Behind the Scenes of a Dancing School

While I'm sure many Syracuse students spent their spring break on a warm and sunny beach somewhere down south (you're lucky if you were one of those students), I had the pleasure to spend the week back home in New Hampshire. While I was home, I did plenty of visiting and one of the places I visited was my old dance school. My dance school was practically my second home for 13 years. I had the same dance instructor, danced with the same people and formed a "dancing family" with everyone involved in the school. So when I returned to visit, I was welcomed in with hugs and an invitation to watch my former dance instructor finish choreographing routines and teach them to the dancers for this year's dance recital.
It was really interesting to watch the two classes that I had dropped in to see. One was a tap class and the other was a class for kickline, both of which I participated in before I left for school so I was familiar with the style and instruction. Dancing is something that many people don't have the chance or the option to see it as a work-in-progress. It's not common for the public to come into a dance studio just to see a group rehearse, at least it's not common in my experience with it. The dancers learn and perform the choreography and the audience sees the final performance, the outcome of many months of rehearsing but the audience has no experience with the rehearsal process. However, I got the rare opportunity to watch a rehearsal.
As an outsider watching a dance being choreographed and taught, I learned a lot about dancing and how a dance needs to come together. After 13 years of being told to sharpen my movements, flap instead of shuffle, be a count faster or slower, position my arms better, spot...the list goes on and on, I've finally seen just how important those notes and remarks are. As a dancer, I listened to the advice and criticism, but didn't focus as much on it as I could have. I improved whenever I was scolded for something, but I didn't think about it too much and would often repeat my mistakes. After watching the dancers rehearse and noticing the sloppiness of uneven arms, moves being off-count, laziness of steps where dancers were walking instead of shuffling or clamping or sashaying, I realized just how important it is to correct the mistakes and really focus on the timing and movements. Every move that is made is important and needs to be treated that way. Every bit of advice and criticism from the instructor also needs to be respected, listened to and followed. If the focus on the movements is ignored, and the instruction is ignored, the dance will never come together and will feel just as sloppy as it looks.
In two months, I will return home to see the final product of the sloppy rehearsal I witnessed. Knowing my studio, I know it will look great when it's finally performed but I never noticed just how much patience and hard work is required to get the dance ready to be performed in front of an audience. I almost learned as much by watching the rehearsal as I did when I was the one rehearsing.