Session Two Day Eleven (TR)

Class One Jazz (Younger):
We had a fun day today! I decided to try and do the isolations seated, for both classes, to try and help them distinguish movement of their hips and their ribs. It worked pretty well! It is a lot harder to use your hips to move your body when you have both sitz bones on the ground, and they looked good! I think it will still be a while before I can have them move just their ribs while standing, but I think this is good progress, and a good solution to the problem.
We still worked on the usual things; pirouettes, kicks, leaps, chaines, side leaps, and normal leaps, but I began to combine things together. I had her do 8 counts of kicks and then an 8 count pirouette (the music was kind of slow) and it worked pretty well! She got mixed up about which foot to use when starting the pirouettes, but I think that was more me confusing her as I tried to mirror her (I may have done it backwards the first few times). I think with practice we'll be able to get them down really well!
The stag leaps are coming along pretty well too! She gets mixed up with which foot should leap, but they're getting better. I had her practice a high chaine and a low chaine with out the leap before we started the stags, and that seemed to help. She still bounces between each step, which throws off her momentum, but that'll come with more practice.

Class One Jazz (Older):
This class went well too! The girls are getting a little more rowdy, and want to play tag through all the exercises, but they are doing well. We did pirouettes, kicks, kick and pirouette combination, side leaps, leaps, chaines, and I began to teach them how to do a floor roll. We started by doing one chaine and then tucked the back leg to allow us to do a bum roll so we could come back to standing and turn under ourselves. It was pretty rough, but I think they'll get it with practice. I am hoping we can do chaines into a bum roll into two chasses and a side leap, but it'll probably be a few weeks before we attempt that. We made it farther in the hip hop routine, and they are doing well. They understand the counts pretty well, (even if their counting with the music still needs a little work). They all take corrections really well and are a delight to work with.

Session Two Day Seven (TR)

Class One Jazz (Younger):
This class went really well! My one dancer is progressing quite well and I think I'm going to start her on some harder things. We did leaps, kicks, pirouettes, chaines, and leaps, and I think she could do stag leaps as well. She is doing better with the hip hop routine and told me that she has been practicing it. She is doing really well, I'm very excited to get to continue to work with her!

There was another applicant today, and she did really well! She came at four and stayed until partway through the second class. She had a good aerobic warm up, and got along well with the students. It was very fun to see them interact with a new teacher, and it was nice to have someone there to help give corrections and keep the class going.

Class Two Jazz (Older):
This class went well today too! We worked on pirouettes, kicks, leaps, chaines and began learning side leaps today. I've had them do 8 counts of kicks and 8 counts of free dancing, and am trying to work them up to counting on their own. It's kind of fun, and I think this will be an excellent way to teach them how to count music and do each movement on the assigned count. They are doing really well with their hip hop dance, and are all very excited to learn the whole thing!

We had a talk today about failure. Some of the dancers seemed a little frustrated about their progress, and so I decided that it was time for a talk. I told them a story about when I was learning to ice skate from a professional ice skater, and she said that if we weren't falling, we weren't learning. We then talked about what this means in dance. I told them that it doesn't matter how many times we don't get it quite right as long as we keep trying. They took it a little bit literally, (there was a lot of talk about falling when we dance) but I think it helped. The rest of the class seemed to go smoother, and they all seemed determined to keep trying to progress.