Preparing routines - My Trip to Tanzania (Post 8) - Dance Saturday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
As you might already know, if you've read my post that I published on Monday, I started up a half term street dance class for children aged 7-12 years to help me fund my expedition to Tanzania in the summer of 2022. So far, I've got a lot of good feedback and support from the advert that I started putting out to people last week. I got a couple responses from my Facebook advert and I also got some responses from the advert that I got my World Challenge co-ordinator to put out to the lower school. I've got three confirmations so far but I'm awaiting a direct response from a few others so we'll just have to wait and see. I know that some parents are quite busy so they might change their minds with these things.
However, this past week, I've been working on trying to get some routines down so that I can start teaching them to the students. I've found it quite challenging because of the time pressure, the mixture of abilities, and when people have chosen to do their classes throughout the week. I've come up with 3 routines that gradually increase in difficulty so when people start their lessons at the beginning of the week, they can start off with a routine that is fairly easy so that they get a feel of it, and then they can get used to the difficulty as the lessons go on. I just need to finalise a few things with the last routine and then I think I will be good to go. My next worry is that the children are all going to be amazing at the dancing and then I'm going to run out of routines to teach. In the unlikely event of this occurring, I might just have to choreograph something quickly either with the students or on my own. In any case, it's still good to have a little bit of apprehension when doing these things because that can propel you to do it better. It is also important to remember that children are children and they'll probably enjoy anything that gets them up and moving during a pandemic, so I guess that I'm lucky in that sense.
The first routine that I choreographed was to Head & Heart by Joel Corry and MNEK. It's quite a simple, fun, upbeat piece of choreography and I'm also using this song for my warm up at the beginning of each session because it's got a good rhythm to it. The second song that I've choreographed a routine to is Don't Call Me Up by Mabel because since most of my students are girls, I figured that they wouldn't mind dancing to a bit of Mabel. My last routine can be considered more difficult than the others but I think it's good to give people a little bit of stretch and challenge from time to time. It's the routine that I also posted on my Instagram to Now or Later by Sage the Gemini. This dance is quite strong and hard-hitting and incorporates some key bits of street dance technique that we would have learnt throughout the week so I'm sure that they will be able to dance it at the end. I was also thinking of doing a cool down to one of Adele's songs since they're quite slow and quite contemporary-like so it would be nice to finish a session on that.
Overall, yes I've layed all this out, but I really just want to try and have fun with it. I want to be encouraging and uplifting because it is just a small half term set of classes that I'm running and most students probably just want to let loose so fun is what I aim it to be. In our drink breaks, I will try and be as talkative as possible and make the students feel at home. One of my life-long dreams is to own a dance studio of a sort and although I am a bit nervous, this is an excellent way to start off that dream and hopefully continue in the future!
My advert:
"Hello, 👋
My name's Juliette Page and I'm a 16 year old student trying to raise funds for my expedition to Tanzania in the summer of 2022 as part of the World Challenge. I have a huge passion for dance and choreography so I'm offering a fun virtual dance class for children aged 7 - 12 years to help me fundraise. Students can be advanced street dancers or complete beginners; this class is open to all abilities! The class would be run everyday over half term (15th - 19th February) from 10:00am - 11:00am and it will be a street dance class. It costs only £4 per class/device and parents are welcome to join in so get involved if you wish! If you're interested, please make sure to email/Facebook message me so I can give you the link to my Just Giving page and so that I can give you your online meeting link closer to the time. I look forward to seeing you! 😊
My email: juliettepage15@gmail.com"
Have you ever taught any classes? Have you ever done them virtually? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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See you next time,
Bye,
XOX, Juliette
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