Our goal for our classes, regardless of target group was to allow the participants to gain confidence through movement and to introduce them to styles of dance that they may not have been exposed to prior. We wanted the classes to be conducted in a respectful, calm and safe space and work around the participants needs.  

 

We also encountered problems with external staffing, such as the children’s class we were supposed to conduct and teach in couldn’t go ahead due to there not being enough staff present from their learning facility. This was understandable and we respected that this couldn’t go ahead as without the needed number of staff members, the classes might not have been conducted as safely as they could have been. I did feel disappointed as I was looking forward to working with children again as I had previously taught children dance in my past training. I really enjoyed seeing the children progression in terms of confidence and musical dynamics as well as seeing their gross motor and fine manipulative skills progress.  

 

However, we were then made aware that we would be teaching adults with disabilities dance which was something I was also familiar and had first-hand experience with. I did discuss my experience with my group and let them know that we might need to simplify some of our movement material as from my past experience. The adults I taught worked best with sensory input such as working alongside someone on a 1:1 basis and enjoyed sensory input such as touch and partnering work in dance. I also discussed our music choice as I believed we should use music that the adults would enjoy opposed to more recent pop music that they might not have heard before. We agreed as a group that the structure of the class needed to change, and we were going to focus more on gestural movements and movements that weren’t going in and out of the floor/floor work (2020 Sportanddev.org). This was decided to allow the participants to feel more comfortable in the space and not feel like they were being judged for their movements. From my past experience, the adults were uneasy about doing complex floor work movements as they struggled with the physicality of this due to being unfamiliar with the movement. I found that once I adapted the class to have similar dynamic movements but focus on the dancers being standing at all times and slowly work levels in such as plies and slight bends of the knee, that the confidence overall in the class heightened. 

 

After choreographing a dance motif to Billie Eilish ‘Everything I Wanted’ with gestural movements and a small usage of levels. We discovered later on that the adults we were teaching struggled with mental health issues. We collectively decided as a group that the song choice wasn’t acceptable to the participants to dance to as Billie Eilish’s song talks about suicidal ideations such as the lyrics ‘I stepped off the Golden’, which is discussed her experience with jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. We felt this was insensitive and could be a potentiometer trigger to the participants mentally and decided to change the song to Labrinth ‘Mount Everest’. As a group we chose to do this as the song is talking about independence such as having lyrics like ‘don’t need no nobody’, we felt as though this was a better song choice and wouldn’t cause any harm to the participants.  

 

We did, however, had to change the gestural movements to suit the song better but as a group we remained positive and managed to book extra rehearsals to allow us to make alterations to our material. Overall, we had already dealt with issues around our project at this point and we remained calm and respectful towards one another. We kept steady communication and had meetings informally weekly to discuss prior and future developments and to check in with one another. This was extremely helpful as we were about to discover that for a third time, we would have to change our material and target audience in terms of participants.  

 

Going forward, we then had a meeting with our tutor for the course and we were told that that we would need to again, change our target audience due to external staffing issues. As a collective we agreed that it would be best for our group to teach the first-year students on our BA Dance course as we were now dealing with a time constraint as the deadline for our project was soon. We decided to change our choreography to be more complex as we were now teaching dance students and we were aware of their capabilities due to training with them. We made the choice to change our contemporary session to a jazz session as on our course we aren’t taught jazz dance. We wanted the participants to engage with a style of dance that they hadn’t learnt before as well as gain confidence and connect with people in our class that they may not have met before. We also made the decision that some members of our group would work together to create a hip-hop session meaning we would collectively be providing a session in hip hop and now jazz dance. This essay will be focusing on the jazz session as that was the group I worked with for this project. We decided to split into two smaller groups whilst working together due to time constraints and due to classes with timetables and personal commitments. This was the most effective way to create material and book the studio spaces needed to curate our choreography for our sessions. This worked well and made the project more exciting for our group as we got to watch each other’s sessions and take part in them at the end of the project as we spend time in different rehearsals for this project. My group needed to adapt and change our choreography more than the hip hop class as our group decided on gestural movements and a slower dynamic composition overall as we were originally choreographing for non-dancers and people who may struggle with complex movements in dance.  

