Practice Time is for Pushing Your Limits

When you are rehearsing a performance piece, either on your own or in the studio with your fellow dancers, you want to use that time to explore your limits. Push yourself to do more with each run-through.

Rehearsal time is not a time for ease and comfort. If you can only do three turns without getting dizzy but you need to do six, push yourself to try four or five. Eventually you will be able to do four turns and you can then push yourself to do five or six and so on. If the pace of the routine feels frantic, don’t take it easy and plan on trying to get faster with time. Push yourself each and every time you dance to stay on pace. Trust your strength and balance a little beyond what you believe you are capable of. It is this effort you put in that results in new skills. You will not progress if you only ever do what is comfortable for you.

You should work to push your physical limits, but rehearsal time is also for pushing yourself in all elements of dance including musicality, precision of moves, and understanding the intricate details of footwork and hand movements and the choreography in general. Push yourself in all of these areas and rely on your choreographer to tell you what you need most to fous on.

When you are rehearsing, you should be putting in the effort to build new skills and not worrying about how you look. This is the time you should look like a learner. No one is going to judge you for trying to do more than you’ve previously been able to do, but you will frustrate your instructor and your fellow dancers if you a hold back your effort and energy. Practice time, especially with a group, has to be managed respecting each other’s time and supporting each other’s needs to help elevate everyone.

Rehearsal time is precious. It’s time for learning, time for exploring what you are currently capable of and what you could be capable of. It’s time for making mistakes and trying to do more than you have yet done. If you work to expand your comfort zone in rehearsals, you will find that expanded space fills up with new skills. Be willing to look like a learner in the safe space of the studio each and every time you rehearse there and when you finally take the stage, you will look like a skilled dancer moving with comfort and ease. It is so important to find your comfort zone and step out every time

Don’t be okay with where you are.
Celebrate that accomplishment and quickly move to the next level. That’s the only way to deliver the performance that will move those watching.

For the Love of Dance Moms

We just celebrated Mother’s Day in the U.S. on May 13th, so this week we wanted to use our blog to pay tribute to mothers who support their children in their passion for dance. They’re our first dance partners, rocking us in their arms as infants or twirling with us after we’ve mastered walking. They put us in classes and drive us to practices. They sew our costumes and learn to do stage makeup and hair. They make us practice when we’re lacking discipline. They take hundreds of pictures at our shows and comfort and encourage us to keep trying when things don’t go well. Even as we continue to dance into adulthood, they remain our biggest fans.

We want to offer a special mention to the mothers of our youth dancers: Arti Bhatt, Mona Parikh, Nutan Dixit, Priya Shendge, and Poonam Saini. From keeping track of rehearsals to altering costumes to learning to apply stage makeup and more, they’re as much dance manager as they are mom and we truly appreciate that they go above and beyond to make it possible for our youth dancers to shine.

With gratitude to all mothers for their love and support, we want to share a few personal thoughts about the special roles moms play in our world of dance.

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“From going around to get choreographers in town to take me in their dances to pushing me to dance to my heart’s content, Ma has been a supporter and my biggest fan. She encouraged me to try my hand at choreography when I had an opportunity. To this day she hates missing any of my shows or performances and enjoys them thoroughly.” — Shyam Suchak

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Poonam and Ananya Saini, mother and daughter Aha! dancers

“My daughter Ananya loves dancing and she learned ballet for years. I have always encouraged her to do her best. She quit ballet a few years back so that she could pursue competitive swimming. But seeing me dance with Aha! she always wanted to do so as well. She recently joined Jhankar youth group and she is really enjoying being part of Aha!. Ananya is the reason I got into dance a few years ago when I started to choreograph. I am really grateful that she is always there to support and I do the same. Our favorite quote is below and it says it all how we feel about dance in our lives. ‘Don’t breathe to survive; dance and feel alive.'”

— Poonam Saini

 

 

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“My mom has always loved dance. She was a ballerina as a young woman but had her dreams cut short when she was in a car accident that left her with a broken leg so damaged that her doctors had considered amputation. The accident couldn’t break her spirit though. If you’ve ever watched a musical and thought it was too unrealistic because people don’t just break out in song and dance, you obviously weren’t ever over at my house because that was my mom, every day, making up songs about whatever was happening at the time and dancing through life. I’m delighted to say that she still does that.

