The Session Shuffle & Cashflow Blues

Running a dance business can be a constant hustle from session to session, riding on the fortune and famine of staggered registration income.

Each session money comes flowing in as students sign up at the beginning of your series and then you’re left to budget and manage till the next round of signups.

As classes finish up you bite your nails and wonder will the next session fill up so you can pay for the studio space.

You’ve got the Cashflow Blues.

While this rhythm is inevitable to some extent with any studio or dance business that schedules classes as series, it can be mitigated with a little fruitful planning.

Drop-In Classes

As instructors it’s rewarding to have students work through the progression that series classes offer.  They learn faster, receive consistent guidance, and classes develop a social bond.  It’s also confirmed income, which provides more security for the class.  However, not everyone is able to commit to a full length series.

Running drop-in classes gives students unable to commit to longer series a way to participate, new students a way to test your classes, and adds a little something extra in the budget every week.

Scheduling drop-in classes before a dance or open studio time adds some of the social element back in which helps create a stronger community.

Mini-Workshops

It’s great to bring in big name instructors and host full-on weekend extravaganzas every once in a while.  They also bring outside talent to your local scene, keeping it current with what is going on in the wider world of dance.  But they require a great deal of planning and more outlay in terms of money

However, mini-workshops are a great way to boost your bank account and your community.  Mini-workshops are smaller one-day intensives around a specific topic.  It’s a great way to focus on a topic that wouldn’t necessarily be included in a regular series or wouldn’t be able to fill out a whole series of its own.

Mini-workshops are also exceptionally easy to tailor to specific levels.  If you don’t offer high-level instruction and focus primarily on beginner and intermediate technique, they can be a good place to target the more advanced dancers in your community.  Or vice versa, a mini-workshop can be a way to offer an intensive introductory class to get people started.

Open Studio Time

For those dance studio owners who operate out a single space full time, having an open studio time slot where individuals can use the space for a small fee is a good way to capitalize on the all of that unused studio time.

Depending upon your city, good dance studio space can be hard to come by so offering open studio time where individuals can drop in to use the space is a boon to those working on a choreography or wanting to practice.

It may not be a major money maker but it reinforces your studio as a friendly and encouraging space for your dance community.

Private Lessons

Hopefully you already offer private lessons, but if you don’t you should probably start yesterday.

Private lessons are a boon to your teachers, your studio and your students.  Teachers are able to hone their individual feedback and critique skills while earning a good hourly wage. Students receive valuable one-on-one instruction and get to interact on a more personal level with instructors.  Your studio benefits from the improvement of the students, the teachers, and the use of the space.

Whether your studio rents space to teachers for private lessons, takes a cut of the rate, or offers it free to studio teachers, you’re reinforcing the whole community chain when you include private lessons in your curriculum.

Sell A Product

Whether you keep a supply of dance merchandise on hand, DVDs for sale or offer an online service for students, having a product to sell that doesn’t rely on studio time divorces income from time and teachers.

Developing a product may not be the standard for dancers and dance studios, but it creates another revenue stream for your dance business and offers more valuable content to your community.  Spend time researching the kinds of products your students would be interested in, ask them what they’d want that would improve their dance experience.

Budget

Last but definitely not least, having good financial planning and budgeting will keep your books in the black even with the cashflow blues and session shuffle.

Better Dancer: How to Learn Choreography, Part 3

This is the third in the three part series on how to improve your ability to learn choreography. The first part covered tips on preparation, the second part covered tips for learning in the studio, and this last part will cover tips on how to better recall and refinement of choreography.

Getting It Right

Once you’ve gone through the process of learning a choreography the first time you’re not done. That’s only the beginning.

To be able to better recall choreography and then refine your performance of choreography requires diligence, focus and the right tools for the job.

Have Notes

Having notes, whether in a digital format (video, photo, etc.), personal notation or scary Laban notation, gives you a reference to help guide you through the choreography without having to immediately internalize the whole choreography.

They function as the blueprint upon which you can work through each section individually; they also serve to remind you of particular comments or feedback you received during instruction. Was this section expressive or stoic, intense or reserved and so on.

Learn to Mark

Learning to mark out a choreography is an excellent way to cement audio, visual and spatial cues in your mind.

What is marking?

