Thread: Rating the level of your choreographies for students

After a hiatus from teaching for 18 months, I started with three groups in a local cultural center for students. My former teaching experience was with drop-in classes, so I couldn't create level specific choreographies or create a coherent 16 classes plan.

I can do these things with my current students and I made three choreographies for a student recital in january. The beginners choreography is the right level for the two beginner groups. It contains something they have mastered, somethings they struggle with and options for making it more finished/complicated.

My problem is that I wonder wether the choreography for my intermediate group (1,5 years of bellydance experience, up to 3+ years students) is the right level for the group. They have trouble grasping the choreography, though they also feel challenged and stimulated to work hard. It leads me to the following questions:

-How do you rate the level of your choreographies?
-How do you know wether a choreographie matches the level in your group if you prepare it before the next semester of classes?

I'm wondering how you handle this!

hmmm,
Once students get beyond my basics class I tend to be pretty merciless when it comes to the difficulty of my choreographies. I do everything in my power to help them rise to the occasion though and they do.

There are a few things I know not everybody can do, like splits or spinning for 32 counts or more, so I leave the asking for disaster things like that out.

Here is what has worked for me:

- Putting the choreography on youtube privately for my students to watch and practice with at home (actually makes a rather large positive difference). I encourage them to try it once watching the video, then try it once without.

-Teaching in sections, moving on before total mastery, but then revisiting and rebreaking down with a lot of patience. Spending extra time drilling trouble spots or important moments in the dance.

- Giving individuals homework on a specific short section of the dance asking them to master that 30 seconds section for next week, giving them the specific details I am looking for.

- Being willing to scrap or simplify something that is absolutely not working.

- Prioritizing moments in the dance, which for me translates to making threats like "if you don't nail this one really important accent in the show, I'm going to pretend that you aren't my students!" "If you are going to mess up, mess up the rest, but make sure your veil is in the air on this note!"

- When they nail something or a section looks particularly good, let them know how hot it looks. Remind them that it is hard work, but they are on track and doing well, then they are mentally prepped for the next challenge you are about to give them.

- don't expect perfection, that will never happen, but enjoy the greatness found in nearly perfect.

Having a performance deadline will help a great deal in motivating your students to pull it together.



Obviously, you know your students better than anybody and you know what they are currently capable of, it is really different with every set of students, so you have to make adjustments as necessary. I think if you set the standard just slightly little higher than their current skill set, they will reach for it, feel challenged, enjoy themselves and make you proud.

Hi Shems,
wow, great advice! I'm glad to see that I already do most of those things, albeit unconciously. I taped a practice clip last monday to get them through the christmas holiday and I hope that it will help them retain the choreography better. Is there a specific reason why you put it on private views, besides not wanting prospective clients to see you in practice gear?


While teaching the choreography I sometimes feel like a slavedriver, to me choreography equals hard work for both student and teacher. I also receive positive reactions, but it still makes me wonder if I made this too hard for them.

make sure that if you do dumb a section down, that they dont notice. it's frustrating for them

if the choreo is not for a group performance offering optional layers works as well

i teach them in building blocks (technique, combo's, than the choreo)

i spend a lot of time working with the music, understanding the music, rather than just diving in there with the steps

i dont even always teach the choreo in the right order, we might skip (harder) sections and come back to them as the class progresses.

decide class per class what you really want them to get that week. you cant correct everything at once.

i also have the private youtubes up, but i wait till the end of a session

Originally Posted by artemisia_danst

i dont even always teach the choreo in the right order, we might skip (harder) sections and come back to them as the class progresses.

although i see the logic of this, i think it makes it harder to remember the choreography. with the first (veil) choreo we learned with you, at first, i used to always confuse which bit of music was coming next. i knew what moves went with what bit of music, but didn't know the order of the bits of music within the song. you would skip through the song until the bit of music we were currently working on, i know that's to not waste class time, but it might help if every class you played the song completely from start to finish a couple times, because once i found the song and listened to it and "learned" it, i had a much easier time seeing the global choreography and understanding the overall structure.
not a critic, just a comment for what worked/not so much with me :)

Originally Posted by mekyria

Hi Shems,
Is there a specific reason why you put it on private views, besides not wanting prospective clients to see you in practice gear?

yes, people pay me to teach them and I make these special choreographies for those people who have paid me, I don't want the general public to have access to my choreographies. Also, they don't look that great with me performing them in practice clothes. They are much better when in full costume with all the parts and pieces put together with all the members. So I don't want that footage representing me to the public at large. It is a pain but I consider it necessary.

