Beyond the Barre: June 2017

The Pointe Shoe Test

2:05 PM

Put Down Your Phone - Why You Shouldn't Videotape Your Child Dancing

9:19 AM

She's worked hard for months. You haven't been allowed in the studio to see her newest variation. Her hair is in a perfect bun and she's wearing tights with no holes today. The parents file into the studio... and get out their cameras and cell phones.

I hate this.

As a teacher, I think it's super important for kids to have a chance to perform, even when it's in the studio. But one of my pet peeves is parents videotaping or taking pictures during their dancing time.

Miss Haley, I want to videotape it so I can have it forever! What's wrong with that?

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In our culture now, it is standard to videotape or record footage from live events. When you go to a concert, you record. When you see something funny happening, you record. It's second nature now.

I use recording all the time in class to help my students. We videotape a combo it, then watch it, find things we want to correct, and then dance it again. It makes a huge difference! And I have no problem with dance being recorded during a live show.

Please hear me: I have no issues with dance being recorded! So why am I so against parents recording their kids?

1. The show should be live.

Imagine this: You've worked hard, you know your dance, you're ready. The music begins. You're dancing and looking into the face of... your mom holding a phone. You cannot connect with your audience because they're not looking at you, they're looking at their phone screen. When the music ends, everyone stops their recording, puts down their expensive device, and then starts clapping (about 4 seconds after you finish), but by then it's too late. It was not magical. It was just a filming.

Dance wasn't created for the screen. It was created for the stage.

Please. Connect with your dancer. Watch them. Be involved in their performance. The disconnect they will experience from dancing for your phone instead of you will poison the experience for them, and they will feel like you are not supporting them. I cannot tell you how many times this has happened.

2. Some people do not want their kids on the internet.

It is a courtesy to others to not record. I distinctly remember one year early in my dance education where all the parents wanted a group picture, but one mom took her kid out of that group picture. The parents were confused, the kids were sad because their classmate wasn't in the photo, and the child was embarrassed. I found out later she was a witness protection kid.

I've had other situations where parents simply didn't want their kids online for random creepy people to see. And I totally get that!

3. Keep your studio safe.

Lastly, some studios has media release clauses in their legal protection, but others don't (or don't have complete coverage). It can actually put the dance studio in a bad place if people spread the photos and videos around without permission.

So what can we do?

1. Ask your teacher/studio owner if it's ok to record.

2. Ask your fellow parents if it's ok to put online.

3. Ask one particular person to record, then share the file or link with everyone so you can be an attentive audience member.

Teachers - it's a great idea to set up a tripod and tell the families you will give them access to the footage, but please put away their phones. Their kids want an audience!

Photo credit: Kaur Ilves via Visual Hunt / CC BY-ND

For Teachers

Supporting Your Dancer - A Family Guide

7:51 AM

Health

Am I Hydrated? Drinking Water In Dance Class

8:35 AM

We all know water is important… but how important is it for a dancer?

Answer: Extremely.

Water makes up 80% of your body weight. Yes you're trying to keep your weight low, but water is more than just something that weighs you down. Water is the unspoken fourth macro-nutrient, debatably more important than fats or proteins.

Can't I just drink water before and after? Sure if that works for you. But keep these important facts in mind.

Why is water important?

1. Studies have shown that there is a very obvious decrease in strength, flexibility, stamina, and overall performance when dancers are as little as 2% dehydrated. For more, check out the USADA's free nutritional download for Athletes.

2. The shock absorbing pads between your spine, and between your femur and tibia (under your knee cap) are mostly water. If they're not functioning right, they won't support you in your dancing. For the sake of your knees, please! Drink plenty of water!

3. Your brain needs a lot of water to work quickly and effectively. Are you feeling sluggish and delayed in class? You might be dehydrated. If you don't drink water, your brain will shut down. (keep in mind this is the simplified version, but I don't feel like doing an entire post about your brain. This is a dance blog.)

4. Your body can't absorb and digest the nutrition from the food you ate unless you're hydrated. It will get some of it, but not all of it, and certainly not the most it can. So if you're dehydrated and you're trying to eat enough calories to dance tonight in class, keep in mind that you aren't getting as much of the energy as you could be getting if you were drinking water.

5. Water boosts your metabolism. Trying to watch your weight? The best way to lose weight is to drink cold water, because your body burns calories warming it up to absorb it. Want your energy levels to stay more consistent? Drink more water! Trying to eat fewer calories but you're still hungry after your meal? Drink a cup of water, weight thirty minutes, and if you're still hungry, drink more.

