dance class – Page 4

Student Spotlight: Anya-Jae Brown

January 7, 2013 by 4dancers

This week’s Student Spotlight features Anya-Jae Brown from the School at Steps…

1. Can you tell readers how you became involved with dance?

I first became involved with dance when I was about 6 years old. I had seen the Rockettes perform in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular for the first time and I was absolutely mesmerized by how beautiful they were. After the show, I came out of the theater kicking my legs and swore that one day I would be up on that stage!

2. What do you find you like best about dance class?

My favorite part about dance class is the environment. I am able to work with people who share the same passion for dance that I have. I also enjoy learning from other dancers in my classes. Having the opportunity to watch others dance allows me to learn from them and expand my personal style and skill set.

3. What is the hardest part about dance for you?

The hardest part about dance for me is probably adjusting to corrections. I find this most difficult because I sometimes struggle to forget how to do something after I first learn it a specific way. Therefore, when my teacher gives me a correction, it can take a while before I apply it correctly and master it.

4. What advice would you give to other dancers?

The advice I would give to other dancers is to never give up and always try your hardest. Nothing is impossible if you try.

5. How has dance changed your life?

Dance has given me an outlet to better express my feelings. I have gained confidence in the studio, which allows me to perform better in school and better express myself with friends and family. Dance has also changed my life in the sense that it has given me more to do, so I am always busy.

The School at Steps is a training ground for students, ages 2-18, who are interested in exploring various dance styles, as well as for those students already focused on a particular discipline. The school offers an Academic Year and Summer Program, with classes in ballet, modern, tap, jazz, theater dance, hip hop, and Pilates. Students at the school are also given performance opportunities, and workshops on dance and career-related topics. Beginning with the Young Dancers Program and continuing through the most advanced pre-professional classes, The School at Steps provides children with an opportunity to explore the word of dance, to learn and experiment with technique, and to enrich their appreciation for the various forms of the art.

CD Review: Ragtime For Dance by Charles Matthews

December 19, 2012 by 4dancers

by Catherine L. Tully

This fun CD is a great resource for ballet teachers of all levels. Featuring well-known ragtime tunes such as The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag by the wonderful Scott Joplin, there are 16 tracks in all to choose from. Some are by other composers and are not as well known, but each track here works well for dance class.

Ragtime music has a gloriously upbeat tempo and feel to it, so it’s a wonderful choice if you need to give a class a “boost” or infuse a little energy into a combination that still needs work but is getting a little tired…

Matthews isn’t just any pianist–he has extensive experience working with ballet and contemporary dancers and understands their needs. The tracks here are edited into even phrases of eight so they are easy to use and they are played with attention and verve. It’s always nice to have a CD like this on hand for times when you want to change things up a bit and add some pep. Nothing does that better than some good ragtime!

Ragtime for Dance lends a 20’s feel to the classroom and is a super fun CD. There are a few sample tracks here if you’d like to have a listen.

Student Spotlight: Gabriella Meiterman-Rodriguez

September 24, 2012 by 4dancers

Today we have a student from the University of Maryland with us for the “student spotlight”…

My involvement in dance began when I was an infant. Most parents enroll their children in gymnastics, soccer, football, etc., but I was enrolled in dance! My mother enrolled me into my first ballet class and I have been dancing ever since. I was told that I picked up the movement and was always focused in class. I would come home and practice my tendus, plies, and arms, so from that point on, dance was my primary hobby. It was not until I was a freshman in high school when I realized dance would be my passion to pursue as a career.

2) What do you find you like best about dance class?

My favorite part of dance class, surprisingly enough, is the warm-up. Although it is difficult to start moving around at 9:30 a.m. in a cold studio, I find this part to be where I am most connected and aware. I have always found it fascinating when the body can transform from a stiff, cold structure into a state where it is warm, limber and ready to move and take on the class. This part of class is where I have the most self-awareness for which body parts need more attention and time for stretching. This awareness practices my self-connectivity and really teaches me to listen to my body’s needs every morning. The warm-up is both my favorite part and the most crucial part of class.

3) What is the hardest part about dance for you?

The hardest part with dance for me is being able to keep my facial expressions active throughout the movement. Sometimes I find myself getting so caught up in the moment of a performance that I lose some of the character. My face during performances is my main focus this year every dance class and it is something I am hoping to make stronger so that I can be a well rounded dancer and performer.

