I am beginning to plan a Day of Dance to be held during the summer holidays for my pupils and for any other local dancers that may be inetrested. I will probably hold 2 sessions concurrently one for 8 - 12's and one for 13+. the sessions will probably be an hour to an hour and a half in length and will be designed as taster sessions in different types of dance. As well as Ballet, Tap and Freestyle Jazz which I offer at my school I was thinking of including some Contemporary (a couple of my teachers are experienced in this) and Musical Production. I am contemplating having a theme running through all the sessions.<P>Do any of you have any experience of this type of thing or any ideas for themes that mights work for all those different types. I would grateful of any ideas or experiences.<P>Thanks<P>Joanne

What an interesting idea and project Joanne! And, quite thought provoking. How about exploring how each of those different dance forms is communicated from dancer to audience.<P>"Dance and Communication" - communication can be making visible the sounds of the music, what it means to the dancer, presenting, perhaps, a new view to the audience. <P>Sometimes in my ballet classes I would take a very simple arm movement and have my students explore how this simple movement would be done differently in the various dance forms. Even though they were all ballet students - I wanted them to recognize that all forms of dance have validity. <P>So you could take the approximate same choreography and show how it would differ through the various genres of dance.<P>I was part of something like this, but it was a sports camp for boys. LOL - the ballet was the only dance form presented. The boys were in a summerlong sports camp - each week they were given a taste of a different sport and I was supposed to relate the ballet to each of those sports. The boys were 8-12 and knew absolutely nothing about dance, let alone ballet. <P>Getting their attention was the first problem and I knew I had to do that within the first five minutes of class, or I was lost........was a great project.<P><p>[This message has been edited by Basheva (edited January 27, 2001).]

Thanks for your reply Basheva - that is certainly an interesting idea which I will give more thought to particularly the idea of the arm move being done in different styles - a good exercise to use.<P>Inadvertently I think you have given me another idea that of Dance and Sport - perhaps there may be a way to correlate those in different dance forms.<P>Thanks again and if anyone has any other ideas please let me know.

Joanne, I may know a few people who can help you with ideas. I'll send them this thread.

Hi Joanne! What a great idea. The first thought that comes to my mind is to add a cultural or country theme to your project. I am a Ballet Dancer and also teach dance in the public schools. Whatever the style of movement we are dancing we choose music and props to help us portray a different country or culture. An example would be Spain or Spanish culture which would involve proud movements that can be done to all sorts of Spanish music (classical, popular, adagio or even flaminco). I hope this is helpful. It sounds like a lot of fun!

Thanks everyone for your replies so far - they are certainly giving me food for thought which is what I need to begin with.<P>Thanks <P>Joanne

Joanne, please do tell us what you come up with. I'd be most interested to hear about it.

I am handing a memo out to my staff this week for their input and have mentioned some of the ideas that you guys have suggested - so will wait to see what their input is.<P>Of course I will keep you informed. I want to have a rough format in place by Easter so that I can hand out flyers at the beginning of the summer term to my pupils, so I may not have alot of info for a while - but I will keep you all posted.<P>Once again thanks for the suggestions and if anyone has any more ideas then I would still be grateful to hear about them