Marking is also called walking the choreography. The idea is to perform the dance at a fraction of their normal intensity so as to reinforce their placement and relationship of movements and steps to one another.

Marking is a way of alluding to the movement without actually performing it; it’s the physical outlining of the choreography without going into depth.

By marking you can focus on sequencing movements instead of performing the movements.

Use a Video Camera

When practicing the choreography use a video camera to film yourself everytime you run it.

Instead of focusing on a mirror to check your lines while you practice, allow the camera to capture the lines for you and then watch the footage and note places where improvement is needed.

Running specific sections with various emotions or expressiveness allows you to find the appropriate character for your movement in a particular place in the choreography when reviewed on film.

The use of a video camera allows you to take note of where you may be ahead or behind the music, missing a step, creating an unanticipated shape, or moving in an unintended direction.

Filming yourself is a great tool for iterative refinement of a choreography.

Run It In Your Mind

Perhaps one of the best pieces of advice I received when learning a choreography to be performed was to run the whole choreography in my head; three times over back to back.

Visualize yourself going through the routine movement by movement in conjunction with the music (don’t actually listen to the music – it should be part of the visualization).

If you make a mistake or forget something start from the beginning. The goal is to properly perform the choreography non-stop three times through without making a mistake or forgetting a section.

The benefit of this visualization process is that you don’t have to be in the studio to perform it physically. It can be performed sitting on the bus, before you go to sleep, or wherever you have a moment to sit and focus your mind.

You’ll find that visualization combined with actual practice will improve your retention and performance more than with physical practice alone.

Have An Audience

It is exceptionally helpful to have an audience of peers, instructors or mentors to help refine various aspects of a choreography or particular movements.

The outsiders eye is invaluable in approaching the work from a different perspective and notice elements which are out of place or off. Having an open and critical discussion of the performance casts the piece in a new light for the performer, giving the performer a new view on their own movements.

What are your tips for recalling and refining choreography?

5 Non-Promotional Twitters Uses for Dance

Most examples of Twitter uses revolve around promotion for your business; however it’s not the only or necessarily best use for Twitter for your dance event or business.

So, I’m showcasing a few solid examples of how to make Twitter work for your business without being just another advertising space.

Updates via SMS

One of the best examples of Twitter usage was at the Frankie95 dance event in New York City May, 2009.

They leveraged the Twitter mobile features to feed updates via SMS to hundreds of event participants.  They encouraged attendees to sign up for Twitter, follow them and then set up mobile updates via SMS for their tweets.

By doing so they created a way to quickly and effectively reach their attendees with changes to the schedule, last minute updates, and more with minimal cost.

For large conferences, dance events and workshops with fluid schedules this kind of notification system works wonders to keep your attendees in sync with what’s going on.  Whether your party has moved down the hall or the workshop has been pushed back an hour, your attendees will get an SMS notification delivered to them.

SMS is a direct line to your participants and Twitter’s mobile update feature leverage that connection well.

Connecting

One of the most common uses of Twitter is as a networking tool.  There are many dancers and dance studios on Twitter who you may not be aware of in your area.

Whether you are looking for dancers for your company, looking to hire a new instructor or looking to network with out of town studios and instructors for possible joint projects, Twitter is a great place to find and connect with individuals.

Using services like Twellow, which function as directories of Twitter users grouped into categories, you can find dancers, musicians, DJs or organizers throughout the world to connect with, share information, tips and more.

Customer Service & Brand Management

While we all hope we don’t have too many complaints or issues to address, Twitter is a great tool for tracking issues and connecting with the individuals who have problems and addressing them directly.

Having an ear on the Twitter feeds for your brand name, your dance studio, your dance style, etc. allow you to monitor and deal with issues that may crop up with your business – and especially with your website that may get lost in the shuffle of e-mail.

Searching for mentions of your brand name, dance style, dance studio or instructors can give you a pulse on what people are saying about your business and the world of dance.

Sharing Content

Whether you want to share a photo of the latest dance competition highlights, a music track you just discovered or a video of an inspirational dance video; Twitter is another way to deliver this content to your customers.

With a camera in every phone, you can easily snap a picture of a dancer and immediately send it to Twitter through a service like TwitPic.

If you have a Flickr stream you can feed your photos to your Twitter account, so once you’ve got pictures from your most recent recital, show or even rehearsal you can feed them out to your followers automatically.