Great! So what can we do to make sure we stay hydrated?

In our society, because we drink so many other things like coffee (guilty), tea (guilty…), and sports drinks (very guilty), we tend to forget that water is pretty much our life source.

Now with that in mind, you really don't want to over-hydrate. That can be fatal, because it dilutes your blood.

Good news: There is a foolproof way to tell if you're hydrated!
Bad news: it's kind of gross.

Basically, take a peek at your urine color. If it's bright yellow or a muddy dark, you're very dehydrated. Drink about four more 6-ounce cups of water a day. If it's a light lemonade color, you're pretty much fine, but you could do for an extra cup or two when you work out. If it's almost clear (which is what a lot of athletes should shoot for, since we sweat so much), you're doing great.

How can I stay hydrated in class?

Once you establish how much water you should drink (and always check with a doctor or health specialist if you aren't sure), what is the best way to drink water in dance class? Teachers want you to be healthy, but many of them get irritated if you're constantly sipping water and using the bathroom. Where's the fine line of health and good class etiquette?

1. Be hydrated before you go into the studio. That means water drinking starts in the morning, not 10 minutes before class.

2. Bring a water bottle, but don't sip all class long. Science has established you actually stay hydrated if you take larger gulps of water at intervals rather than sip after every hard thing you do. For example, try drinking larger gulps of water before class, after rond de jambe, after stretch, and after allegro.

3. Be aware - if you "feel thirsty," you've already been dehydrated for at least 20 minutes. Just like hunger, thirst sometimes has a delayed response in letting your body know "hey! gimme some help over here!" Again, start the hydration process in the morning, not right before class!

Resources

Here are some extra resources if you want to do more research.

USADA's Nutrition guide for athletes (I give this to my pre-professional students!)
Nutrition for the Dancer
Diet for Dancers
Sweat. Think. Go Faster: A common sense approach to sports nutrition for endurance athletes

For Dancers

3 Types Of Corrections You Will Get In Dance Class - and what to do about them

9:15 AM

Did you know that there are only 3 kinds of corrections in Dance?

Every type of correction is going to boil down to fit in one of these 3 categories! (This is not counting laziness, which is a decision, not a mistake.)

Why is this important? You need to know why you are making the mistake, not just what the mistake is. This will help you fix it faster.

Do you keep getting the same correction? Or maybe you just don't know how to fix the issue you've been presented with, no matter how hard you try? Here are the 3 kinds of issues you'll come across.

1. Muscle memory. You've always done it this way, from the beginning, and you've never corrected it. For example: closing tendu with a bent knee, cranking in Pique turns, not spotting on a turn. The young lady below danced for a year and was never corrected on her arm.

How to fix it - drill the correct way. Remember my video on Stars and Minus signs? You need to drill the correct way until you have overwhelmed the incorrect way out of your system. For example, lift the leg from a tendu to in arabesque, making sure it's lengthened and straight 50 times, every day for 2 weeks. You won't have to think about it after a few weeks, because you will have made it a habit.

2. Lack of strength. You are not strong enough to do something correctly; for example your left foot is always sickles in passé, or your arm drops in chaines. In the picture below, the dancer's foot is not strong enough to get all the way up onto her relevé.

How to fix it - identify what muscle you use for that thing, and strengthen it. Usually there is a muscle weakness causing the problem. Is it an alignment issue? Usually alignment issues are a result of not activating the correct muscle. Talk to your teacher and ask for conditioning exercises to help strengthen the weakness.

3. Visualization. You are perfectly capable of doing a double pirouette, but you keep falling out of it. You know your leg has to be straight when you do a leap, but it keeps bending.

Do you know what muscle is your strongest? Your brain! You probably imagine yourself doing it wrong in your mind. Many dancers use visualization to help improve their technique.

How to fix it - Do it in your head. Imagine it. Feel it. Don't open your eyes until you can see it correctly. Get on YouTube, watch videos of the step being done correctly. Pretend it's you. Dream about it. Refuse to let yourself mess it up. See what you want.

Next time you get a correction from your teacher, see if you can identify which category it goes in! This will help you learn how to improve it.

For Teachers

Muscle Memory, Stars, and Minus Signs - How To Avoid The Learning Curve

11:05 AM

Continuing where I left off on my earlier post about doing it correctly or not doing it at all... Wouldn't it be great if students could get it correctly from the get-go? We wouldn't have to correct mistakes or fix bad habits accidentally created in the process of learning a new step!

I have good news for you.

