You probably think your dance teacher is the most awesome person in the world. Not only do they seem to have boundless amounts of energy to keep you motivated but they also teach you some super cool skills! However, what you don’t see is the hours of preparation work behind the scenes to make your one hour or so of dance be the highlight of your week. So here’s a sneak-peek at some of the things your dance teacher does when you’re not looking:
- Lesson Planning: As teachers, we have the responsibility to make your dance class loaded with fun, education, skills and fitness and it can take a little while to make sure we tick all those boxes. Now you may think that this would be easy-peasy because it’s dance and dance is fun, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Your teacher wants you to have the best dance experience created for you. So, each class is tailor made with exercises, techniques, challenges, creativity and fun just for you… and the twelve other classes he/she teaches each week.
- Choreography: As much as they would love to be able to make choreography on the spot many dance teachers would much rather have something prepared and don’t forget, your teacher probably teaches more than one class which means a routine for jazz, ballet, hip hop, contemporary and probably tap and lyrical too. They also want you to have an original, fun and challenging dance routine for each class so it’s not quite as easy peasy as they make it out to be. Those moves your teacher gives you are carefully planned, specifically selected and neatly stitched together so you have a fresh routine that’s loaded with fun and challenges.
- Music: You’ll probably notice your teacher always has the coolest playlist for your class and the songs always make you feel happy and excited to dance. That’s because your dance teacher specifically chose those songs for that exact reason. Teachers often spend a good amount of time scrolling through the latest hits and their corresponding lyrics to check that they are clean, positive and fun. Yet again you may think, ‘fun’ and ‘easy’ and you’re right it is, but it can take quite a bit of time to find the ‘perfect’ song for each and every class.
- Demonstrating: Your teacher will always do his/her best to demonstrate as best as they can so you can have a irl (in real life) example of how to do that up down turn in to a hitch kick and layout. They make it look easy but don’t forget that they probably demonstrated a gazillion other things for the gazillion other classes they teach. So they have been dancing from when they started at 3pm until they finish at 7pm (or sometimes as late as 9pm) often stopping and starting more times than a sprint trainer. All this demonstrating takes its toll on the body so you’re dance teacher is more often than not probably just as exhausted as you are at the end of the night.
- Research: Your teachers are always on the lookout for fresh inspiration, teaching tips and, of course, costumes. So they probably spend their lunchtime with their laptop in hand searching the web for any and every dance costume website to find the best costume that they just know everyone will love.
- Family Dinner: this is a myth to many dance teachers as they’re often still at the studio teaching while their family sits at the dinner table. Often dance teachers will just have a banana or a smoothie for dinner while they’re teaching. However this is just one of the little sacrifices your teacher makes for their dance family (ie. you). Yes, we love you more than dinner!
- Love: The thing us dance teachers do most however is care about you; our students. At night before we go to sleep we’re thinking about your solo or group dance and whether or not we should add another section or not or how we can break down a pas de bourree even more so you understand it. We can often be heard at night talking in our sleep saying, ‘Now show me first position, now second position and now third…’ So even when we’re not awake we’re thinking about our students.
The thing is, we love you guys – a lot! We want you to get the best experience out of dance possible. We want to help you achieve your goals so we do everything in our time, energy and power to to help you get there. So next time you see your teacher say a big thank you. It’s a tiny gift that makes us teachers feel loved for all the extra we do for you!
Do you have any thoughts about some of the things your teacher does behind the scenes? Let us know in the comments.