Many music streaming services like Last.fm, Blip.fm, and Pandora allow you to share the song or channel you are listening to with your Twitter followers with the click of a button; so if you just caught a song that inspires your dancing – share it.

By sharing content of your dancers, your DJs, your inspiration and your studio you create a stronger community connection with your followers.

Dance Mobs

Who doesn’t love a dance mob?

Whether you are organizing a random club bomb where you descend en masse upon a specific club, a flash mob dance event, or a spontaneous dance party, Twitter helps you setup and share the details needed with dancers.

If a favorite DJ or band is playing at a club it’s a quick way to gather your friends to join you.

With the use of other online media, like YouTube or another video platform, you can share a dance to be learned, and then organize the meetup and performance entirely via Twitter.

These kinds of performances, jams and meetups are a great way to spur interest, engagement and media attention.

Virtual Dance Lesson Giveaway

A while ago I conducted an experiment in online dance instruction via Skype; and after some testing and feedback I think I’ve got it down.

I’ll be rolling out a virtual private lesson service so that I can work with people one-on-one or with small groups from anywhere in the coming weeks.

So to launch the virtual service, I’m offering 6 virtual dance lessons to Dance Nomad readers.

What do you mean virtual?

I mean we’re going to use the wonders of the internet and video conferencing to work together online.  Tools like Skype allow us to connect dancers from all over the globe to collaborate, learn and develop skills without having to constantly be in the same place.

I’ll contact the winners directly and we’ll schedule a time together.

How it works:

First… Become a fan of The Dance Nomad on the Facebook page.

Then… Leave a comment on why you think you should get the lesson.

I’ll use Random.org to select 3 of  winners and video it so you know it’s legit.

The other 3 winners will be selected based on their comment.

I’ll contact the winners and we’ll get the ball rolling.

What Else?

I expect that you’ll have the technical things worked out on your side; that means: decent internet connection, dance partner (unless you want to work solo), space to dance, and a web cam setup.

These will be 50 minute sessions.

You have to be a Facebook fan at the time of the drawing to win; so make sure you get on over to the Facebook page and leave a comment.

Drawing is closed. Thanks for all the entries.

An Open Letter to Dance Community Leaders

This is a letter from Kelly C. Porter, she is a dancer, DJ and dance historian in Seattle, WA.  She is the creator of the Voices of the Jazz Era Ballroom Project in which she is collecting the oral history of dancers before they are gone from us.

Greetings Friends, Colleagues and Mentors,

By now some of you may have heard a few bits and pieces about the Voices of the Jazz Era Ballroom Project. Simply put, VJEB is a web-based public oral history initiative devoted to recording and passing on the memory of dance and music in the jazz era through the lives and words of everyday people. Much of what we know about the dances we love has come from performers and celebrities—the “important people”— and yet there is perhaps an even richer story to be told by those who, like my own grandparents and probably many of yours, just went out and danced, listened, lived. This rich social history, the “people’s history,” of dance is sadly slipping away as people with first-hand memories of it grow older and leave us. Certainly nothing could have made that more apparent than the recent passing of Frankie Manning. With that sad event I suddenly realized that if the dances we love survive another 80 or 90 years, we may be the last generation which has the privilege of knowing the people who comprised the first. I have decided to use my background in new media and oral history, along with the considerable support of some amazing scholars helping with my thesis at the University of Washington, to create a new means for us to preserve and share the stories of the jazz era ballroom.

This project supposes something very simple and very big: that a community which spans the globe can come together through the power of technology to preserve the history and stories of its elders. To do that, I need community leaders like you to participate and spread the word about this project. I want you talk, e-mail, blog, tweet, post and write about it to your peers and students wherever you go, because people look up to you. The ask is simple, I want people to talk to their parents, grandparents, neighbors and loved ones who have first-hand memories of dancing and music in the 1920’s-1950’s.

The Voices of the Jazz Era Ballroom website (www.jazzeravoices.org) is a permanent archive where people can upload transcripts, digital video and audio files of interviews as well as images from loved ones who remember the jazz era. The website is also a resource which will walk people through the process of conducting a good interview and uploading content to the standards that will allow the collection to be a durable record for both scholars and the public. Already there are example oral history interviews live on the site which I conducted with my own grandmothers and others close to me, as well as more photos than I ever imagined they had—it was such a joy to listen to these people and sift through their family archives. Norma Miller has thrown her weight behind the project and an interview with her will be up shortly. You can contribute by talking to a relative or friend who remembers music and dance in the jazz era, flipping through their photo albums, making them a priority.

