TEACHING TIPS – The Game
By Kashani of Mas Uda Dancers
Almost immediately after iShimmy.com went live, I got an e-mail from a new teacher – here is what she said --
“First and foremost I would like to thank-you for the wonderful article I read in "ishimmy" about games to play at class. I am a beginner teacher and think this is a wonderful idea. Do you have any other games to share? Thanks in advance,……”
So, I told her I would talk about more games. My last article did just that, giving a game that can be played to allow dancers to focus on specific body areas for their dance.
My ‘game’ for this issue is one that you would normally use in a group that has danced together for some time and all know a fair number of choreographed dances.
As usual, I have my handy dandy index cards – at least one per student. They draw a card ‘blindly’ and on the other side of the card is the name of a choreographed number that they know – if it happens that they don’t know the dance on the card, then they draw another card until they get one that they know.
Once everyone has their cards, I ask someone to give me a number between 1 and 24. 24 is the number of CDs I usually have with me. If they say “10”, then I pull the 10th CD out of my case and check to see how many tracks there are. Then I ask someone to give me a number in the range for the number of tracks on the CD. This is all so that I have NO part in PICKING the music – it is totally random!
I play the track that was chosen and they dance the steps and step combinations from the choreography that they had on their index card. They can change the tempo of the steps if needed and they don’t need to dance them in the same order as they are in the ‘real’ choreography. I find this encourages them to use steps and combos they already know to different music. They are usually quite surprised at how well this can work. This is a great technique for allowing somewhat new dancers to improvise. They realize that they actually do know enough to ‘wing it’.
If you have any questions or comments you can contact me via www.mas-uda.com and put Kashani’s Korner in the subject line. I do ask you to please not add my e-mail to any distributions lists. If you’re not e-mail accessible, please send any comments or questions to me at: Kashani, c/o J. Berube, 5840 Stellar Lane SE, Lacey, WA 98513-4758. Let me know if you have any questions. Until next time, happy dancing and have some fun teaching and learning!
