Posts Tagged ‘Thinking Out Loud’

By Nina Koch

As a dance teacher, I know it is hard to find balance between creative play and structure in toddler or preschool classes. I also know that when young dancers are challenged they will stay engaged, interested, and excited to come back to class every week. And when you have high expectations for these children, they will meet or exceed those expectations if they are given the tools to do so. And when you do, you end up with students who are ready to enter a program in which they are expected to advance every year.

At my studio, East County Performing Arts Center in Brentwood, California, I take children at 2 years old. Not many dance studios will take dancers that young. But I know that even these youngsters will thrive in a class with a consistent, structured format. Of course, the biggest challenge with 2-year-olds is getting them comfortable enough to leave their moms; when they reach that point, they are ready to be in a structured program.

Last season I was working with my 3- to 5-year-old students with the goal of making them into great listeners. On the first day I sat down with them and talked about the rules of class: Eyes on Miss Nina; be nice to your friends; be a good listener; after your shoes are on, line up with your toes on the line. On the second day I walked into the dance room and all eight of them were standing in first position with their toes on the line.

Now, I am not a “mean” teacher. I am loving and fun and silly—but I’m also firm and the kids know I mean business. So how do I create this environment of cooperation and attentiveness?

First, I am clear about my expectations with the parents and children. Not taking the time to explain the class rules and expectations is a big mistake. Children can follow rules only if they know what the rules are. Even those as young as 2 or 3 are capable of knowing what’s expected of them, and I can tell that they feel proud when I praise them for meeting those expectations.

And I don’t underestimate their capacity for learning. At my studio we start teaching proper technique and terminology right away, to 2-year-olds. As a result, all of my 4-year-old students know the basic ballet positions and their correct terms. If you dropped in on my “babies” classes, you’d hear common terms and phrases like arms en bas, à la seconde, tendu en croix. And you’d see them approximate basic movements like plié, tendu, bourrée, sauté, glissade, and jeté. And yes, they know those terms too.

I am introducing values that will help these children grow into adults who do not accept mediocrity in their lives or in themselves.

If you use correct terminology and engage children with questions like “Who can show me arms en bas?” or “Who remembers how to do a sauté?” and reward them when they answer correctly, they will learn it. And they will love learning it.

Why is it important to put so much energy into toddler and preschool dance classes? Of course we all want to grow great dancers; we feel fulfilled when our competition teams win top honors or when a graduating dancer gets accepted to a college dance program or hired for a great dance job. But my reasons for putting so much energy into my “babies” program are bigger than that.

Children, especially young girls, need to be encouraged to be smart, encouraged to advance past mediocrity. These early lessons in dance class are not necessarily intended to develop them into prima ballerinas; they are life lessons. Along with dance basics, I am teaching them how to be good listeners, be respectful, connect with another person, and rise to challenges. I am teaching them self-respect and self-excellence. I am introducing values that will help these children grow into adults who do not accept mediocrity in their lives or in themselves. Those lessons need to start very early on, and those values will help these children change the world.

The next time you are preparing for a toddler or preschool class, ask yourself if you are just going through the motions because it’s a “no-brainer.” Or are you making the effort to challenge these young minds, trying to make a difference in their education? Through dance, we can start building a foundation for a positive life education.

By Cara Iuliano

As long as I can remember, I have loved to dance. When it was time to attend college, like many aspiring dancers, I headed to New York and spent my freshman year as a dance major at Marymount College. One day, I happened to sit next to a little deaf girl at a ballet, who was signing “dance” to her mother. I knew then that both dance and communication were meant to be in my life.

Today I work as a speech-language pathologist in a preschool near Philadelphia for deaf and hard-of-hearing children who wear hearing aids and cochlear implants. These technologies provide them with enough access to sound that they can learn to listen and speak. My job is to help them develop the listening and spoken-language skills they need to be successful in a mainstream school setting by the time they are in kindergarten.

