The not-so-secret life of me

11 Feb

For posperity, I want to chronicle my experience in the process of becoming a dance teacher. One day, I want to teach dancing as a job (most likely a second job, because I doubt if I could live off it!) so this is pretty important to me. I’ve been training in Jazz for 3 years and slowly taking exams in a teaching syllabus. The syllabus has 9 levels and students are eglible for the first Associate level exam after level 5. Well that’s where I am. Students who pass Associate level 1 are then considered qualified to teach beginner students and the first 4 levels of the syllabus.

The associate level exam consists of:

Demonstration of 2 specified exercises from any of the levels 1-4

Demonstration of one of the dance routines from levels 1-4 (the adjudicators decide which level)

Theory (musicality, technique, anatomy, injury, warmup, choreography, general knowledge)

Demonstration of certain moves and the elements to keep in mind (e.g. flat-back, jetes, turns)

A solo routine that goes for 2.5 minutes

Teaching a class of beginners for 30 minutes – stretching, travelling and 32-count dance routine. Students not provided.
That’s all!

So far, after 2 weeks, I have re-learned the dances from levels 1 & 2, started learning some of the theory, started choreographing the routine for the class and found some volunteer students. Not bad. Re-learning levels 1 & 2 has been interesting. Each time we only had about 30 minutes with the teacher to go over a whole dance – I did these levels about 3 years ago so I’d forgotten most of the moves – but they came back to me quickly and now having done level 5 I realise how easy they were.

The hardest part of this exam for me is going to be remembering the level 1-4 dances (there’s a lot of repetition and some lame moves) and choreographing a good dance, I haven’t choreographed anything since I was about 16 and then it wasn’t Jazz. The choreography for the solo has to be at my level, not beginner standard, so there’s a lot of room to move, but it has to exhibit a broad range of moves – turns, jumps, floor work, fast steps, slow steps, character, flavour – e.g. funky, lyrical, or balletic, etc. That’s a lot for 2.5 minutes of choreography. So I will be going to lots of different classes to get inspiration and ideas. This includes going to a beginner class to look at the standard moves taught to beginners, going to ballet to help strengthen my muscles, going to advanced to keep improving technique and learning new things / different choreography and also my regular intermediate class(es) which I do because I like the teacher, the warmup, the travelling and the other students. That’s a lot of dancing for someone who works >40 hours a week. Phew!

So, only 11 weeks to go until D-Day…