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In dance it is really important to practice a dance routine a lot in order to get your routine into your long-term memory. I have practiced my dance routines so much that I still remember routines from 6th grade. Long-term memory is considered to be relatively permanent and its capacity is unlimited. I can't even count the amount of dance routines I have memorized in my head, because there are just too many. When learning a dance, in order to remember the dance easier you use chunking. This breaks the dance into smaller parts and enables you to learn the dance quicker. My teacher would do this all the time. Each week she would teach us a little more of the routine. Once we had the new part learned she would go on and choreograph more of the dance.

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All motor skills are able to be classified by the muscles being used, the distinctness of the movements, and the environmental stability. The distinctness of the movement has three subcategories; discrete skills, serial skills, and continuous skills. Discrete skills have well-defined beginning and ending poins and they typically only last a few seconds. This would be like a simple kick. Serial skills are a combination of discrete skills put together in a particular order. Continuous skills are repetitive skills with arbitrary beginning and ending points. For example, a kick line is a perfect example of a serial skill. Each kick is a discrete skill, but when they are put together, they make up serial skills. The order that the kicks are performed matters in order to stay in sync with all of the other dancers in your formation. In this video, you can see that the cheerleaders are performing the same moves over and over, but they are adding some variation, making the order very important.

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Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders kick line on Thanksgiving Day 2013 Cowboys-Raiders

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Have you ever wondered why someone is better at a sport compared to someone else who tries just as hard or even harder? This question can be answered by the abilities that a person has. An ability is a general trait or capacity of the individual that is a determinant of a person's achievement potential for the performance of specific skills and they are unmodifiable by practice. Extent flexibility is one of the physical proficiency abilities that we discussed in class. This is the ability to extend or stretch the body as far as possible in various directions. This one is really important in dance because it is necesssary to be extremely flexible. Looking back to when I danced competitively, I can remember an instance where the judges gave my friend an award and they commented that "she is in the studio working hard everyday." We all laughed because she did not try as hard as the judges thought. She just was born with certain abilities that made her a naturally talented dancer.

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It's easy to do a skill with our dominant side and forget about the non-dominant side. There is one transfer theory that can be used in dance to influence your performance. Bilateral transfer is a transfer of learning that occurs between two limbs. When I was younger, my dance teacher would have us practice left leg kicks even though she never put them in our routines. I always wondered why she would make us do this, but now I know. I have noticed that when we practiced our left leg kicks in practice, our right leg kicks were much better when we performed. Left side pirouettes are also not common, so they don't get practiced. I have realized that if I try to do a left side pirouette, I can still do them because of all the practice I have with right side pirouettes. It's true that the pirouettes aren't perfect, but they are better than if I were to do them without practicing on my dominant side.

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Practice variability refers to the variety of movement and context characteristics the learner experiences while practicing. This is important to do because when the learner practices with an increased variability of context and movement, the learner will be able to adapt to different conditions. In dance, this can be done by practicing in different rooms with a variety of flooring, and to mix up the order of practice. Practicing on different floors will help a dancer to adjust to the floor they eventually will have to perform on. I can remember a certain dance competition that would have a different floor compared to what we were used to practicing on. All of us would be caught off guard when we would try to do our turn sequence. Changing the order of practice is also very important because if your practice always starts with practicing kicks, then practicing leaps in the middle of practice, practicing pirouettes after, and then finiching practice with practicing the entire dance routine, you aren't getting much variety. You need to intersperse practicing all of the dance moves at different times throughout your practice time.