Hello Dancers-
I have taught Belly Dance for the last 3 plus years ( Turkish& Egyptian/ American Style) and I taking notice of a dance/drill dynamic.
One is; most students love a warm up routine that they know well- knowthe music- feel safe within the rhythmical map.
I too loved this in my budding stages of dance.
For the first year of studying Bellydance- I thought THE only recording on the planet of Bellydance music was an antquited( albeit, much loved )Mary Ellen Donald mix. Our beloved teacher did teach us an amazing amount with just one tape.
The students in my area- do not get much of a chance to experience other teachers. ( Demographically challenged are we..) but I really try to expose them to way more than one CD or tape...and other teachers ,if I can swing it.
The two bookends of a class for me, are the warm up and the cool down.
Students all learn at a different rate-and in my intermediate class it seems like some students would do well with knowing a "recipie"
others do well with lots of fresh material & musical changes.
How often do you change material of your warm up / cool downs?
How often do you change the music/material for drills?
Nicole*
I have taught Belly Dance for the last 3 plus years ( Turkish& Egyptian/ American Style) and I taking notice of a dance/drill dynamic.
One is; most students love a warm up routine that they know well- knowthe music- feel safe within the rhythmical map.
I too loved this in my budding stages of dance.
For the first year of studying Bellydance- I thought THE only recording on the planet of Bellydance music was an antquited( albeit, much loved )Mary Ellen Donald mix. Our beloved teacher did teach us an amazing amount with just one tape.
The students in my area- do not get much of a chance to experience other teachers. ( Demographically challenged are we..) but I really try to expose them to way more than one CD or tape...and other teachers ,if I can swing it.
The two bookends of a class for me, are the warm up and the cool down.
Students all learn at a different rate-and in my intermediate class it seems like some students would do well with knowing a "recipie"
others do well with lots of fresh material & musical changes.
How often do you change material of your warm up / cool downs?
How often do you change the music/material for drills?
Nicole*
posted by:
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California
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Re: changing up the routine for the class-it's influence
Thu, May 8, 2008 - 2:59 AMok, being a student i'm not really in the same place as you, but i have noticed the same thing.
in our class, we've come down to approx this: the warm-up music is nearly always the same. it helps cos we know what to do, we know the music, we can just close our eyes, block out the rest of the day and enter the feeling of the dance.
for the class itself; well clearly when learning a choreography we hear th same music over and over....
but when learning moves the teacher constantly changes songs from one class to the next (unless we request a song we liked)
just one thing though, when learning moves it has got to be on a track with a constant beat.... some songs the beat accelerates, slows down, gets faster again.... those are fine for the impov sessions but to learn moves to is just too hard trying to do the move properly and anticipate the beat at the same time. especially if it starts to get really fast and you're not comfortable with the move even slow yet ^^
so yeah. we like that cos it gives us something we know, and a bit of change too....
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Re: changing up the routine for the class-it's influence
Sun, June 1, 2008 - 10:33 PMI'm not teaching at present, but when I was, I changed the music each class except for the choreography piece we were working on. I
believe that if my students learn to dance to many different types of music, they will have more fun. I'm afraid I have even had them
drilling to the Blackeyed Peas and Herbie Hancock as well as Eddie Kochack and Hassam Ramsy. I tell them that I have danced
to "Dueling Banjos" and even bagpipes! My Gram used to play the organ for me to practice when I had no music!
(My good Baptist Gram!)
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Re: changing up the routine for the class-it's influence
Sun, June 1, 2008 - 11:30 PMFor beginners, I never change up the music. I think it's hard enough to figure out how to move your hips without having to get your ears attuned to a new song.
Intermediate...just depends on my mood. I typically change things up a little every session, but not too much. I probably need to do that more.
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Re: changing up the routine for the class-it's influence
Mon, June 2, 2008 - 8:32 AMIn the classes I take and the class I teach, our routine for warm up and cool down remain the same (unless we worked something like arms a lot, and then we'll throw in a few extra stretches to help out) but the music constantly changes each class, depending on mood. So far, for both my students and my troupemates, this works for us. My class is a beginning class that focuses a ton on drilling, so I try to choose music that has a constant beat and the same rhythm if not tempo between songs. And since they are beginners, I count out loud so they can learn how to listen to music to find the beat. With my troupe, we often learn a combination in our choreography to music other than our choreography music, so that our brains don't associate that move with only that music. For my troupe, this seems to have only positive influences... :)
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Re: changing up the routine for the class-it's influence
Fri, June 13, 2008 - 9:37 PMI tried to switch my warm up a few years back and my students hated it. We were doing most of the same things but they just didn't like the flow so we switched back. A friend I hadn't seen in years stopped by and she said, "This old warm up?" But hey, why fix what aint broke?
