Category Selection

“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

-Alan Watts

Selecting the correct category to place your dance under is vital to the message you want your routine to display. It’s not as simple as one may think. You cannot just throw a lyrical into a jazz category, hip-hop into musical theatre, or mistake a ballet for contemporary. There is a difference between clogging and tap, large group and line, and teen and senior. Dances need to make sense in the category they are placed in to keep judging standard and equal across all divisions, styles and ages.

The choreography was most likely given to fit a select amount of dancers. The style was made to reflect what the dancers perform best under the category. For example, a jazz routine can be either sassy, fierce, funk, creepy, classical, slow, fast, etc. However you have to be careful that if it is under the jazz category, it is straight jazz. Yes you may get away with a street jazz, but in all honesty a street jazz is hip-hop. Same goes for a Broadway jazz, where the style could have fit better under the musical theatre division. It is also important to note the difference between jazz and lyrical, which is especially confused in dance team, when they are not filtered into the correct categories. At the high school level there are two separated categories of lyrical and jazz, and a lot of teams incorrectly place their lyrical into the jazz category, and get away with it. Another thought about distinguishing styles is the question of contemporary. Contemporary is pretty much a cross of lyrical and jazz elements, but combined to form a new interesting piece. Contemporary may lean toward a more jazz side, or lyrical side, so a choreographer should be precise on whether the style is lyrical, jazz or contemporary when registering it under a style.

Please place your dance in the correct division, style and age category. It makes judging fairer in an already opinionated sport. It can be easy to misjudge the style of dance, so if it’s questionable you should look for multiple opinions, from multiple backgrounds. You want the message of your dance to be displayed properly to the audience, and one step to making that happen is by placing the dance under the correct category.

~Julia Brewer

Appreciating Talent

"While I dance I can not judge, I can not hate, I can not separate myself from life.  I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance."

- Hans Bos

Dance is very popular, performed and watched by many. There are so many spectators of dance, not only do you have judges, family, and friends, but you may have scouts, unknown peers, rival studios, and crazy dance parents. This all leads to many eyes falling upon the dance on stage and forming their own opinions. With that it is obvious that training and talent of dancer's differ tremendously on a great range of areas. It is easy to spot out a dancer or group that has a high level of talent, blowing you away by every breath they take, move they make and sound you hear. It is what the spectator chooses to do with that opinion that defines them in the dance world and the view others may share or disapprove of in comparison t their own.

There are too many cases to be had and experiences to be told about parents, dancers, teachers and outsiders alike not appreciating a dancer’s talent and what they bring into the dance industry. Some take the dancer out on the means of jealousy, which in my opinion is just absolutely ridiculous. Some of the best dancers in the world are frowned upon by others for simply being the best dancer they can. What is wrong with being the best? I believe instead of trying to tear down the dancers that are better than yourself, you should be in appreciation of the talent they have. Dancers should be inspired by what they are doing, and strive to be like them or the best version they can be.

 

This jealousy is penetrated all sorts of ways, like through social media, gossip and hate messages. Famous dancers have so much hate on them through gossip and social media. It's visible everywhere, through Facebook, Instagram, twitter and vine. This is wrong to do. It is degrading talent and embarrassing. There are several cases as well where jealousy sparks the fact that some individuals can't even stand to dance with someone that might be seen as better than themselves. This is a prime studio hopper, although not always the case, many studio hoppers feel as though they aren't getting the attention they deserve, because someone else is better than them, and they don't understand why they are not as good. It's a sad, but a true occurrence in the dance world.

Talent should not go unnoticed, instead be appreciated. Someone else's should not be at the expense as an escape for an individual or group to terrorize the talent. There is an under appreciation for the talent of dance, because some cannot handle the fact that they are not the best. It is a sad idea that is ignored by many, it's wrong and needs to be settled to an end. If you see an individual or group with an immense amount of talent use that to compliment them on what you see instead of tearing them apart because you are not who they are, even though that is where you want to be.

 

~Julia Brewer

The Judge of it All

“Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.”

-H. Jackson Brown jr

Dance is different in comparison to other sports in several different fields, one being the way in which placements, scores and rankings are given to individuals, groups and teams. Dance is sport judged completely on opinion. This can lead judge bias, preference and appeal. Everything on dance is based on an opinion, so every score sheet you receive can be different, even if several judges watched the exact same routine at the exact same time. In that lays the fact that one judge does not see everything another judge may notice. Judges also come from many different stylistic backgrounds, leading some to have more knowledge in specific genres than others.

