An inspirational thought

Miss Krista Soleski - teacher at both the Edmonton School of Ballet and Vimy Dance saw this and wanted to remind you about the important message it shares!

How to Prepare for Your Ballet Exams

Miss Carmelle McKinlay, teacher at Vimy Dance, thought that this article would be of great help for all of you who have RAD exams coming up in the next month or so!  It also applies to upcoming tap exams, Jr., Ballet Progressions, and Cecchetti exams too!  Good luck with your preparations and your exams!  Ballet Blab - a blog for ballet teachers and dancers has many other great articles you might like to read!

How to Prepare for Your Ballet Exam

January 30, 2015 by Susie from Ballet Blab

Dancer: Emily Whittome
Photo: Alexis McKeown Photography

I remember my first ballet exam. I ran into the studio, started Pliés and my legs where shaking so much from nerves I was sure I’d fail. The nerves finally calmed down and I did fine on my exam in the end. Since becoming a teacher, I’ve put my own students through for their yearly ballet examinations for over two decades now and over time, have discovered a few practical steps that I hope will help you perform your best on exam day.  Exams should be an exciting and satisfying (not terrifying) experience if you’re fully prepared for the level of exam you are taking.  The feedback you receive from your Examiner helps you discover your personal strengths and weaknesses within your dancing.  

To read more click here!

Pursuing Dance After Graduation

Pursuing Dance After Graduation – by Stephanie Lilley

Students and studio owners often ask me what dancers should do if they want to pursue the art after high school.  There are some great options available but the most important message I try to deliver is that you are responsible for creating your own opportunities.  This blog entry will focus on my dance career thus far and how I have been able to survive as a dancer in Edmonton.  Although not exhaustive, the five main options to dancers after high school are:

·         further dance training,

·         pre professional and professional company work,

·         teacher training or teaching,

·         post secondary dance and performing arts programs, and

·         cruise ship contracts and industry work.

It is important to note that these are not mutually exclusive options. There are also many complimentary activities such as teaching fitness or yoga and performing in other disciplines. After training at a competitive studio in Edmonton for my teenage years, I switched to a more technically focused studio after I graduated (100 years ago…).  I continued to train and to teach as I studied General Arts at the University of Alberta. When I was 19, I was offered a cruise ship contract which was to last 9 months and travel the Caribbean. I obtained this contract through video audition but it is very important for dancers to attend live auditions as well. I took a break from university to pursue this opportunity and also received my group fitness teaching certification while abroad.

Upon returning home (and changing majors and faculties), I continued my studies while still training and teaching.  I discovered the dance group on university campus and supplemented my training by taking Orchesis classes.  Also, around this time, I got serious about cross training and also took up running and yoga.  These proved to be hugely helpful for my dancing.  I found that the more classes and workshops I could take with different teachers and styles, the richer my dance education was. 

Through Orchesis, I met one of my dance mentors, Laura Krewski. Not only did she get me involved with teaching at the university but she also invited me to work on a project with her company, Freefall.  This was my first company experience and I was thrilled to be dancing modern jazz under such a strong role model.  The project was short termed but it wet my appetite for further company experience.  As I grew as a performer, I began to take on more roles dancing in fashion shows, fundraisers, conventions and the like.  These industry shows were project based but often led to valuable networking and ultimately further projects. I found that my personal interactions with directors and employers were as critical to my success as my dancing. Like most dancers in Edmonton, I have always been self managed and not used an agent.  This means I have had to sell myself and be own ambassador.  Many very talented dancers have not succeeded because they have ignored the business side of their careers.

 When I was 22, I decided to take a second cruise ship contract.  I negotiated with my professors at university and was able to finish 2 courses by correspondence while abroad.  The cruise ship world is not for everyone.  I was very homesick (the downside to falling in love) and was not interested in the party lifestyle aboard the ship.  I ended my contract early and came home to start the 6^th (and final!!!) year of my undergraduate degree.  I continued to train, teach and perform in industry shows while going to school.

