Dancers who practice at home have a leg up on dancers who don’t, and luckily, there are ways to make practicing jazz dance fun! From focused exercises to silly games, practicing jazz dance at home does take some effort, but the results will be worth it when your child and their teacher sees their progress.
Dance teachers and dancers are always looking for new music to use in jazz class, both at home and at the dance studio! Sometimes we just need to shake things up a bit and find music that will give our dancers some new inspiration, new rhythms, and new ideas!
Some of the best songs for kids’ jazz dance classes include old favorites, unexpected artists, and of course, clean lyrics and themes!
This list includes just a few of my favorite songs to use for kids’ jazz classes – feel free to go down the rabbit hole of Spotify by following some of these artists and seeking out similar sounds if you like what you hear!
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.
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.
To help your child improve in lyrical dance, you can encourage practicing at home, promote clear storytelling, and encourage creative improvisation and play in dance practice.
Tap dance, with its intricate rhythm patterns and fast footwork, requires a lot of practice! Even the most advanced and professional tap dancers come back to what are called the “rudiments” of tap dance to hone in on the basic skills necessary to execute the flashy steps.
As a dance educator and dancer, I’ve always thought that tap dance is the easiest form of dance to learn at any age. Even if you’re not a tap dancer yourself, you can still help your tap dancing kiddo improve by doing a few simple things at home, in the car, or wherever you happen to feel the need to dance!
Imagine, if you can, bored, blank faced orphans in “It’s a Hard Knock Life” from “Annie”. Or, Donald O’Connor trying to “Make Em’ Laugh” in “Singin’ in the Rain” without his hilarious and skilled facial expressions throughout the show-stopping routine. It would be a pretty bleak world if musical theatre dancers didn’t use acting skills to tell their story. If your child is studying theatre dance, there are a few things you can do to help them level up their acting abilities from home!
In order to be a well-rounded musical theatre dancer, you really have to have a wide variety of training in all aspects of musical theatre – dance, vocals, and acting. While not all young dancers want to be professionals, even dancers who participate in musical theatre classes for fun can benefit from learning the different facets of the art form.