Having a dance routine based completely on a judge’s opinion has both benefits and downfalls. For starters you encounter interpretations, ideas and suggestions from a wide variety of people. You get more than one point of view, and it can refresh the dancers and choreographers what is most noticeable to an eye that has never seen the routine. The judges can help by giving beneficial insight into the routine, and it is unlikely that every judge has the exact same thing to say. On the other hand judges can sometimes be tired from a long competition day and weary to give you much comment other than on the score sheet. This can be frustrating, especially when given a lower score, yet you don’t know why, where or how that score was deserved. Another downfall to dance judgements is the variety. One judge may give you a nearly perfect score, while another gives you subpar and three more give you somewhere crazily in between. Judges can also show bias to certain teams, although this is to commonly used to blame a poor scored performance, it does sometimes happen. In most occasions however, judges are selected with a lot of time, effort and professionalism, so hopefully this point never actually comes to be true.

Dance uses a score system based on opinion, which is different than most other sporting victories. Just like dance being judged differently, the judges are all different o. You encounter new ideas and insight from them and they hold knowledgeable backgrounds in the many forms of dance genres. It’s beneficial to gather information based on judgement in order to progress a dance routine to its fullest potential.

~Julia Brewer

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Bettering Yourself

“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.”

-Miklail Baryshnikov

In a previous blog post I gave insight on how a dancer is their own worst critic. With this being the case, the main focus of a dancer is to learn, grow and create new and better pieces, as time and age conquer. It becomes less important to beat out the opponents in a competition, because the satisfaction of bettering your own dancing ability and being better than the last performance you gave is much more rewarding. In my opinion the improvement of a dancer is most significant when they feel they have reached a greater potential, with more confidence and understanding than the time before. Improvement should be about bettering yourself, not comparing yourself to other dancers.

To better yourself as a dancer consider the focus of your own development as the most important effort. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, but yourself. With that, take the time to polish you weaknesses and develop them into strengths. This will better yourself as a dancer, as you are using your time to focus on yourself over anyone else.

The feeling you receive when you have accomplished something you once never thought possible is something that comes along with the encouragement of bettering yourself as a dancer. You feel you have reached the next milestone to be your greatest potential. You should start feeling better and better about yourself, before and after taking the stage. It’s shouldn’t even be the feeling of winning over your peers that makes you feel this way, but the joy of knowing you are better than you ever have been before. It’s such a rewarding pleasure to think about how far you are headed in the right direction, with respects to a dancing career. It improves confidence, and understanding of dance that only furthers a dancer for the better.

Every dancer is unique, and has their own style that makes them stand out. Dancers should be bettering those unique features, instead of attempting to compare their own stylistic qualities to another dancers, whose may be completely different. The improvement will come to a dancer, when they find how to improve their own style.

Dancing is about self-improvement. Bettering yourself to new heights, that make you feel more confident and improved. Always remember to take your own dancing and grow, learn and create from that. It’s about bettering yourself, not comparing yourself to be better than everyone around you. It will come faster if you use the motivation of bettering yourself, than trying to be better than every other single dancer. If you are growing, learning and improving yourself to your new best, that’s what counts. Bettering yourself is so vital and should be strived by every dancer, every day.

~Julia Brewer

Taking Corrections

“Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.”

-Martha Graham

When taking corrections it is important to always keep your cool. From experience and in human nature, we don't like when others pick out all of our negative flaws. At times it can be frustrating to learn you have made a habit to a correction you are now trying to overcome. Taking corrections is a stressful task, but one that has to be accomplished for team and self-improvement. Approaching correction taking is either going to tear you down to your breaking point, or leave you feeling more confident in knowing the correct sequence and execution of the dance.

As a beginning note in correction taking, try having an open mind and keeping your cool under the stressful networking of it all. It can be long, tedious and repetitive, but in the end it's about fixing what is wrong in the routine and perfecting it to its best, so that there are high impressions of it when it reaches an audience. You may feel like breaking down, but if you keep your cool and stay open minded, I can only hope that it will leave you feeling more confident in the dance and with yourself as a dancer. This can be achieved by being courteous to the correctors, motivating yourself and taking breaks to calm yourself down, if feeling completely overwhelmed.   

Having someone or a group of someone's looking over your every move, telling you all the things you are doing wrong is like a stab to your confidence in every bit. I challenge you to take it in slowly and focus on the progress you want in order to succeed. It becomes a frustration to learn what you have been doing all along is completely wrong, and needs a total renovation. It's difficult to break a habit, but with the help of a positive outlook, confidence in yourself and an understanding corrector you should find yourself correcting moves accordingly.