Here is the REALLY IMPORTANT PART: the online archive will open to submissions on March 1st, 2010, and it will close to submissions on July 21st, 2010 . . . that is only about 6 months. Why the short time frame? Because we do not have forever to ask for these stories, and being human we often tend to put things off, not infrequently until it’s too late. I want this project to feel as urgent as it really is. I want us to make a focused effort at the right time to capture this personal history before it disappears from view. So I ask you to go to the website and explore the project.

If you have any questions or would like to contribute your time, talents, publicity or other resources to the project please do not hesitate to contact me personally (kelly@jazzeravoices.org, on Facebook or by phone). A few people have expressed a desire to interview in languages other than English for the project: an idea which I love and for which I will need translators and subtitle-ers. If you have any interest in that, or in helping others to do interviews and uploads, I would love your help as well.

With all my heart, I thank you.
 Kelly Porter

Please contact Kelly Porter if you know anyone who lived and enjoyed the jazz era in person – whether they are dancers, community members, musicians, etc. their stories are important to preserve.

Please help us by sharing this letter and the Voices of the Jazz Era Project online via Facebook, Twitter, and E-Mail.

Better Dancer: How To Learn Choreography, Part 2

This is the second of a three part series on tips, tools and advice on improving your ability to learn choreography. The first part covered preparation, this part will cover tips and advice on learning in class, and the last part will cover recall and refinement of choreography.

Learn

Depending upon the level of the material and the teacher, choreography is presented and taught in a variety of ways. Whether the instruction is purely visual repetition, sequencing, or count by count; these tips helps.

Create a Blueprint

As the choreography is demonstrated, create a mental outline from what you see and hear. Mark significant changes, shifts and movements in your mind.

Having an outline or birds eye view of the overall structure of the choreography is like having the blueprints to a building. You’ve got the plan, now you have to become the construction worker – starting from the foundation to the frame to the sheathing, walls and so on until it is complete.

Break It Down, Build It Up

Choreography is in essence a sequence of movements, long or short. Experienced dancers can understand and recall large chunks of sequence quickly, while less experienced dancers understand more basic chunks.

Just like building with legos, you need to put the pieces together one by one to form each chunk and then assemble the chunks into a larger whole.

Know your chunk size.

By that, know how long or short of a sequence you can address and repeat quickly. As the choreography is taught or shown, begin with chunk sizes you can process easily (whether that is 8 counts of movement or a full phrase of music).

Start at this level and begin combining them into larger chunks.

Work on creating several larger chunks individually, then assemble the larger chunks into the even larger chunks until you have assembled the whole choreography.

Use Cues to Anchor Chunks

Develop verbal, spatial and musical cues to anchor chunks of movement to specific times, places, and rhythms.

Cues come in many forms.

Spatial cues anchor what comes next with where you are at a certain point in space. This can be placement within a group of dancers, location on a stage, or body position. By tying a chunk to spatial cues you take the pressure off of recalling larger chunks by placing chunks into context.

Verbal cues anchor what you are doing with a verbal phrase or series of sounds. They can be as simple as verbal rhythms spoken while performing the physical representation of the sound, or as deep as stories representing various movements or sections of the dance that carry one section into the next.

Musical cues anchor what you are doing and what comes next with the music being played for a piece. While not all choreographies are performed to music, many are. Knowing that a specific chunk follows a particular hit in the music, or a shift in the mood of the music changes the style of the momvent, allows you to place chunks into context.

Cues place content (the chunks of movement) with context. By understanding context we can deliver content adeptly.

Do It, Don’t Watch Yourself Do It

If your studio has mirrors, don’t focus on what you are doing as you dance it in the mirror. Focus on the experience of performing the movements correctly. The mirror is a refinement tool, not a framing tool.

Placing too much emphasis on a mirror distracts you from engaging your bodies memory.  Save the mirror for refinement – or even better, use a video camera to review your performance.

In Your Words

Whether you are using a physical dance journal, or a digital dance journal, capture each step of your learning process so you can use it to recall, reflect and refine your performance of the choreography in the future.