When I was 25, I started my master’s degree in business and got engaged, all the while I kept dancing! Once I got married, I was starting to look for different performance opportunities in Edmonton and because of my husband’s Ukrainian background, I became interested in the Ukrainian Shumka Dancers. Having never danced or trained in the genre before, I relied heavily on my previous ballet training and was invited to join the artistic and management teams as well.  Shumka provided me with such a fruitful experience.  I toured across Canada and China, learnt a new genre of dance, gained invaluable directing experience, and honoured a family tradition.  I was fortunate enough to perform roughly 200 times over 5 years with Shumka. At the same time I started with Shumka, I also danced with Citie Ballet.  Although a wonderful experience, I was spread too thinly and did not return for a second season.  

My true passion is in contemporary, modern and jazz dance and although Shumka offered many performance opportunities, I was not able to connect to Ukrainian dance the way I was with the aforementioned genres.  The highlight of my dance career has been running my own contemporary dance company.  I started Viva Dance Company in 2012 so that I could finally put a name to all of the freelance and industry jobs I was performing in.  I recruited the most talented and dedicated dancers I knew and dove in head first.  We have performed in over 100 shows including Fringe festivals across Canada and in Orlando, Florida. We are the resident dance company for Western Canada Fashion Week in Edmonton.  We have performed at many fundraisers, corporate events, festivals (Nextfest, Feats Fest, Skirt Afire Festival, Kaleido Festival, Festival Hatzafon, etc.), industry shows and open houses.  I was the dance coordinator and hired Viva to dance in this season’s Singing Christmas Tree.  All this and I simultaneously grew 1½ babies (I am currently 15 weeks pregnant).  

Although unorthodox, a professional dance career in Edmonton is possible. It is not true that you have to stop dancing after high school.  It is not true that you have to stop dancing when you get married. And, it is not true that you have to stop dancing once you start a family.  My most heartfelt advice to my beloved students at Vimy is

• ·        take as many classes from as many different teachers as you can,
• ·         remain humble and receptive,
• ·         go to as many auditions as you can,
• ·         always dance hard, you never know who is watching,
• ·         give attention to the soft skills around managing your career, and
• ·         most importantly: CREATE YOUR OWN OPPORTUNITIES!

Strategies for Remembering Choreography - Making it Stick

Jayme Kurach, teacher at Vimy Dance and Co-director of the Edmonton Contemporary Dancers wrote this and found an article that she thought might help out all of our dancers!

After a long, lazy break my classes suffered from not being able to remember their dances.  I thought offering some strategies, outside of relying on technology (such as videotaping with our phones or cameras), for the dancers for remembering choreography would be almost too relevant.  I think the key to this article is that everyone learns differently and will require different strategies to remember choreography.  Also, an important note is that these strategies will need to be practiced ... For as long as I can remember, Tina (Jayme is referring to our director Tina Covlin-Dewart) always took the time out of my solo rehearsal to have me write it down in my own words. Between this rehearsal and the next, using my notes, any obvious musical cues that may have been identified and the small amount of muscle memory I may have attained from rehearsal, I was able to piece the choreography back together. And by next solo rehearsal we could continue with new choreography, and then, the entire process repeated itself.

~ Jayme Kurach 

Please check out the following article from the online magazine - Dance Spirit.

Making It Stick

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Julie Diana

Joffrey Ballet dancer Jeraldine Mendoza was thrilled to be cast as Juliet in Krzysztof Pastor’s Romeo and Juliet—but her excitement dimmed after the first few rehearsals. She had trouble wrapping her head around the complex choreography, especially since its vocabulary was more contemporary than classical. “They were teaching it so quickly that I couldn’t pick it up,” she says. “I freaked out!”
Learning and retaining choreography is one of a dancer’s greatest challenges. How can you improve your choreographic memory? DS (Dance Spirit) talked to the pros about their strategies—and about why absorbing choreography is so difficult in the first place.