4) What advice would you give to other dancers? [Read more…]

Student Spotlight: Murilo Leite

August 30, 2012 by Ashley David

Murilo Leite - Earthfall Dance - Hugo Glendinning — Murilo Leite, Earthfall Dance, Photo by Hugo Glendinning

Here’s another of our “Student Spotlights”…get to know Murilo Leite…

1. Can you tell readers how you became involved with dance?

Dance has been in my life for as long as I can remember but not in the usual sense. I didn’t start ballet when I was 3 years old and go through all the exams in tap and modern. I grew up next door to a dance college in Brazil and even as a kid I used to sneak out of my house to watch the classes because there was something about the atmosphere that enticed me. I’d then go home and teach myself the sequences in secret but it wasn’t until I was 12 or 13 that I attended my first class and really I didn’t start doing it regularly until I was 16 when I co-founded a performing youth company called Re*Flex Dance Co. which is still going today 8 years later!

2. What do you find you like best about dance class?

The hard work. I love a class that challenges my mind and body to the maximum, there’s no better feeling than finally being able to do a sequence that at first seemed impossible but with perseverance and determination the reward is unmatched. Also sweating is the sign of a great class!

3. What is the hardest part about dance for you?

For me the hardest part is also the most productive. I find myself constantly comparing myself to other dancers in the studio, admiring the ease of his grand battement or how beautifully curly her feet are! Naturally there are things others can do that I can’t, I’m quite self critical and always striving to be better so though I find it hard it also pushes me to jump higher, land softer, run faster or move slower… You get the idea.

4. What advice would you give to other dancers?

I always say to dancers who are beginning their training to think hard about what it is they are doing it for. For me, I think you have to love it, no – you have feel more than love for it because it’s tough, it’s full of knock downs, it’s not the best paid job and so on. Saying that, if you love it there’s nothing else that will satisfy you more, it will be exactly the life you always hoped for and none of the bad stuff will come close to taking away from how it fulfills you.

5. How has dance changed your life?

Dance hasn’t changed my life, it has shaped it. It is something I’ve always loved and for many years it was my sole focus, all my energy was being put into dance as my final goal. I feel I am blessed to have had dance in my life because it has always given me a path to follow so that when in other parts of my life or when my friends and family reached that part in growing up that we all go through where we are unsure what the hell we’re doing I could put my efforts further into dance.

Since then I’ve realised that it doesn’t need to be the only thing in my life which I guess could be something else I would use as advice, but I also think this is something one needs to find out for themselves. Yes, to succeed with dance as a career you must put 200% and more but you should never forget that you are a person first, a dancer second. That is something that really opened my eyes to life and the world when the penny finally dropped.

10 Questions With…Allan Greene

June 5, 2012 by 4dancers

Today on 10 Questions With… we have Allan Greene, a pianist that works in the dance world…

We would also like to welcome Allan to our contributing writer staff here at 4dancers. He’ll be writing a new monthly column appropriately titled, “Music Notes”…

1. How did you get started in music?

I started composing on my own when I was eight years old after I tired of copying songs from our third grade songbooks. The next year I began studying the cello at my elementary school, and the next year I began studying piano with the wife of one of my father’s electronic engineer colleagues. Things moved rapidly from there.

The cantor at my family’s synagogue recommended me to a Viennese choir-master who passed me on to an eccentric Juilliard-trained pianist. The intensity of the Juilliard training was too much for me and conflicted with Boy Scouts and after-school basketball. I moved on to a retired violinist / pianist who devoted his Saturdays to me, and presented me in recital several months before my 16^th birthday.

All the while I was composing on my own. At the age of twelve I was composing suites of atonal works, for various chamber music combinations as well as solo piano. My high school choir performed a setting I created of a poem by James Joyce. Stylistically, I was heading out the trajectory blazed by Charles Ives, inventing what I called “stream-of-consciousness music” analogous to Joyce’s literary technique: I created a musical narrative out of musical objets trouvés, using juxtaposition of styles and recognizable snippets to shape the drama. A generation later, due to the invention of sampling synthesizers, personal computers and audio production software, some of my ideas were independently showing up as common compositional tools in film and television scores.

2. What brought you into the dance world?

Accompanying ballet and modern dance classes was a work-study contract gig available at Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) in my freshman year. After a term washing dishes at one of the college’s cafeterias, it was a god-send. I found it easy, delightful to watch and participate in, and, importantly, made being a musician both quotidian and artistic. I’ve never liked having the spotlight trained on me, so this allowed me to participate and observe simultaneously. Accompanying dance became a laboratory for me to study the effect on collaborating artists of all kinds of music and all sorts of harmonies, melodies, rhythms and textures. It still is.

3. Where has your career taken you in terms of playing for dancers? [Read more…]

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