Jane Syder's Blog

SEEING THINGS FROM THE CHILD/LEARNERS PERSPECTIVE Davis made me think today as to whether Dance is always perceived as a useful tool in the therapy of others particularly the older generation or if in fact they reject the idea.  One piece of music can be evocative and give pleasure or pain depending on the memories attached to it. That all individuals will draw what they will from the dance class despite our best intentions, it will come down to who they are and what interests them and our job to provide enough interest to engage all learners. I was keen to see how much we relied on syllabus in our early careers and at what point we had the confidence and courage to branch out with our own ideas to motivate learners.  So convention and spontaneity.  Also where the spontaneity came from and how much of it is deep rooted into who we are, our subconscious. Our environment, childhoods......? We also discussed the relevance of 'tradition' and Davis pointed out the many ...

New Intermediate ISTD Tap I have just come back from the new Inter Tap course with one of my former teachers Heather Rees. What an inspiration she is!  The syllabus is incredible.  The younger girls were really picking up the new work quickly and it was taking my old knee injury and my brain somewhat longer.  But you find that rather than just learning the work you are contemplating the teaching of it.  I loved the sequences and slides!!  Day 2 is to come.  Looking forward to the turning steps. Having taken my Adv 2 and Associate Tap and National both with Heather Rees I realise how fortunate I was to have her as my mentor and teacher.  The new work features some of the Advanced steps and the build up from the new grades.  I am yet to learn the Grades 5 and 6 and realise there are a few gaps in my learning where paddles and around the sides are concerned.  It makes you realise the importance of the 'build-up's' and for children ...

Different genres and their relevance today? How important is it for you to uphold the 'tradition' of a particular genre in your Practise? Different styles, how they originated is interesting. Whether the dance was created for religious purposes, rituals and how the steps relate to 'actions' i.e planting seeds, ringing bells to rid evil spirits etc is quite fascinating and gives 'meaning' to the steps and dance as a whole.   The National Dance Syllabus (ISTD) covers many different dances from around the world.  How they 'came to be' and their influence in new choreographic pieces is apparent.  Many of these dances were just performed at a social occasion to celebrate the harvest and such like. How relevant is tradition in what we teach now? How many young children would be interested in learning some of these dances? How could we inspire them to do so? What newish genres have evolved in the past 30 years?  Hip-Hop, Bollywood, ...

Rhythm is in our Lives How has the rhythm of your day impacted upon your teaching?  If you've been rushing about trying to drive the children to school and catch up on admin, etc how does this effect your teaching?  Do you bring the rhythm of your day into the studio?  How do you manage stress? Or are we always able to switch hats and our professionalism kicks in? Is it important for our participants to see the 'perfect us'?  The perfect us that we always feel we have to present - the performance?  Does it start the minute we step through the door? Or can they realise that we all have pressures and responsibilities and we are in fact human? After watching and listening to the wonderful Liz Herman I have been wondering about how my experience at home and at the 'studio' growing up has shaped me as a teacher and communicator.  I think the plastic self protective shield struck a certain chord.  I think I was brought up in a strict...

UNIFORM I am interested in how you all feel about Uniform?  Do you insist on the set ISTD/RAD regulation uniform for classes? Are all children comfortable wearing it? My consideration is for the child who may be 'self-conscious' already.  Insisting on tight fitting leotards and soft flowing skirts, can this be off - putting for some children wanting desperately to dance or perhaps feeling uncomfortable with their bodies?  One little girl said to me she "I don't like Ballet, I don't want to be a 'fairy"!  I think it's a shame that some little girls see Ballet only in this way partly by the image a uniform might project. How does uniform impact upon the child.  Does the 'image' decide which genre they want to learn?  If we dressed 'Ballet' up in Baseball Hats and t-shirts would more children sign up?  Is Hip-Hop more attractive because you can wear jogging pants? Are we able to be flexible on this?  Do we need to rethink the im...

'Give the child a Voice'  they aren't our puppets or trophies. I was very interested to hear George talk about how dancers at HE level seemed reluctant to try anything for themselves as they have become used to this 'spoon fed' culture expecting to be told what to do mainly because the teacher is always telling them what to do! This troubled me as I know we need to find our innovative choreographers for the future so we need to educate our young dancers to think creatively. This put me in mind of my childhood learning to dance when my teacher would stand at the front and we would be expected to watch, listen copy practise and learn.  We weren't able to speak at all.  Perhaps we got more done.  I realise that dance is a discipline and group cohesion is necessary, but don't believe this has to be forced.  I think you can engage children by including them and using methods they relate to, to keep them interested.  What do you th...

for the REFLECTIVE JOUR NAL Description A 2yrs - 4yrs dance class at their Primary School in a large school hall which took place yesterday morning from 9am until 9.40am.  There were two girls and ten boys.  Three other members of the kindergartens staff joined in with the children helping them with taking their socks and shoes off and repeating my instructions. Looking back, I felt content and reassured that the method I used had worked and was effective for 10/12 of the children!  I felt I needed to put more work into understanding the two other children.  One little chaps disruption was not unexpected, but there was a definite improvement in his behaviour from previous classes. I felt in a 'play moment' and concentrated on the age of children and gave careful thought to what they could identify with. List Three addition staff members from the kindergarten. music worked from CD player. one child with limited hearing due to glue ear in both ears...