I also teach dance classes for hearing children ages 2 to 18 at The Dance Academy in Holland, Pennsylvania. Now, you might say, “Wow, these are two very different jobs,” but in fact they have a lot in common. Both require a fundamental knowledge of anatomy, movement, rhythm, sound, and using the human body to communicate meaning.

My deaf and hard-of-hearing students meet with me individually for 30-minute sessions, 5 days a week. I introduce them to new language, vocabulary, and concepts that children with hearing learn incidentally, including receptive and expressive language, articulation, and auditory skills. We don’t use sign language because acquiring listening skills is critical to the children’s ability to develop natural-sounding speaking voices.

It’s amazing to see these profoundly deaf children listen to the music, follow directions, learn dance routines, and move fluidly to music as they use technology to access the sound and rhythm.

Many of the techniques I use are similar to those I use to teach dance. In both cases, I present concepts or ideas that require the children to listen, and I encourage them to imitate what I do with my voice or body. I ask them to pay attention to pitch, rhythm, and melody and to bring those skills together to produce sound or movement.

About two years ago I developed a dance program at the preschool. It’s amazing to see these profoundly deaf children listen to the music, follow directions, learn dance routines, and move fluidly to music as they use technology to access the sound and rhythm.

The most rewarding part of both my jobs is witnessing each child’s progress. Some of my deaf students start the year with little or no language at all. While the work we do seems like play to them, they are challenged every day to learn spoken language that, for most of us, is effortless.

For the last two years, I have been working with a little boy, now 5 years old, who has a severe disorder that makes his speech unintelligible. Because he was fully aware of his challenges, I did not want his speech to become a negative for him. One technique I use is to search on YouTube for interviews with his favorite athletes and talk to him about how hard they practice. He loves the expression “Practice makes perfect” but has had trouble producing the T sound, which comes out sounding like a K. We kept repeating, “Practice makes perfect,” and then it clicked. The look of accomplishment on his face is a special memory that I will keep forever.

What I teach my preschoolers is the same thing I teach my dance students: All you can do is your best. What you put in is what you get out. You have to focus and accomplish your goals. If shuffle-hop-step is difficult, keep practicing; if you can’t do a triple pirouette, get in the kitchen and practice every night. I try to help them understand that trying is what’s most important; the end result is just the reward.

I love being a facilitator of language and dance. I am able to see children who are born deaf or hard of hearing learn to access the world of sound as well as share my love of music and movement with them. It is one of the coolest things to see these children singing, dancing to music, and learning how to communicate through the arts. And when I reflect on what they have learned, I too am reminded to enjoy the music and dance!

By Dorina Linga

A story about yourself is not just a simple essay about your life; it is a reflection on the past, present, and future—a meditation on failures, achievements, hopes, and disappointments.

So here I am, an international student who won the jackpot: a scholarship funded by the U.S. government. I was one of nine representatives of the Republic of Moldova (formerly part of the USSR) who were in the United States, the only one in Washington State. If someone had told me that one day I would be in the United States, fulfilling my dreams of traveling, studying abroad, and doing an internship with a professional ballet company, I would have laughed. But life is a lottery full of unexpected surprises. One thing I know for sure, as Paulo Coelho wrote in his book The Alchemist: “If you want something strongly, then the whole universe will come to help you achieve it.”

My mother took me to ballet from the time I was 3 or 4 years old. Ballet charms many little girls and determines their hobbies and their future goals; I was one of them. A year later we went to a professional national dance studio, where I was told to wait another year. Too small, I remember sitting on the stairs in the hall, watching all those dancers, rehearsing and dancing so gracefully, with tears in my eyes.

The following year my mother signed me into a music school for piano. A year after that, when I was 7, I handed my mother a note with an invitation to the dance studio Cununita. My mother was shocked to see my desire and ambition to dance. For more than nine years that was my second home.

Once my mother asked me what I liked most of all, dance or piano. I said dance. During the school years I lived for dance and music; school was a complement for my passions. In my last three years of high school I understood the meaning of graduating successfully, and I had to focus more on the basic school, but I didn’t give up my passions. I bow my head to the extraordinary teachers who helped me develop my artistic vision and character. My piano teacher, Ludmila Volcova, and dance teacher, Valentina Zagorskaia, are nationally recognized artists for their efforts in developing the beauty of arts in Moldova.