I've lately taken advantage of the option to put running commentary up on a youtube video also, reiterating counts, pointing out details and stuff like that. I think it is a very useful tool.

we spend the first four classes exploring the music, dividing it into sections and improvising on different parts. That prepped them for working on the choreography, learned them to listen to the music.

They do understand how steps fit into the music and why it's choreographed that way. In the last class, someone asked to remove a step completely, so I asked her to dance the choreography to the music without that step. She then realised that without it, it didn't work.

It's Aziza BTW, from Hossam Ramzy. A beautiful composition by Mohammed Abdul Wahab, with big lines to follow and little accents and details that you can choose to accentuate.

I wanted to use a classic piece of music to let them get in touch with his work.

Originally Posted by shems

-Teaching in sections, moving on before total mastery, but then revisiting and rebreaking down with a lot of patience. Spending extra time drilling trouble spots or important moments in the dance.

- Giving individuals homework on a specific short section of the dance asking them to master that 30 seconds section for next week, giving them the specific details I am looking for.

- Being willing to scrap or simplify something that is absolutely not working.

- Prioritizing moments in the dance, which for me translates to making threats like "if you don't nail this one really important accent in the show, I'm going to pretend that you aren't my students!" "If you are going to mess up, mess up the rest, but make sure your veil is in the air on this note!"

- When they nail something or a section looks particularly good, let them know how hot it looks. Remind them that it is hard work, but they are on track and doing well, then they are mentally prepped for the next challenge you are about to give them.

- don't expect perfection, that will never happen, but enjoy the greatness found in nearly perfect.

Having a performance deadline will help a great deal in motivating your students to pull it together.

Obviously, you know your students better than anybody and you know what they are currently capable of, it is really different with every set of students, so you have to make adjustments as necessary. I think if you set the standard just slightly little higher than their current skill set, they will reach for it, feel challenged, enjoy themselves and make you proud.

Sounds like what I've done.

I've encountered times when the whole blasted thing just wasn't as tight as it should have been at a particular point in classes and rehearsals, so I've had to go as far as threatening to pull the performance. I do this by giving the the students a goal: "we have to be at [x point] in two weeks or we just won't be ready and I can't put you on stage without being ready."

Magically, there was much improvement over the next couple of weeks.

Deborah

hehe, well, usually my goal is not that you learn the choreo itself, but that you learn whatever moves, techniques are in it, but you are right, next time i need to make sure you all have/buy the music/that i send you a link etc, and that will make it easier, less chaotic if i decide to teach something in that structure again (leaving the hard bits for later).

so the whole class gets to really know the piece of music better.

Originally Posted by Kathiya

although i see the logic of this, i think it makes it harder to remember the choreography. with the first (veil) choreo we learned with you, at first, i used to always confuse which bit of music was coming next. i knew what moves went with what bit of music, but didn't know the order of the bits of music within the song. you would skip through the song until the bit of music we were currently working on, i know that's to not waste class time, but it might help if every class you played the song completely from start to finish a couple times, because once i found the song and listened to it and "learned" it, i had a much easier time seeing the global choreography and understanding the overall structure.
not a critic, just a comment for what worked/not so much with me :)

I think any choreography used for teaching should be built around who will be performing it, their strengths and weaknesses, and what you want them to get out of learning this piece. You can have a very simple mechanical piece, but the emotive quality is what you are seeking to enhance, so that becomes the "work." That is definitely NOT something I'd give beginners to tackle.

If you are working on refining a particular aspect of their skills, I'd make that the work. Beginners struggle with gross motor skills and usually "get" this from the center out. So they can move the core well, but their line is off or their framing is odd. That could be the work.

Anyway, I think it's easy to design a choreography for whatever level of student you have if you start from the framework of "what am I trying to teach?" If you have already done that and they aren't responding well, that tells you where YOUR work is. Either the choreography wasn't designed appropriate to their skill level or your break down needs work. Either way, you can salvage this by just noticing where the bogging down is happening and a focusing your attention there. Use that information to make the next one better.

I teach in 4 levels. Each level learns 4 choreographies (or 3 choreographies plus one session of technique).

I have a set of skills I expect the students to master in each level. Dance steps, levels of body awareness, performance skills, folkloric, stylistic and rhythm knowledge, prop skills, posture skills, etc.

So the choreographies are designed to teach a particular set of skills. And the group of Level 2 choreographies taken as a whole, for instance, teach the Level 2 skill set and knowledge base.

I rotate the teaching of the choreographies, so students can enter a new level at the beginning of any session, stay for 4 consecutive sessions, and complete the entire level.

My choreographies are more about learning than performance until you reach the troupe level, but even then I keep adding new material designed to help the students master new skills and information. It just gets harder for me, because some of them have been dancing almost as long as I have!