Yes, getting an outstanding amount of critiques is hard on a dancer, it can leave you feeling hopeless, stressed and not good enough. I want to stress that that’s not how the critiques should be making you feel. If someone is willing to take the time to give you a critique, they are giving you their attention, and they want you to be successful. To be honest it is much easier to give a correction if you know it will be applied, so by someone giving you a correction they are telling you that they believe in you, and truly just want to see you take it, and make it better than it was before. They are giving you the correction for your own self-improvement, which may later lead to the improvement of a team, if it's a group dance.

The point to remember is when your peers are giving you corrections, keep a steady ground of focus, they don't want you worked up, they just want you to be doing the moves correctly and fixing them now and instead of finding out later when it's harder to break the habit. They are taking the time to help you become a dancer, so you should show respect and be courteous, even if you disagree or are feeling overwhelmed. It's natural to feel frustrated when others point out your errors, but if you take corrections as a positive over a negative the whole process will feel so much better, and run smoother as well.

~Julia Brewer

H2O

“If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance.”

-Anonymous

Staying hydrated is important in all competitive sports, dance is no different. You need to help cool down the body when it is becoming heated or dry. To stay hydrated you should be drinking lots of water, especially during an intense rehearsal. Drinking water helps relax and fuel muscles, reducing spasms or tensions within them. If the dance studio doesn’t have a drinking fountain, be prepared to have a water bottle, and if refills are needed don’t feel like the bathroom sink isn’t an option for a replenishment. It’s important to drink water when you are dancing, you are sweating and burning off calories. Treat yourself, by giving your body fluids for hydration. It will reduce tiredness and stress on muscles.

~Julia Brewer

 

Pom Foundation

“To dance is to challenge the body which is also the self. To generate an action which has a force of its own and allow the movement to penetrate the inner sensibilities, or to calculate the action and try to tune out--this is difficult, perhaps impossible.”

 -Katherine Litz

Pom is a type of dance that is performed at the high school dance team level, as well as by college dance teams. It is a completely foreign studio genre that is not practiced much or at all, unless the studio is specific to it. Poms combines elements of jazz technique, such as turn, leaps, extensions and jumps, and combines it with hip-hop levels and dynamics. Setting it aside from other dance styles the distinguishing factor of poms is in fact the use of poms during the dance. Poms takes the different jazz, hip-hop, upbeat styles and incorporates them with motion of poms in the hand. It’s a very fast pace, team collaborative, and if properly executed, clean style of dance.

Poms uses hip-hop, jazz and fast tempo music variety in performance. The hip-hop elements dig deeper into level changes such as; going from a high v to a low v, giving a bending of the legs verse a releve, knees to a standing position, or having a jump sequence that ultimately travels to a landing split. These hip-hop assortments give the pom routine a breakdown section, which adds diversity into the overall performance. Jazz features bring the pom, technique options like turns, leaps, extensions and jumps. You need the foundation of jazz for small things too, like pointing the feet, turning out from the hip and engaging the core. Pom has its own style as well, new components are clarified and specified to make the dance look like one, in a collaborative team effort.

Pom in itself has to have a fast tempo base, and watch out for pom technique. Moves are done very quickly and need lots of cleaning to get them precise. Arms are important for hyperextending purposes, as are the placements of wrists, one cracked wrist could be detrimental as it bends the poms the wrong way in the hand. Pom also requires a team collaboration, members have to work together to look like one common union. Dancing as one is important for the overall “look” of a pom routine because everyone is wearing a solid uniform and is meant to look exactly alike, like a uniform. Teams clean pom routines to get this effect, not only to look the same, but to display key small group spotlights. One last note about pom characteristics is the need of crazy, outrageous, dramatic faces. Faces are meant to keep the energy flowing between dancer and audience, also to show excitement and school spirit. They get crazy because the dance is exhausting, but they need to be kept up for performance standards. Faces are crucial for a competitive pom routine.

The most distinctive part of poms is the use of poms in the hands during the whole entire dance. It’s an element that brings color and dimension into the routine. The movement of them is the base grading of how a pom routine is scored. The execution has to be done clean, without sloppy wrists or arms. Breaking is usually a do, to make the movements go by faster. Cleaning the poms to the body is also an important note for making the routine look clean. Finally it is key to remember that you should never under any circumstances let a pom fall from your grasp. Dropping a pom during competition is a deduction to the team and easily avoided by holding them in a correct position.

Pom is a difficult style to master and is typically only performed by high school and college dance teams. It pushes the body to its limits, with the speed and precision it requires. It is forceful and difficult, and not easy to just pick up and compete. It requires a foundation in other dance styles, time to clean and clarify, and a commitment to a new thinking level for a style that is not common to a dancer before any dance team experience.

~Julia