I realized that what defines me most of all is that life is wonderful when you gamble and enjoy the delight of winning.

My parents always said, “If you start something, finish it.” And so I did. There were some school years when I had rehearsals seven days a week. I had to run from one rehearsal to another all over the city. I chose to practice so hard because I love challenges. I consider them my most important motivator and tool for improvement. And in the process, I realized my strengths and weaknesses.

Three years ago I was chosen to work as a dancer in South Korea for one year, but I would have lost two years of high school. I decided to finish school instead. And that was what I worked on at Pierce College in Lakewood. As a scholarship recipient I had the opportunity to study both business and dance. The arts are business too, and it takes strong skills to survive in a not-so-well-understood field.

As an intern at Dance Theatre Northwest, near Tacoma, I realized that what defines me most of all is that life is wonderful when you gamble and enjoy the delight of winning. There was no way I could foresee working with someone as accomplished as Melanie Kirk-Stauffer, the artistic director. The learning experience afforded me the opportunity to speak and present myself in public forums. I learned about marketing, development, advertising, budgeting, politics, advocacy, and networking and how these activities all come into play to support the beautiful, graceful aspects of dance.

I am grateful for this opportunity—to my parents, Ion and Larisa Linga, for supporting my aspirations; to my teachers; to my hosts, Sunny Burns and George Neal; to my advisors at Pierce College, Sandra Plann and Mary Meulblok; and to the staff at Dance Theatre Northwest. It’s my dream to build something as important in my own community one day. I am really inspired and I can’t wait to put my learning experiences into practice.

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

By Heidi Landgraf

How do I see with fresh eyes every day? How do I challenge myself to be awake, to really see what’s happening in front of me, in my life, within my routine?

Every day we wake up and go through a series of rituals. I am making a sweeping assumption; however, even the most chaos-making artists have some kind of routine: Turn off the alarm, brush teeth, hit the shower, grab some coffee. How do I prevent myself from falling into a trance and missing it—missing the morning, the week, the year, my life?

One way I like to challenge myself is to see art everywhere and be ready for the day’s little synchronicities. When I prepare myself to be at the ready, so often I am met halfway by what I call “the universe.” Sometimes those synchronicities are dance or movement specific and happen by chance, in the flash of a moment. I live in San Francisco, and every so often I’ll make a left-hand turn at an intersection while the driver directly across from me is also turning left. Seeing the lane available, the person or (if I’m really lucky) persons kitty-corner to me are making right turns. This can be a swift and beautifully choreographed event, a rare moment that raises the hair on your arms if you are awake to it.

It can also happen when the windshield wipers coordinate perfectly with the music that is playing in the car. Everyone knows that one. But what if (and to our amazement) it lasts for a minute or more? That is another little gift from the universe to remind us that we are alive, right now, in this moment.

Have you ever been thinking of a song only to hear it in a coffee shop, at a friend’s house, or on the radio? I especially love it when these moments are accompanied by goosebumps. Wow! It’s like a direct message from a knowing and loving force outside of myself telling me, “Hey! You’re on the right track! Keep going, keep going!”

One of the ways I like to challenge myself is to see art everywhere and to be ready for the little synchronicities that can occur on any given day.

Have you ever had an idea for a dance and then someone gave you an object that you later used as a prop? How about when a friend who did not know about your idea tells you a story that fits the theme perfectly? Or perhaps as you begin to work on the dance, an opportunity to perform it appears before you’ve even had a chance to look for one, or a catalogue falls open to reveal the exact costume you were envisioning.