I didn’t start studying dance until I was a grown woman, but my mother is still one of my biggest fans. Her eyes light up whenever I talk to her about dance and she is always telling me how overjoyed she is that I inherited her love of dance. I’m so grateful that we can share this.” — Jennifer Szczublewski

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“Some of my most cherished memories are of my daughter and I dancing on stages together and just around the kitchen while making dinner!” — Tiffany Adamski

The following video is Tiffany performing with her daughter, Abby:

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“I’ve been dancing since I was a small child. My mom has always supported my need for dance. And now she helps watch my children, so I can continue to dance and perform.  Thanks mom, you are the best!” — Amy Rodebaugh

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Allison Kodeih’s Mom, Helena, exuberant and enjoying her adventures!

“My mom has always been my biggest cheerleader in dance. From the time I was a little kid she always made sure I had dance in my life. She was responsible for getting me to and from every class, every recital.

As I’ve gotten older and my life and dance have changed, she remains my biggest fan and supporter! When I was raising Fred, she would often take care of him so I could make it to rehearsals.  She’s been to so many of my performances and has even been a student in classes I’m teaching.  We participated in a North African dance intensive together and discovered a new and terrific way to spend time together. My mom has also spent thousands of hours listening to me talk about my dance life and never shows any impatience or boredom.

My mom always demonstrated a love for adventure, and always supported what was important to me! I wouldn’t be the woman I am today, nor would I be the dancer I am today, without my mom always in my corner.” — Allison Kodeih

Allison and her mom dancing together in one of the traditional West African dance classes Allison taught.

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“If it wasn’t for my mom I probably wouldn’t be dancing. She was the one who taught me (and all of my friends) garba. She was the one who first enrolled me in Aha! Dance Classes when I was only three years old and now, eleven years later, dance is still such a big part of my life! She’s the one who helps me get ready for every performance, drives me to class, makes sure my costumes are in perfect condition, and of course, has always been my biggest fan! I remember ever since I first started dancing, you could always count on hearing my mom screaming with joy after every performance and cheering us on throughout. She’s the reason I am who I am today, in dance and in life, and I am so grateful for everything she does! Love you Mom!!!” — Kavita Parikh

Kavita and her mom, Mona, then and now:

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Dance Moms, you’re the best!

 

Tiffany Takes on the World

Tiffany Adamski is a beautiful dancer and a very busy woman. If she ever told me she had nothing going on for more than an hour or two, I’d suspect I was talking to an imposter. When she’s not working, working out, dancing, or supporting her kids in their interests, she’s running races, traveling the world, organizing events, doing charity work, gardening, or crafting. “Crafting” is probably not the right word. Tiffany is a do-it-yourself master. If you show her almost anything and ask her if she can reproduce it, she will find a way. Making things happen seems to be her specialty.

Tiffany’s Family

Tiffany has been obsessed with dance since she was little, but her parents couldn’t afford classes for her. In high school, she joined the color guard, which involved choreography, required poise, and was as close to dance as she could get at the time. Once she was in college and paying for her own classes, she was able to take some modern dance and jazz as electives, but it was her second pregnancy that got her really hooked on dance.

“Riley was rearranging my insides pretty significantly, so I got The Goddess Workout on VHS tape. That’s how I started in belly dance. I thought it looked really fun and cool, and ballet wasn’t really my thing, so I went straight for belly dance and fell in love with it as an art form and started taking classes when I could. I actually spent about twelve years as a professional belly dancer.”

In her years booking gigs as a belly dancer, she performed under her LLC, “Mesmerize Belly Dance.” Her favorite places to perform were resorts in the tropics, but one of her favorite performance memories was from a show she was in with her daughter in Pennsylvania. Abby had started dancing with her mom when she was just three years old and learned to soak up choreography like a sponge. Years later, Abby helped to choreograph the routine they performed at this particular event in Pittsburgh. When Tiffany finished the routine early, she realized she had missed a step near the end. She giggled a little when she told me that Abby had noticed her mistake and given “a look.” I can only imagine it was that look you get from your choreographer when you flub something that had been well rehearsed.

Tiffany has studied belly dance with well-known names like Ava Flemming, Lisa Zahia, and Aziza among others. She would sponsor weekend events to bring in the dancers she wanted to learn from. There would be a series of workshops and a Saturday evening show with a headline artist, and these events would attract attendees from around the country. It was at one of these events, her “Birthday Bash”, that she got her first taste of Indian dance when Lisa Zahia performed a Bollywood/Bhangra fusion number.

“It was amazing, so energetic and uplifting! That’s what started me trying to track down someone in town that would teach Indian dance.”

Aha! was on hiatus at the time, but Tiffany was able to get some personal lessons from Sangeeta Mehta. It wasn’t long after Sangeeta also decided to break from teaching dance that someone tagged Tiffany in a Facebook post about some classes Shyam was offering and she jumped at the opportunity. She’s been dancing with Aha! ever since.