 

To structure all of our sessions that we curated, we started by delegating certain roles to individuals such as a warmup and cool down, main choreography and technique section. My role was to work with another student on the warmup and cool down to ensure the safe practice of our class and to ensure we were preventing injuries as the material we were creating in terms of jazz dance was going to be unfamiliar to the participants. We made sure to include dynamic stretches for the warmup and focus more on static stretches for the cool down (Insight, 2020). This was because dynamic stretches are great for warming the body up and increasing flexibility whilst preventing injury, it also allows the participants to stretch according to their bodies needs as the stretches including light movement (Francis, 2014). The participants could choose to go deeper into the stretches or take it at an easier and slower pace. We choose to do static stretches at the end of our session for a cool down so that the dancers’ muscles wouldn’t be strained, and they could go deeper into the stretches and release the lactic acid their body would have built up during the session. This can prevent injuries and aid with increasing flexibility and mobility in the muscles (Insight, 2020).The technique section was similar to our contemporary session we created and included movements such as split jumps and high kicks/grande battements. This worked well for us as the technique in jazz and contemporary is similar as they both have fundamentals and structure derived from ballet. Lastly, we needed to create a choreographic section and my peers did a great job at embodying the style and characteristics of jazz dance. Jazz dance is known to have sharp dynamics and be a fun, animated style as it was mostly showcased on stage and television. We took inspiration from Bob Fosse and Fosse’s sharp dynamic and shoulder rolls (Nicolaou). We implemented this into our choreography, and it worked well overall (Seibert, 2019).

I believe that our communication was effective, and we were resilient and strong as a team, we kept in contact weekly and made sure that we remained calm and respectful of one another no matter the challenges we faced. The session was successful, and everyone seemed to enjoy the material we created as a team. The participants seemed to be confident as they were already within the dance community and studying dance, however we allowed the participants to take the class at their own rate as one of the material sections, I myself struggled with in terms of syncopated beats and dynamic composition (Seibert, 2019). We made sure to assist the participants with learning the choreography and helping them with counts and timing as well as joining them throughout the session so that they wouldn’t be pressured to do the material alone. We made sure to ask throughout the sessions if anyone needed help and to check in with everyone to see if they needed anything adapted. I believe that as a group and as an individual that I’ve learnt a lot about developing and creating a dance class and have learnt how to teach to a higher standard. This has been the first time I’ve taught a jazz dance session and it was beneficial to step out of my comfort zone and I hope I can continue to utilise the skills I have ascertained during this project.

 

Bibliography:

 

Francis, R. (2014) Stretching for dancers, Dance Informa Magazine. Available at: https://dancemagazine.com.au/2014/01/stretching-truths-2/ (Accessed: 09 May 2023). 

Insight, D. (2020) Home, Dance Insight. Available at: https://dance-insight.com/static-vs-dynamic-stretching/ (Accessed: 09 May 2023). 

Maddalena, M. and Parkhatskaya, K. (2021) Vernacular, authentic or modern, what is jazz dance?  • solo jazz dance, Ksenia’s Secrets of Solo. Available at: https://secretsofsolo.com/2020/08/vernacular-authentic-or-modern-what-is-jazz-dance/ (Accessed: 09 May 2023). 

Nicolaou, E. (no date) You can thank Bob Fosse for your jazz hands, Choreographer Bob Fosse Dance Style & Signature Moves. Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/04/229334/what-is-bob-fosse-dance-style-jazz-moves (Accessed: 09 May 2023). 

Seibert, B. (2019) Hands! hips! hats! the why and how of Fosse/Verdon Dance Moves, The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/arts/dance/fosse-verdon-dance.html (Accessed: 09 May 2023). 

sportanddev.org (2020) Dance, disability and quality of life, sportanddev. Available at: https://www.sportanddev.org/latest/news/dance-disability-and-quality-life (Accessed: 09 May 2023).