This note taking process puts the choreography into your own words.

Focus

When in the studio learning choreography put the rest of the world out of your mind. To learn swiftly you need intensity of focus.

Watch the lead dancer or instructor demonstrate first, don’t attempt to mimic immediately. Watch the whole presentation of the choreography, take note of the outline, the chunks, the cues. Create the outline, listen and watch for the cues, and fill in the outline with the pieces.

Focus ties all of the elements together.

What do you do to learn choreography? Leave a comment.

Why Local Classes Are Important

Local classes are the lifeblood of any dance community.

Workshops, camps, and competitions are merely fleeting nodes that connect a much larger network of disparate nodes; they are the glimmer that fascinates us but lack greater substance.

Local classes are the breeding grounds for new dancers, they foster the initial relationship people will have with the art form. From the basics they learn from day one, to the atmosphere of dance events, to the focus of the dance; the local scene socializes expectations.

Local classes are the roots of the movement, they feed and nurture everything that grows out of it. The cycle of students flows back on itself, as local teachers introduce new students, students become intermediate then advanced dancers, who then become local teachers, introducing more students. Without local classes scenes whither and die.

Local classes allow students to cut their teeth on instruction, performance and competition. They foster strong social bonds which support a scene and create new advocates for the art form.

Why I Gave Up Local Classes

It’s hard work and compensation can be scarce.

After nearly four years helping build the scene, maintaining a presence, and teaching in Montreal, I gave up on local classes. I wanted the benefits without the hardship – that elusive dream of traveling dance instructor. I wanted to bounce from fleeting node to fleeting node without the responsibility of feeding the roots.

Guess what? It doesn’t work that way.

How It Should Work

Perhaps one of the best examples of a teacher, organizer and scene advocate is Carla Heiney.  She stretches across three domains and works exceptionally hard within all of them.

She travels the world teaching, competing and performing with exceptional caliber. She helps organize a node of her own, Boogie by the Bay. Lastly, perhaps most importantly, she is one of the most active local teachers, organizers and promoters. She runs Lindy Central, works with local universities, works with local troupes. Somehow she even finds time to fly to LA for T.V. spotlights on So You Think You Can Dance and Time Warp.

If we devoted half the energy Carla does to building our own local scene and not skipping out of town for the next fleeting glamour event, there would be more work, reward and joy to go around for all of us.

What work do you do for your local scene?

Better Dancer: How to Learn Choreography, Part 1

Learning choreography is a part of dance training, whether you are a social, competitive or performance dancer. It is a tried and true method for dance instruction.

Choreography may be as simple as learning a short sequence of steps as a repetition exercise, or as complex as learning a whole sequence of dances and routines for a show.

Understanding how to learn, recall and perform choreography is as much a personal endeavor as dancing itself is, yet there are some tools you can use to speed you on your way.

Part 1 will cover how to prepare yourself for choreography, Part 2 will cover tips for learning choreography, and Part 3 will cover tips for recalling and improving performance of choreography.

Be Prepared

Preparation is one of the biggest advantages you can have for learning a choreography.

Start with choreography in mind.

You know you are going to learn choreography so there is no use denying or avoiding it. Having a mindset that opens yourself up to the learning process is essential. If you believe you can’t learn choreography, you are sabotaging your efforts before you begin.

Know how you learn

We all have slightly different methods for learning, so prepare yourself by finding out how you process and recall information.  Knowing your core learning styles helps you translate the material you will encounter into something meaningful.  But in the end, remember, dance is about physical movement, so make sure not to neglect how you translate information into movement.

Know your limits and your strengths

Learning choreography is as much an understanding of what we can do and what we can’t do.  If you are learning a choreography outside of your area of expertise, recognize that and don’t set your standards based on your strengths.  If you are sitting in on a Master class choreography and are not at that level know you may not be able to perform to that level, although it doesn’t hurt to try your damnedest.

Know your steps

Choreographies are built upon the understanding of certain basic or core movements in a dance. If you don’t have solid basics and core movement you are going to be struggling from the start. Know your basics and common sequences, practice them regularly (there’s a reason even the best ballet dancers go back to the bar everyday). If you know the choreography is going to focus on specific kinds of movement, dedicate time to practicing and strengthening those.

