Dance Aid
the problem:
Children need a dance teacher
vital stats:
people impacted:
120people involved:
30why it's important:
Because I want to expand on this activity, making it into my career, I was able to take so much from it and grow personally, learning so much about the dance business.
I meet young inspiring dancers, saw them weekly, and helped them learn. Being able to see, I have the power to influence their lives and to teach them new things is important to me. I now have some of the confidence I need to start my own dance company one day. After the first day of aiding, I wrote down how I felt: nervous and terrified that making some infinitesimal mistake would affect whether or not the dancers looked up to me. I realized that this was silly, over the year, and I gained the confidence needed to teach the class fearlessly.
Also, I got to know how the dance company works. I was able to recognize patterns in the dances that I had never seen before. I got the opportunity to see how to choreograph different kinds of dances. This is a skill that I had never had before. I was lucky to have these years watching the instructor plan the different steps and hear her tips about teaching the different age levels.
I acquired so many new skills. I know way more dance moves and it helped seeing how they are first introduced. I was able to go back to the basics of my dance technique training and even improve upon how I do some of the moves.
The most memorable part of this activity was of course the performance at the end of the year. Watching the young dancers on stage was incredibly inspirational. When I meet them many of them had never taken dance before, but now they were on stage performing their dances from memory for a large audience. In addition to watching their dances on stage, that night, during the finale, I got to walk down the centre of the stage and bow. I also got flowers in recognitions of my work. I would encourage all young people to volunteer, watching the end product of your work is unbelievably breathtaking.
I think that the most important role I played in volunteering was helping one little dancer, Toby. This incident made me feel particularly good about volunteering, as if I was not there to help her, she would not have learned the dance. Adults in her life became frustrated with her not listening and not learning, so she was often getting scolded. Because I was there to help her individually she was able to learn. It broke my heart to see her mother yelling at her every single time she came to pick her up after class, but it was amazing to see her start to learn to listen when people took their time with her. I felt so helpful because I had the time and the moment I saw her on stage I realized how much she has improved over the year.
the plan of action:
Volunteer work with Glen Burnie Recreation Association is not effortless. Each dance class I had to show up 15 minutes before it started dressed to dance. This would sometimes be hard after a long day at school. I needed to be energetic and alert during class. I greeted all of the parents and children when they arrived. After getting the dancers attention, I would lead them through stretches and tell them where to line up at the barre and proceed to lead them through barre work. After that I would turn on their ballet song and help them remember the order of the steps. To accomplish this I of course had to have all of their dances memorized and know how to work the stereo system. After going through the ballet dance a few times, I clamed them down and had them individually bring their tap shoes to me, so I could help them tie. When everyone was ready, I would lead tap exercises to enforce the basics of tap dance. After that, I would start the tap music and help them remember that dance. Then the first class was over and I would start over with the nine ad ten year olds. Their class would run about the same, but they did not need help with such things as tying. They did, however, have a whole different kind of dance, to which they were new: jazz. They needed help with this one the most. Although it was upbeat and fun, they needed help remembering the new techniques. They were used to the ballet way to do certain steps, so when many jazz steps had the same terminology as ballet steps they needed a reminder to do them sharper or not turned out. This is how each class would go. The most difficult part of my volunteer work was the week of the recital. I had to attend every practice, sometimes being there the entire day because one practice would end and another one would start, most dancers only had to attend every other one. I had to change between all of the dances, this year I am in the opening, ballet, tap, jazz, duet, my age three’s ballet class, my age three’s tap dance, my age five’s ballet, and my age five’s tap. For each of those I had to keep the choreography and costumes straight as they were all different. Sometimes I would nearly miss a dance unless I rushed. That week was also the week of finals at my school, so I had little time to do anything beside volunteer and study. The night of the show was especially hectic, as I had the extra responsibility of sitting with an age five and six year old class, entertaining quietly them while they waited for their turn to go on stage, fixing lipstick and costumes. In the end, all of the hard work was entirely worth getting to volunteer with the young dancers.
how you can get involved:
Come to the dance show May 21 at glen burnie high school
project updates:
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