 500 kids in the studio. She knows what class they’re in; she knows what they’re good at; she knows their first names, has no idea what their last name is. I’m not sure who the kid is, but I know the mom. I know her first name and whether she’s a good payer or not.”

“You know,” says Diane, “we get along. It works well.”

John adds, “We get to spend a lot of time with each other. We also have a lot of recognition within the community. Whenever we’re in a mall or a restaurant it’s ‘Oh, Miss Diane!’ Some of it even rubs off on me. I was doing the readings in church one Sunday morning, and a little kid halfway back stands up and screeches, ‘It’s Mr. John!’ ”

Gary & Tracy Butler: From studio parents to studio owners
Studio 4 Dance Company, Bermuda Dunes, CA
Gary and Tracy Butler came at their studio partnership from a completely different direction. They’ve been running a business together for 28 years, but it’s not a dance studio; it’s an asphalt contracting company. For the last year and a half, however, the Butlers have been working harder than they ever thought possible on something they never imagined before: Their four daughters pulled them into the dance world. Says Gary, “We are dance parents that are now in the dance studio business.”

With the idea of launching a business that their oldest daughter, who is finishing college this year, could take over after graduation, Gary and Tracy started Studio 4 Dance Company a year and a half ago, while still maintaining their asphalt company. Their world was rocked. Says Gary, “Neither one of us had any dance background other than the fact that we had four girls we would take to the dance studio every day.”

“I’ll be perfectly honest with you,” says Gary. “This year was the most difficult year of my wife’s adult life.” In running the studio, “she was a one-woman show and had to do every single component of it. My part was to support her in every area that I possibly could—emotionally, physically, working as the custodian and the bouncer.

“I couldn’t imagine not having strong spousal support in a business like this,” he continues. “Because it is a highly emotional type of business, you’ve got to have that husband-and-wife team, for the emotional support. My presence really helps Tracy, gives her that extra confidence with issues that are sticky with either staff or parents.”

“I’ve got a lot of energy,” says Tracy, “and he’s the one who sits back and thinks about it. We’re just a real good balance.” She also says Gary helps her keep things in perspective. “He stands alongside me. He listens to me when I get upset.” Recently, on the studio’s picture day, Tracy’s phone was ringing off the hook and her stress level was on high. “I walked up to him in the hallway,” she says, “and hugged him and put my head on his shoulder and he said, ‘It’s going to be OK.’ ”

After surviving the first year without Tracy ending up “in a mental institution,” Gary says, the second is going more smoothly. But the couple can’t wait till their daughter finishes college and steps into the “front man” role. Gary and Tracy still plan to work on the marketing and financial aspects of the business, respectively, but they will let their daughter take the lead as the face of the studio.

Meanwhile, they’ve found plenty of rewards amidst the challenges they’ve faced together. Tracy notes, first of all, “We get to spend more time together. We go to lunch together all the time now.”

 “Your rewards are what you see in the kids who are so excited about what they do, and the year-end shows, the joy that comes with that,” says Gary. “Our goal was to make a place where families could really come together and develop relationships that they never had before with other families. We’re happy with what we’ve built.”

Mike & Shelly Wood: Put it in perspective
Footworks Dance Studio, Winter Garden, FL
Married for 16 years and in business for 5, Mike and Shelly Wood decided early on not to have children of their own. In a sense, they feel, the 500 students at their studio are their children. Their partnership thrives on patience and mutual respect.

Like Mike Semmel and Gary Butler, Mike has a full-time job outside the studio as graphic design manager for Disney Design Group. So Shelly handles most of the day-to-day operations,” he says. “I do most of the behind-the-scenes [work] as far as ordering costumes for the recital, organizing paperwork to go to our bookkeeper, working on payroll, doing all of our advertising.”

The Woods hashed out their division of labor early on. As Mike says, “After about the first year or so, we sat down and said, ‘OK, if this is going to go forward, there are certain things that I’m going to stay out of, and there are certain things that I need you to stay out of.’ And I think that has really helped.

“You have to have a very strong relationship to start with, and a mutual respect for what each other brings to the table,” he continues. “I have zero dance background. So I respect Shelly for what she brings to the table because I don’t have it.”

They both agree that working together and living together makes them more proactive in resolving differences. “Because you can curse a business partner all you want, but you don’t have to go home with them,” says Mike.

“We never go to bed at night without resolving conflict,” Shelly adds, “especially if it has to do with the business. Put it in perspective: Remember it’s work, a job you do together and you’re looking out for the best interests of the company. You definitely have to love it, and love doing it together. It’s a lot of work.”

Like the other couples we spoke to, Mike and Shelly say their main challenge is finding time for each other apart from work. Now, says Mike, they cherish the simple things that they used to take for granted, “like being able to watch a TV show at the normal time, to order Chinese and sit down on a Friday night. We enjoy just spending that kind of time together. In some respects our marriage is a little stronger because we don’t take those times for granted anymore.”