Photo credit: Stage Door Dance, Raleigh NC; Winter intensive

In my classes, I use a combination of classical ballet mixed with exercises from Eileen Juric's PowerDance Technique system, formerly known as Ballet Barre None.

These exercises are designed to teach the dancer to execute movements organically, from the inside out, concept before content, mechanism before movement.

One of the things Eileen talks about a lot is Effort Quotient. More on that later.

But no matter your system, exercises, or method, there will always be students who:

complain about doing exercises multiple times
can demonstrate a step correctly, but fall back into their bad habits easily
get frustrated with their inability to improve, or see their improvement
struggle to apply the corrections you give them.

How can we change this, and encourage our students through their learning process?

Photo credit: Bellevue Fine Art Repro (Scott) via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC

Every year, in every class, I explain my Stars and Minus concept to them, and it helps them measure their improvement and avoid making bad habits by accident.

For instance: You explain a combination, and the whole time your students mark the feet and arms. You ask if they understand and are ready to dance, they say yes. When they go to dance the combination they thought they understood, they have horrible arms, bad foot positions, and have forgotten the combination or no longer understand it.

Do your students say they understood the combo, but they can't dance it?

Another example: Your student receives a correction and applies it, does it correctly a few times, and then takes their turn across the floor, only to fall back into their former habit that you just corrected.

Wouldn't it be awesome if we could cut these situations out of dance class? Students would improve and learn so much faster and more efficiently.

And how about the complaining? Everyone seems to think as soon as they do it right, they don't have to keep practicing it!

But I don't want to do it AGAIN.

Well, I made a video explaining my Stars and Minus concept the exact way I teach it to my students. I would love to share it with you totally free, and have you explain it to them. It will change their attitudes in class!

After explaining this concept to my students, they:

are more attentive to corrections
are less likely to be frustrated by their learning curve
don't complain about repeating exercises multiple times
gain more strength, stamina, and muscle memory
practice corrections without being told

The youngest age I begin explaining this concept is age 5, or our Beginner Level 1 class. Some 5-year-old's still struggle with the concept, but can usually get it if you draw it out on a white-board or piece of paper like I do in the video.

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~Miss Haley

For Dancers

Do You Know How To Point Your Toes?

9:35 AM

Number one thing I say in the studio while teaching? Point your toes.

Everyone knows you have to point your toes in ballet class, but nobody seems to be able to do it correctly, and everyone has to be constantly reminded. Shouldn't it be muscle memory by now?

Well, we're gonna tackle that one today.

First of all, why does your teacher wants you to point your toes? It's not because it's tradition, or because it's pretty. I mean, yes, those are true things, and they're OK reasons. But that's not the main reason.

It's because ballet is really hard if you don't.

Imagine placing just your fingertips against a heavy item and pushing it away. Kinda difficult. Now imagine placing your entire hand on that heavy item and pushing with your whole hand. A lot easier, right?

When you pointe your toes correctly, you press your whole foot against the floor and create opposition. Your foot springs up off of the floor and points as an effect of the pushing.

Pushing off the floor to get into the air

I'm going to say that again. Pointing your feet should be an effect, not a cause!

Pointing your feet happens when you articulate.
Pointing your feet happens when you push.
Pointing your feet happens when you flex the muscles in the back of the foot and leg.

And it creates what I like to call "Push Power," which is really just opposition that young kids understand (because opposition is a big word).

So that's all fine and dandy... but how do you point your toes correctly?

Photo 1: yes! Photo 2: no.

It starts with understanding what we mean when we say "point." Really we should be saying push and lengthen.

Beautifully lengthened feet (aside from the strings sticking out)

When you PUSH your feet, you articulate the feet off the ground, as mentioned above. You activate the muscles in the foot and press against the floor, and that causes your foot to point.

When you LENGTHEN your feet, you are elongating the muscles in your leg, trying to reach the toes farther than ever before, trying to shoot lightning bolts out of the toes. This helps all the muscles in the leg engage more efficiently and effectively, and helps with flexibility, extension, and turnout.

1. Articulating the ankle

2. Lengthening the toes

3. A full lengthened pointed foot

Sometimes when teachers say point your toes, the student ends up crunching their toes, because they are trying to get their foot curved.

Crunched toes - not elongated properly

This is why I try to say PUSH and LENGTHEN instead, so my students understand exactly what I want from them.

Stay tuned for foot strengthening exercises!

Photo credit: Jack Devant ballet photography via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC-SA and Shopping Diva via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

and gabrielsaldana via Visual hunt / CC BY-SA