I was talking to a friend of mind last week about her
granddaughter (age 7) who takes dance (in another state). She loves dance and has been
dancing for 3 or 4 years. Yesterday her grandmother told me that she didn’t
want to go to dance this week. When asked why, she told her grandmother that
she was worried about messing up the show dance. Apparently they had started
the recital dance and the teacher had TOLD them it was their RECITAL dance and
right away this little perfectionist started worrying about making a mistake on
the stage. They started something new and she probably didn’t feel
like she had learned the first step perfectly. I never told my young students “This
is your RECITAL DANCE" or today we are starting "OUR NEW RECITAL DANCE.” Oh, boy, those little perfectionist start to
worry right off the bat. It really is better not to talk about the show, the
costumes, anything about the recital at all until much later in the year and
closer to the show date. They will peak
in enthusiasm and in the quality of the preparedness too early and start on the
down slope before the show arrives. This
goes for showing them a picture of the costume. You will have lots of
excitement at first but 4 months later it is old news and then it falls on your
shoulders to keep that excitement and newness alive for 4 months and that is
hard to do with little kids that don’t have that much conception of time.
More about winter Blaaas next post.
And remember: There's no Crying in Dancing School
No comments:
Post a Comment