Sometimes life goes along, ho-hum, and we can feel burdened by the sameness of it, the mundaneness of another set of tendus or chaînés across the floor. At these times it is good to remember that if we look and listen, the world around us is ready to respond in kind. Living can be a co-creative act, a dance with what surrounds us. Sometimes we can step outside of the studio for a change and literally dance with the wind in the trees, or see the synchronicity in hearing the music we’d just been thinking of. Or we can notice a kind of choreography in an intersection. (Merce Cunningham would be thrilled that we discovered the chance occurrence in that moment.)

But I question whether it is chance or if perhaps a greater force is working on our behalf. Perhaps it is both. I like to be reminded of the aid and assistance I receive when I am open to it. I keep a quote on my wall at home, by W.H. Murray in The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951), to remind me to be grateful and watchful for these events: 

“. . . The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

Are you awake and looking for that moment? Are you ready to receive it?

By Cheryl Ossola

“I love this dance!” That’s what one of my Balboa partners says nearly every week after class. If you’ve never heard of this dance, you’re not alone; within the larger swing-dance community, Balboa dancers are a relatively small subset. But if you ask us, of all the dances that fall into the category of swing, Balboa is king.

Many people equate swing dance with Savoy-style Lindy hop, with it crouched stance, sock-hop dress style, and flat shoes (great for landing those aerials but not as elegant as high heels). That’s what Lacey Schwimmer did on So You Think You Can Dance a few seasons ago. But there’s another world of swing out there, one that’s smooth, elegant, and infinitely variable, jazz dancing that swings as hard as Louis Prima or Chick Webb. Sure, you can jitterbug to rock ’n’ roll, but to dance Bal (as we call it), you need musicians who really know how to swing.

I’ve heard old-timers say that Balboa doesn’t look like much, but wherever my friends and I go dancing, people come up and say, “What are you doing? That is so cool!” One reason why Balboa stands out is its elegance—no crouching and stomping here, and we women wear heels and, often, vintage dresses—and the other is its speed. When a very fast song comes on, most swing dancers leave the floor—but that’s when we Bal dancers hit our stride. Songs played at 180 to 280 beats per minute (or even 292—think of the fastest version you’ve heard of Count Basie’s “Jumpin’ at the Woodside”) are what we love, though we can adapt to slower tempos.

The Balboa was born on Balboa Island, off the coast of San Diego, CA, in the mid-1920s, becoming popular in the 1930s. It was born of necessity: Dance floors were too mobbed for the space-devouring moves of the Lindy. During the swing revival of the 1990s, dancers who wanted to learn the Balboa sought out the old-timers who had originated it, including Maxie Dorf, Willie Desatoff, Ann Mills, Hal Takier, and Dean Raftery, many of whom danced in movie musicals in the 1930s and ’40s. Through the swing revivalists’ efforts the Balboa, which had been mostly limited to Southern California, started spreading and changing.

In its original form (now called “pure Balboa”) the partners danced in closed position at all times. Its very close, torso-to-torso position allows the lead to be given and received with the whole body. In some of my early classes, we practiced without using our arms, learning to communicate via directional movements that originate in the lead’s center. In Balboa, weight shifts are everything.

Pure Bal’s showiness is all in the feet—fast footwork, with a rhythmic pulse (often subtle) that keeps the partners together musically. In some old footage, it’s smooth enough that if you saw a couple from the waist up you’d think they were skating, or maybe not moving at all.

(Other swing dances, by comparison, are far more linear.) Once you separate, you’re doing Bal-swing, which the inventive Maxie Dorf was doing as early as the 1940s.

The next generation of Bal dancers built on that foundation, including one fabulous champion couple, Steve Garrett and Heidi Salerno, who call their unique style “Jitter-Bal.” But descriptions aren’t enough—go to YouTube and search for “Balboa by Steve and Heidi” or “Joel and Alison at All Balboa Weekend 2005” for a great taste.

If you like speed, swing, and inventiveness, Balboa is for you. I’ve learned so much from great teachers such as Steve and Heidi, Alison and Joel Plys, Zach Richard and Maryse Lebeau, Sylvia Sykes, Jonathan Bixby, Marty Klempner, Brenda Collins, and Jeff Kroll. There are teachers and workshops all over the world, so jump into action! Or go to Bal’s birthplace and attend the Balboa Rendezvous in San Diego (www.2plyswing.com). Why am I telling you this? It’s simple: I love this dance!

