Today we were having an extra
dance rehearsal for the dance show next week. The aim of this rehearsal was to
go through all of the parts that the children were in so that they have a
better idea of what they will be doing on the night of the show. Also, for some
of the children, this was their first time in the performance studio so it gave
them a chance to get familiar with the space.
We started the rehearsal by going
over the part that Sienna will be performing. She will be playing the part of
Aurora and we worked with her last week to create her solo piece. In her solo,
she moves around the space and uses several different blocks as they act as
toadstools. The first time Sienna practiced this dance, she went ahead of the
timing a little and therefore was left at the end of the piece of the music
waiting for quite a long time. I then told her to take it a bit slower and to
exaggerate the movements. The second time rehearsing this, she danced it a lot
better, taking her time with the choreography and finished a lot later in the
music. I think this may have been slightly tricky for Sienna because the piece
of music that she is dancing to has no words or a beat so every time she
performs it, it is slightly different. However, this doesn’t really matter
because the aim of this dance is to show that Aurora is playful.
After practicing this with
Sienna, we moved on to practicing the first dance in the show. Unfortunately we
were missing 3 people who will also be in this dance but we practiced as best
we could without them. I was able to stand in for Anna and Eve so that Aidan
and Toby could get a feel for what the routine was going to be like in this
space.
I wasn’t able to practice my duet
with Luke because he was unable to make it to the rehearsal today and probably
won’t be able to make it to the rehearsal on Thursday either. The only time
that we will be able to rehearse the duet is on the day of the show. I am slightly
wary about this because Laura is yet to see our duet part and there will be
hardly any time to change it if there are any major concerns.
I think that this rehearsal
really helped the children to grasp a better idea of what the space is going to
be like when they perform. There will be a tech/dress rehearsal on Thursday
next week where we will hopefully have everyone who is in the show to practice
their parts. They will then arrive early on the day of the shoe to have a full
run through of the show.
By helping the children to
improve their technique and performance, I was able to improve my own at the
same time. I did this by taking the improvements that I was giving them and
then making sure that I had applied these to the dances that I was performing.
At the start of this academic year, I really lacked confidence with teaching
dance to small children. However, over the course of the year I have been able
to improve on my teaching technique by observing other dance teachers and how
they teach and then applying this to my own teaching style. I have shown this
through teaching at the primary school and also teaching my own dance class on
a Saturday morning to 7 to 12 year olds.
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