Click on this link to read more:  http://www.dancespirit.com/your-body/mind/making-stick/

Video auditions for summer intensives

Many senior dancers take the opportunity to travel and train at different studios across Canada and the U.S. during the summer.  This allows students to explore different styles and different teachers, be more independent (perhaps spending several weeks away from home for the first time), and learn more about opportunities for dance outside Edmonton for when it is time for them to move on.

For many schools, their summer intensive is by audition only.  Occasionally it is possible to audition in the city if the school you want to audition for has an audition tour that comes here.  However, if you had a conflict and couldn't attend their audition, or they aren't auditioning in Edmonton, you may have to find a different way to tryout.  You could travel to another city, perhaps, or you could send in a video. 

Janet Hagisavas, senior teacher and director of the teacher training program at ESB and Vimy Dance has found this great article about how to create a better audition video.

Originally posted on the Dance Teacher online magazine, it has many pieces of advice to help you when creating an audition video.  Remember, many teachers on staff at ESB and Vimy Dance have had experience with this and would love to help you - you just need to ask!

10 Minutes to Impress

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Ashley Rivers

 

A summer intensive director sits bleary-eyed in front of a monitor for the fourth hour straight, viewing videos of one eager applicant after another. A few submissions naturally rise to the top, while most fade into the parade. “When you watch 100 videos a year, you get pretty smart about what you’re looking for,” says Shelly Power, director of Houston Ballet’s Ben Stevenson Academy.
To help ensure that your students’ videos stand out, DT asked for advice from Power, The Juilliard School, Patrick Armand of San Francisco Ballet School and Oregon-based dance teacher and videographer Les Watanabe.

To read more, go to Dance Teacher Magazine by clicking here.
 

To Clean or Not to Clean….

Nancy Hamilton, senior teacher for Vimy Dance and Co-Director of the Edmonton Festival Ballet has written this great piece regarding the preparation of choreography for performance.  

  

To Clean or Not to Clean….

It is with a certain amount of trepidation that I announce a few months into each year, “It is time to start cleaning this piece.”  This announcement is usually followed by a few groans, sighs or a stunned silence in the studio if I am working with the younger dancers.  The senior dancers know what a necessary evil this is, and while the younger dancers are unsure, this announcement certainly does not sound like something that will be fun. The cleaning process in any piece is essential however, and onstage it is what separates the good from the bad and the ugly.  

Preparing any dance piece for stage involves a series of steps; learning choreography, cleaning, repetition, and polish. 

First, dancers must learn the work and memorize the steps.  This step gets easier with more experience and training, and takes less and less time as dancers advance in level. Unlike technique classes, rehearsals run with the assumption that the dancer already knows how to do the steps, and now is responsible for learning them in new sequences and patterns.   

Once the choreography is learned, a series of cleaning rehearsals will pull the dance apart count by count and establish where the head, eye line, arms, legs, feet etc. are for everyone on stage.   

Once these motor patterns are established correctly, (through guided practice of the movement) the dancers are ready to move forward to repetition. The mistake often made in preparing a piece for stage comes from reversing the second and third step of this series, and doing too much repetition without cleaning first.  In my experience, clean dances do not evolve from just running a dance over and over.  The pitfall in that approach is that each dancer may be practicing bad habits and technique, and committing those flawed motor patterns to memory.  This will inevitably lead to performance without true unity and cohesiveness.   

Repetition following a series of cleaning rehearsals will be most beneficial to the piece as the dancers will have the correct steps and techniques committed to muscle memory, and will be able to go on stage without conscious thought of the choreography and better able to focus on performance.

Once the piece is set, cleaned and rehearsed repeatedly, the final steps are taken to polish the piece with small adjustments to spacing, performance and quality of movement.  If the cleaning process is skipped, or done too late, the foundation of the piece will never be as strong and the final step of polishing would be, in the words of my husband Steve, “like putting lipstick on a pig.”  It will not cover the fact that the dancers are not together.  

So get ready ladies and gentlemen, it’s a New Year and it’s time to clean!

~ Nancy Hamilton