By Cheryl Ossola

Thanks to Igor Stravinsky, I have a fresh perspective on learning. I’ve read a lot about learning styles and teaching methods, but none of it touched on the relationship between learning and receptivity that a fascinating show called “Sound as Touch” did. A Radio Lab show, it was broadcast by WNYC, New York Public Radio, in April 2006. (Listen to it at www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21/segments/58280.) The show made me think, but it wasn’t until San Francisco Ballet’s repertory season last spring that I saw firsthand how our ability to embrace the unfamiliar depends on biological, and thus emotional, readiness.

What does a show called “Sound as Touch” have to do with learning? The answer is that it explores how sound, specifically music, generates emotion, and emotion has a lot to do with being able to learn. That might seem obvious, but what isn’t so apparent is the fact that those emotions are governed by biochemistry. The neuroscientists on the show go into detail about sound perception at the cellular level, but they illustrated the concept with a fascinating story about the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

You might know that at the work’s premiere in Paris (as the score for Nijinsky’s ballet of the same name for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes), on May 29, 1913, the audience rioted. Little old ladies were beating each other with canes, and Stravinsky had to take refuge backstage. Simply put, they couldn’t make sense of what they were hearing. (Nijinsky’s unconventional choreography and the ballet’s shocking story line might have had something to do with it, too.) Listeners were accustomed to the familiar patterns and consonant sounds of Baroque and classical music, which their brains had no trouble decoding. Sound enters our ears as little pulses of electricity; when they have an even, regular rhythm, we perceive them as pleasing. But when they are irregular and unpredictable we usually interpret them as sounds that we don’t like.

Stravinsky’s music was different, rhythmically complex and full of dissonant sounds like minor seconds. And all those new sounds made the audience literally go a little crazy. (You’d have to listen to the part about dopamine release and schizophrenia, which I won’t go into here.) But less than a year later, when Rite of Spring was again performed in Paris (without the ballet), the audience loved it and Stravinsky was hailed as a hero. And 26 years later, the same music that had caused blood to be shed at its first hearing was deemed suitable for children and included on the soundtrack for Disney’s Fantasia.

Stravinsky’s music was different, rhythmically complex and full of dissonant sounds. And all those new sounds made the audience literally go crazy.

What happened? The audience could respond favorably the second time because the music was no longer so grossly unfamiliar. Their brains could break it down into patterns and translate it into something recognizable. And that’s where the connection to learning comes in. To learn something, we must be able to receive and interpret the information.

Here’s what made this concept hit home for me. In 2006 San Francisco Ballet performed William Forsythe’s Artifact Suite, in which the fire curtain slams down five times, a lone woman directs the ensemble with semaphoric arm movements, and the stage lights shine into the audience’s eyes. Quite a few people walked out mid-performance. Two people I know said they hated it; one claimed it gave her a headache. Then, in 2007, SFB again performed Artifact Suite, and the difference in audience response was remarkable. Few if any people left, and the two people who had said they hated it were raving about how much they loved it. Not only that, audiences also responded positively to another extremely edgy ballet that season, Wayne McGregor’s Eden/Eden, which I don’t believe would have happened had Artifact Suite not paved the way. I couldn’t help but think about Rite of Spring and the power of familiarity to change people’s attitudes toward something they had previously rejected.

What does this have to do with teaching dance? Understanding that humans are hard-wired to search for patterns, to translate the unfamiliar into the familiar, might help teachers accept the need to repeat new material, perhaps more often than they’d like. So be patient the next time you present something new and are met with stony expressions and cries of “I hate this!” It might take more than one encounter before students can receive, interpret, and respond to it. So chalk it up to biochemistry, listen to Rite of Spring, and give silent thanks to Stravinsky. And remember that what was a disaster in 1913 was considered a masterpiece a year later, and still is today.