Posts Tagged ‘credibility’

By Cheryl Ossola and Karen White

The ABCs of Image
I hear a lot of talk about professionalism these days. I doubt I could find a dance teacher or school owner who doesn’t claim to have the training, experience, credibility, and expertise that we associate with being a professional. But even when you’ve got all those attributes, you need one more thing: presentation. If you make yourself look careless or uninformed—or even worse, uneducated—you’ve blown that professional image to smithereens.

What’s provoked this line of thought is a YouTube video that was all over Facebook not long ago, being widely ridiculed. Its title? “Grand battma.” That’s right—someone who claims to have enough expertise not only to teach but to produce a video demonstrating ballet technique—specifically grand battement—doesn’t even know how to spell the term. (As of press time the video was no longer on the site, but I did find another one posted by a similarly spelling-challenged person, called “jazz grande batma.”)

Maybe some dance teachers would shrug and say, “Nah, I can’t spell—but who cares? I’m a darn good teacher.” Who cares? Plenty of people. I’m not talking about typos; I mean inexplicable, gross errors that raise questions and eyebrows about someone’s ability, mistakes like “battma” instead of “battement.” That’s no slip of the fingers on the keyboard. And maybe, if you spell it that way in a handout for parents, they won’t know the difference—until, that is, their kids become complete bunheads and spend hours poring over ballet books and websites and discover its correct spelling. What would those parents think of your professionalism then?

Admittedly, I’m sensitive to these things—I’m an editor, after all—but spelling and its nasty companion, grammar, are critical, visible parts of a professional image. Would you go to a doctor who can’t spell “encephalitis” or a lawyer who stumbles on “jurisprudence”? How would you feel if your child’s high school math teacher sent home a note asking you for a “conferance”—spelling it that way not once but twice, so you know it’s not just a slipup? Sure, he teaches math, not English, but wouldn’t you begin to doubt whether he’s a good teacher?

Correct spelling of dance terms is only a click away, at abt.org/education/dictionary/index.html. Or keep a copy of Gail Grant’s Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet on your desk. If your grammar is shaky, find a word whiz to double-check anything you write that will be read by students, parents, or prospective customers. And if you work in Microsoft Word, use its spell-check function—but with the understanding that its grasp of grammar is about as good as a 2-year-old’s. It can alert you to potential problems, but don’t assume it’s right. Look them up.

By the way, aside from its misspelling, the “grand battma” video itself came under a huge amount of fire, and rightfully so. But that’s a rant for another day. —Cheryl Ossola, Editor in Chief

Best of Both Worlds
Hello, fellow dance teachers. I can’t begin to tell you how thrilled I am to be the latest editor here at Dance Studio Life. It’s as if my two worlds have collided in the very nicest of ways.

My trajectory in dance followed a very typical path—years in a local studio lovin’ dance, but being pushed into a “real career” by parents and teachers who couldn’t be faulted for seeing only what my body could (or could not) do and for not seeing into my heart. “But you’re such a good writer!” everyone said, which led to 25 years of newspaper reporting and editing, plus plenty of freelance magazine and public relations work.

But I never left the studio, either, continuing to teach and take class. By day I was a writer of stories about wastewater treatment plants and bone-headed school committee decisions; by night, a dance instructor who could wrestle any class of “terror tots” into abject submission. People would ask, “What are you?” and if I answered one or the other, it felt odd, like an animal that doesn’t know if it’s fish or fowl.

But now, I realize where that schizophrenic career was leading—to a journalism job that’s all about dance. Dance all day, and dance all night! It may not be 32 curtain calls after Giselle, but it’s a triumph in my own little world. Cheers! —Karen White, Associate Editor

Words from the publisher

By Rhee Gold

I’ve been thinking about the issues of respect and credibility among dance teachers. Is the teacher who produces phenomenal ballerinas more credible than the teacher who produces the best hip-hop dancers? Is the teacher in small-town America less passionate than the teacher in big-city America? My thought is that all dance teachers pass on the gifts of dance in the most appropriate way for them. They share a common goal and I don’t judge how they do it.

In fact, in my writing and seminars I always encourage teachers to get together with one another to share the life with those who best understand it (even if the other teacher happens to be in the same town). One of our loyal readers, whom I will call Mary, took the “common bond” message to heart. She sent an email flyer to the school owners in her area, inviting them and their students to a day of master classes at her school. Sounds like the perfect way to open the doors of communication—or was it?

In response to Mary’s email, she received the following:
Today I received your invitation for September 19. We are a professional school teaching dance as an art form, not a commercial dance studio. Our students go to summer programs at Joffrey, ABT, and Governor’s School, to name a few. We would not be sending our trained pre-professional students to the boonies to study with former beauty queens. Please kindly remove us from your mailing list.

What strikes me most about this response is that this school owner made the time in her busy and obviously successful teaching life to ridicule Mary. Of course, it’s acceptable not to respond at all—we all receive email invitations to dance events that don’t interest us—but why go out of your way to be mean? What inspires a dance person to hurt another is beyond my understanding.

There isn’t one positive thing that comes from this teacher’s mean-spirited response to an invitation sent in a gesture of goodwill. Instead of the proper response—silence, or a polite “No, thanks”—this person has created resentment. Without claiming to be an expert in psychology, I am confident that she could be described as an insecure person with a need to feel superior to someone—anyone. And she chose to stroke her ego by degrading another person who loves to do the same thing she does. Too bad.

But wait—I just thought of the good that comes from this email: It inspires me—and, I hope, Dance Studio Life readers—to be resilient advocates for bringing the dance community together, especially educators and school owners. No matter where and how we choose to share it, we all share a passion for our art. We can’t help ourselves.