Maintain your body and mind

If your body is shot and mind frazzled when you step into the studio to learn a choreography, you are assuredly going to stumble and maybe even get injured. Make sure to keep yourself in good health, including eating well, keeping hydrated, stretching, warming up and strengthening your body. Don’t underestimate the power of a limber and ready body.

Have your own tips to prepare for choreography? Leave a comment.

5 Thoughts, Quotes & Images on the Making of a Dancer

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.

Ted Shawn

When we dance we are the paintbrush, the easel, the paints and the artist.  Each step a stroke of the brush.  Each gesture a splash of paint.  The artist as art.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

Miles Davis

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.

Fred Astaire

Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.

Twyla Tharp

To dance is to train, to envision, and to create out of nothing with only our bodies and space.  It is not sold like a painting or shared like a song, it is a fleeting creation, gone as it is performed.

Better Dancer: The Digital Dance Journal

This is the start of a series of articles on Being A Better Dancer.  The series will consist of articles on how to become a better dancer through the examination of learning process, creative process, and performance improvement.

I recall back when I started dancing I toted around a little spiral notebook with me to all the classes and workshops I attended. In it I jotted down notes, steps, counts, sequences and feedback. Anything that would help me along as a dancer.

It was a repository for my progress as a dancer and while some may disdain the use of journals or writing dance steps out, it helped me navigate a new domain of movement and remember the intense amount of information presented in classes and workshops.

Mine was just a spiral bound notebook and a pen, but today, with the ease of video, audio and photo capture, it can be much more. A digital dance journal may comprise dance videos of steps you have learned, voice memos of feedback, written out counts to a step, inspirational videos and songs, and the list goes on.

Create a capture process

Once you make the decision to have a dance journal, you need to establish a habit of capturing the feedback, reflections and inspirations in a way that works for you.

If you are a writer you’ll be used to toting around a notebook and pen. If you are a photographer you are used to having a camera on you. If you are nearly anyone in the digital age, you’ve got a cell phone with a camera in it. You may use a single capture medium, but more likely you will use a collection of tools to capture information for your dance journal.

Example of Capture Media

The most important part of the process is to create the capture habit and maintain it. Without a consistent habit of note taking (in whatever form) you will lack the critical data you will use to reflect on later.

Create an organization process

The capture process gives you the data, the organization process makes that data meaningful.

In the organization process you may use a series of folders on your computer, mind mapping software, project management tools, or straightforward text files. The goal is to take the captured data and place it into an overarching domain map or structure.

The domain map is a theoretical structure of the practice of dance. The map is for your own benefit so structure it as you will, but there will most likely be a few principle categories that tree or web out into other sub-categories.

Example Lindy Hop Domain Map

In each domain place or link the corresponding data that you collected in your capture process. This gives your feedback a place in the meta-view of your domain.

Don’t be afraid to move data around or add it in multiple spaces. There are many options for how you can structure your own data so it is meaningful to you. The most important part of this process is that you create a domain map or structure that makes sense for you and that you can place captured data into that map for later review.

Create a review process

The organization process makes data meaningful by placing it within your domain map, the review process creates a space to engage and work with that data.

Once you have an established domain map with various categories and sub-categories and you have begun placing data into the map you can begin a review process.

The importance of the categories and sub-categories in your domain map is that you can break apart a specific portion of the data to review and engage with without having to confront the sheer density of information in the whole domain.

Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.

- Geoff Colvin

In your review, take a specific set of elements or sub-category and engage with it alone.

Example:

Data Object: Learn a specific rhythm.

Action:

  • Breakdown and identify the rhythm from the data.
  • Build up the rhythm slowly from steps you already know.
  • Perform rhythm
  • Film yourself performing rhythm
  • Compare to example from data.
  • Repeat while fine-tuning rhythm to match data.

The review process is the most difficult and yet the most rewarding part of the journaling process. Identifying and engaging with the elements of your feedback process that push you just outside of your comfort zone will accelerate your learning process.

Repeat

The journaling process is a cyclical process. As you proceed from capture to organize to review, you will notice that you will be capturing, reorganizing and reviewing alongside each step. This is an essential part of the process.

At each stage you will be improving not only the various aspects of your dancing, but also the very process by which you improve your dancing. This metacognition of your learning process and your dance domain is essential to exceptional performance.

Flickr photo by StarbucksGuy.