Her work life has been just as busy and successful as her dance life. With a background in education and two masters degrees, Tiffany started out as a high school teacher but quickly found herself frustrated with the focus on mandatory testing and was wanting a better way for her students to learn. She turned around a Toledo area charter school and soon found herself presenting her own curriculum design for a new K-12 school in Dubai. Getting through the red tape in Dubai was difficult and time-consuming, so they put that on the back-burner and she built her first school in Amman, Jordan. That school is still operational today and now has a high school also. By the time Tiffany had moved on to a new project, they were building a similar school in Qatar and had plans for one in Saudi Arabia also.

The American Excellence School under construction in Amman, Jordan

Back home Tiffany built the iLEAD Spring Meadows charter school and was helping to manage that until relatively recently when she felt like she just needed a break from the business of education. Currently, she’s helping her cousin expand and grow her acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine practice, Tamara TCM, while waiting for The Universe to nudge her toward her next project.

I asked her if she had any career goals in mind yet.

“When I grow up, I would love to work on building educational infrastructure in third world countries.”

She also currently sits on the board of The Janet Phleger Foundation which works to grant college scholarships and related support to children who had a parent diagnosed with cancer. They are currently selling beautiful glass butterflies made by the students at the Toledo School for the Arts to raise money for their “Butterflies for Cancer” campaign.

So you can see that I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you she was a busy woman and that she’s very good at getting things done. Tiffany also plays as intensely as she works and has enjoyed quite a bit of world travel. She’s very fond of Iceland, Prague, and almost any beautiful tropical destination, but her favorite location currently is Tamarindo, Costa Rica. She was there earlier this year and felt as if she’d found home.

“It just had such a good, energetic vibe to it. It had lots of yoga studios, lots of vegan restaurants, and it had this kind of surfer/hippie/vegan vibe thing. I totally loved it.”

 

 

When I asked her for the song that would be the big dance number in the movie of her life so far, she named “Yeh Ishq Hai” almost without hesitation.

The Magic of Invested Energy

Everything you do requires an investment of energy on your part. Even sitting still and thinking will burn calories. Dance is no exception. Dance requires a lot of energy and in more than one form. Physical energy is needed to move your body, mental energy to process the music and remember the choreography, and emotional energy to perform and even to motivate yourself to practice. Energy also means being able to strengthen your presence and have control in clarity in your movement, energy through elegance, precision, and grace. We have been afforded the privilege to dance to music that many put energy into creating. As dancers, we have the obligation to do justice to that music.

Energy gets talked about frequently in the dance studio. Dancers are instructed to pull energy up from the ground and direct it out through the top of the head and through every toe and finger, an act that requires effort to visualize the flow and intention to feel it. This not only reminds the dancer to keep the whole body engaged and to follow through with every move, but it also makes a huge difference in the quality of a performance. A dancer who can use the concept of energy to project the dance beyond their actual body will always seem more animated, vital and captivating.

 

The interesting thing about this concept of dance energy is that all the energy anyone needs is there for the taking, but you have to invest the effort to accumulate it. Energy begets energy. Not only do you have to “show up” in every possible way to rehearsals and classes, but you will do far better if you bring good energy with you. Studios and stages are work spaces but also sacred spaces, refuges of creativity, inspiration, and intensely devoted effort. Dancers share these sacred spaces and should take care to mind the kind of energy they bring to these locations. You are encouraged to leave your worries at the door and be fully present in the moment and the work.

When you come to work in these spaces, out of respect for your teachers and your fellow dancers, you should be on time, you should limit distractions as much as possible (phones, children, people stopping in to see you “for just a moment”, …, etc.), you should have the mindset that you are there to receive training and to work to apply all you learn, and you should do your best to leave any negativity at the door. These things all require an investment of mental, physical, and emotional energy, being organized, being focused, being mindful, and being determined to work.

Committing to practice independently between lessons or group rehearsals also requires energy, and it’s often the most difficult energy to muster. Again, you get what you give. You can try to fly by the seat of your pants and just hope to remember as much as possible from one rehearsal to the next, but that will always leave you feeling slightly off balance, a little confused, and several steps behind. It will be obvious you have made no progress since last rehearsal and you will slow the whole group’s progress. If you commit to practicing on your own outside of the studio, investing the same sacred energy you would bring to the studio or stage, you will feel far more grounded, steady, and on pace when you come together to dance with your instructor and fellow dancers, people who are counting on you to do the work required in a group effort.

If you make the effort to be mindful of the energy you invest in dance, you will find that energy has a way of multiplying. You will have it as a resource in performing, but it also manifests in other ways in your life. You will have more confidence, more stability, and better health, among many other benefits. The first step is committing to investing good energy in your dance.