DANZ QUARTERLY Issue No 13 – October, November, December 2008

Conditioning intervention to prepare young dancers for better performance

Dance teacher Bronwyn Stiles approached dance performance enhancement specialist Tania Huddart to assist her students. She wanted to see if Tania could give these recreational students “ … a better understanding of posture and how to strengthen their bodies so they are able to carry posture through all their work”.

Tania’s work approach assumes that when we dance, our minds and bodies act together to create, perceive and perform movements. When we dance we are fully involved physically and mentally. Children, in particular, find this difficult because they need to be able to balance, have adequate strength and flexibility as well as stay concentrated on the meaning they want their movements to convey. Learning to dance is challenging, and students need the right environment in order to take risks. This is even more effective if they understand how their bodies work to produce the movements they are attempting

When learning to use their bodies effectively, the students are able to explore and produce movement that is relevant to what they are doing in class. This exploration through dance conditioning complements motor skill acquisition, and promotes expression and non-verbal communication. This creates a wonderful arena for teachers and students to interact in an enthusiastic and positive way, and this supportive participation in dance promotes self-discovery and builds self-esteem.

Tania brings a lot of variety to the class in order to reawaken students’ involvement and assists them to concentrate while providing motivation to learn. By working towards small goals, Tania helps the students to build up ownership of their movement exploration - she has found that spending too much time on one task is not satisfying to them.

The biggest benefit of having a specialist like Tania work with students is that it allows dancers time to establish good muscular activations for the more sophisticated dance movements that dance teachers present to students. Tania works towards creating an environment where students are motivated by internal drives to know, do, accomplish, andcultivate belief in the value of building body awareness and alignment control for dance.

At Bronwyn’s studio, Tania had access to four groups, with an average number of 8 dancers in each group. She worked with each group for five hours over a four-day period. The participants ranged from 10 to 17 years. Each group had a clear focus to work towards, from pointe work preparation and lower leg and ankle strengthening to establishing upper body control for arm actions that spanned classical ballet and contemporary dance techniques. Tania began the sessions with an introduction to the fundamentals of good posture, alignment and core control. The intention was to offer an understandable theoretical basis on which students could build up more detailed exercises to address each group’s focus area. Tania also introduced best practice warm-up and cool down techniques.

Participants reported the biggest benefit of having a specialist like Tania work with them was the time to concentrate on how their bodies worked. It also established good muscular activation for the more sophisticated dance movements that teachers present to students.

Bronwyn Stiles believes that the biggest benefit to her students was:

“… my students have shown a greater awareness of their posture, and better control of their turnout. Having taken the time to find better posture and control in their own bodies they now respond well when reminded while dancing. “

“The students and myself enjoyed taking a fresh look at the nuts and bolts which underline good technique. Tania’s approach, taken over a concentrated period, has given us all a renewed enthusiasm for tackling areas, which had become a bit ho-hum. 

Tania developed a course hand-out detailing the exercises covered during the workshop period so the students had a resource to refer to after she has left.

Tania also led two teacher workshops. Feedback from the teachers involved indicated that they would have liked to have longer workshops with additional content, as they found it to be beneficial for their own understanding as well as their studio development.

Tania is very excited about making a contribution to individual dancers, and being able to work so intensively for outcomes that benefit both students and the teachers.

Return to Contents page of DANZ QUARTERLY No 13 October 2008