If your dancer is looking to improve in ballet, there is one tried and true solution – practice at home! Most young dancers don’t take enough hours of class per week to get away with not practicing at home and still expect to see results, whether that’s balancing longer in an arabesque or finding that additional rotation in a pirouette.

Competitive dancers typically are very driven and have a keen ability to memorize choreography. Being competitive can be very stressful and overwhelming at times but there are so many amazing things dancers can learn when on a competitive competition team.

Well, Teresa Nelson, a passionate dance mom of a competitive dancer in the US has taken the time to explain the difference between what a competitive dancer and non competitive dancer is!

Competitive dance can be a fun and exciting world, but by nature, it is a competition and therefore a certain amount of readiness is required to enter. In particular, many people consider age to be a good indicator of whether a dancer is ready to enter and many others believe that there is a certain age at which you are required to stop competing altogether.

If your dancer is two, three, four or even five years of age and you attend a dance studio that actively participates in competitive dance, then you might be wondering if you should be encouraging your child to be part of the competitive program.

Legwarmers are a classic dancewear staple in the closet of any dancer. But today there are so many different ones to choose from – especially as people wear them in mainstream fashion! So it can be hard to choose which are best for dance and ballet class.

For many of us, simply thinking of leg warmers might resurrect memories of the 80s, the movie Fame, or any number of dance class moments we experienced personally. Maybe you never experienced the 80s or have no idea what leg warmers are.

In lyrical dance, we combine the best of the worlds of ballet and jazz, sometimes with a little modern thrown in for fun. But with so many styles fusing into one to create lyrical, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly what dancers should focus on when practicing at home. Luckily, there are several easy and fun exercises you can do with your dancer that will help them improve in lyrical dance!

Jazz dance, with its origins in African music and culture, has long been a way to celebrate, communicate and entertain. The history of jazz dance isn’t often taught in the studio setting, but understanding where this commercially successful form of dance comes from, and how it has evolved, is an important part of improving as a jazz dancer.

Hi I’m Karly Wood and like many mothers, I never thought one day I would be a dance mom (Abby Lee Miller definitely scared me off). But now that I’ve arrived, I can’t imagine a better way to spend my spring weekends than at a dance competition, cheering on my dancer. Taking the leap from academy dance to competition was a big step, however and I wasn’t fully financially prepared.