Dance Class Observation

Words: 1122
Pages: 5

The rehearsal class that I attended was Choreography II and the technique class was Beginning Social Dance (Dance 46A). It was the first time that I had ever observed a dance class. Doing these observations was a great learning experience, and I enjoyed it. The two dance classes were different from each other in many ways. In this paper, I have contrasted the two classes that I attended. Before attending these classes, I did not know the difference between the two. For both of the classes, I thought that the professor would teach the students all the steps, and the students would follow him. However, what really happened in the rehearsal class was that the professor had given the students an idea and music to prepare a dance on and the students …show more content…
The day I visited, the professor was going to teach Tango dance. At the beginning of the class, he gave a brief introduction about Tango. He mentioned the names of the steps involved and how Tango has evolved. He showed a video to the students so that they got an idea of the dance. Then, he started teaching them the steps. He used counts to teach them. He even mentioned some history related to some steps. For example, when he was telling them about the roses that the male dancers have in their mouths while dancing, he told them the story behind it. He was very specific with the names of the steps. And concentrated on the movement of each body part. As he taught each step, he told the students about the position of the legs and hands, the distance between the legs relative to the shoulders. He made them practice each step well after teaching a particular step. He demonstrated how a particular step is done with the help of his assistant. He was very particular about where the body parts are positioned and where the eyes look. There were these steps in which the male dancers were supposed to move toward the female dancers and the female dancers had to move withdraw themselves simultaneously. So, he told the students the story behind why his is done. The man is trying to kiss the girl and the girl moves back to not let him kiss. He also told the girls how their hips should move and where the toe should point. First, he made them practice the individual steps without music and later with music. And, at the end of the class he played the music and they had to dance to it. He put some twists after teaching them the steps so that they could dance in any condition and with any partner. He put some music and started saying the names of different steps in the tone of the music and the students were supposed to perform that step only. For example, when he said “Tango Rocks”, they had to perform that