Dance Class

       I hope everyone had a good weekend / winter break , but now back to blogging. First I decided to recap on my previous blog posts. So far I have talked about what dance is and what it means to me, Items you need for dance ( clothing,shoes, dance bag, etc), where to start with it all, and the style of dance called jazz. Today I'm going to talk about what happens in a dance class. If you have never taken a dance class this may be interesting or if you have taken a dance class, you can relate. 

        

        Well in any dance class the first thing to do is warm up. Before doing anything in dance you have to warm up your body, that way you don't pull a muscle or injure yourself while dancing. Warming up goes with all sports as well. With dance you work on your flexibility, strength and technique. Depending on the class you take or level of difficulty you are at, warm ups are different. Certain classes are different as well. For classes like jazz,lyrical  and contemporary you have to focus on stretching really well. As a dancer you use almost every muscle in your body and it is important to build muscles and strengthen them. These warm ups consist of many different types of stretching, ab work out ,push ups , working on technique , building up more strength and many other things. 

        After warm up in a dance class we go across the floor. Now reading that if you are not a dancer ,you may be a little confused. The teacher of your dance class will give you a progression to do  and go across the room, one ,two or three people at a time or more( depending how big the class is). After that some classes learn a combination. A combination is a series of dance steps put together. You would learn them and then dance to the music for the combination. Music is the key to dancing but I will get into that in another post. So that is what happens during a general dance class. I got this from my experience of dance classes, but other studios may do it much differently. How does your dance class go? 

   

         There are also warm ups for tap. Tap is when a person wears shoes that make noise by rhythmic tapping of the heels and toes of the shoe. For tap you mainly warm up your feet since that is what you mostly use in this type of dance. For ballet you also stretch a lot and focus on technique and the placement of your body ( legs, feet , shoulder, stomach, arms etc). For ballet you warm up at a ballet bar and then go across the floor and do specific ballet combinations. 

         For a vague description / summary of how dance classes go : warm up, go across the floor, learn a combination or a dance piece that your class will perform. There are many ways for a dance class to go so this is probably one of many ways. Don't forget to stay hydrated through all the dancing!! Have fun in class!