My answer is almost unanimously “Yes!” and there are very few reasons to not charge for a lesson.

“But dance should be free for all,” or at least such-and-such dance should, is generally the response to charging for lessons.

The debate over free has raged along especially in the rise of digital tools, communities and services that are free or nearly free; what that means and so on has been of much discussion and vitriol on all sides. Something I don’t intend to delve into (regarding digital media).

The thing most people don’t realize is that free lessons are never free, as in gratis. Hosting a dance lesson requires work that take time, effort and skill.

• Dance Expertise
• Teaching Expertise
• Organizational Work
• Promotion Work

Dance instruction does not materialize out of thin air, even if you teach on a street corner to a group of friends (which is usually not the case).

Someone has to perform the instruction, hopefully with years of dance experience, while someone needed to have organized the space and time and managed the responses to promotion and inscription, while promotional materials had to have been created and distributed.

This work is not free, even if it is not paid for in dollars it is paid for in time, skill and effort. This is the cost of a free lesson even if no one gets paid.

Even if your lesson is free for the students, they are not free for everyone. Someone is paying the cost.

This is just one reason I nearly always advocate charging for lessons.

People are more invested when they pay for something, thus more attentive students who are more likely to continue on. Teachers and staff feel compensated for their time and effort which gives them the freedom to invest more into creating an exceptional class. Invested students, teachers and staff means better classes for everyone.

Unless you are willing to teach, organize, promote and dance as charity, which is valuable in its own right on occasion, I recommend sticking to charging for your lessons.

It was where I cut my teeth as an instructor and worked in an amazing community. I hope to give back a little bit with this class on solo jazz inspiration and choreography.

All are welcome so long as you have experience with solo jazz and charleston, including line routines like the shim sham and big apple, people of all levels will get something out of it.

I will also be out dancing and available for private lessons from August 10th to the 14th. Contact me directly to book.

Master Class: Solo Jazz Inspiration & Choreography

Delve deeper into your solo jazz and dance with this master class. Tools and ideas to go from doing cool moves to having good movement. Carl will walk you through his process that makes choreographing and solo jazz a journey that reveals itself as you go.

With experience choreographing multiple solo and duet jazz pieces like this routine with Davis Thurber at Midwest Lindyfest 2008, Carl’s take on choreography is one of exploring narrative and structure from a birds eye view.

Experience in solo jazz & charleston highly recommended.

Class 20$, Wednesday 7pm, pre-registration encouraged.

Register:

info@catscorner.ca or 514-874-9846

PayPal: info@catscorner.ca

Classe Maître: Inspiration Solo Jazz & Chorégraphie

Plongez plus profondément dans vos solos jazz et votre danse en générale avec cette classe maître. Vous développerez les outils et les idées pour passer de gestes “cool” à l’exécution de bon mouvements complet. Carl vous accompagnera à travers le processus qui rend la chorégraphie et les solos jazz une démarche qui se définie au fur et à mesure que l’on progresse.

Avec sa grande expérience en tant que chorégraphe jazz en solo et en duo, telle que cette routine avec Davis Thurber at Midwest Lindyfest 2008, Carl défini la chorégraphie comme étant l’exploration d’une structure et d’une narration vue de haut.

Il est grandement recommandé d’avoir une expérience en solo jazz et en Charleston.

Cours 20$. Mercredi 7PM. Il est recommandé de réservé en avance.

Pour s’inscrire:

info@catscorner.ca 514-874-9846

PayPal: info@catscorner.ca

Jazz is my Religion by Ted Joans

JAZZ is my religion and it alone do I dig the jazz
clubs are my houses f worship and sometimes the concert halls

but some
holy places are too commercial (like churches) so I
don’t dig the
sermons there I buy jazz sides to dig in solitude Like
man/Harlem,
Harlem U.S.A. used used to be a jazz heaven where most of
the jazz
sermons were preached but now-a-days due to chacha
cha and
rotten rock ‘n’roll alotta good jazzmen have sold their
souls but jazz
is still my religion because I know and feel the message
it brings
like reverend Dizzy Gillespie/Brother Bird and
Basie/Uncle
Armstrong/Minister Monk/ Deacon Miles Davis/ Rector
Rollins/
Priest Ellington/ His funkness Horace Silver/ and the great
Pope
John, John COLTRANE and Cecil Taylor They
Preach A Sermon
That Always Swings!!

Yeah jazz is MY religion Jazz
is my story
it was my mom’s and pop’s and their moms and pops
from the days of Buddy Bolton who swung them blues to Charlie
Parker and
Ornette Coleman’s extension of Bebop Yeah jazz is my
religion
Jazz is unique musical religion the sermons spread
happiness and
joy to be able to dig and swing inside what a
wonderful feeling

jazz is/YEAH BOY!! JAZZ is my religion and dig this:
it wasn’t for
us to choose because they created it for a damn good
reason as a
weapon to battle our blues!JAZZ is my religion and its
international all the way JAZZ is just an Afroamerican
music
and like us its here to stay So remember that JAZZ is
my religion
but it can be your religion too but JAZZ is a truth that is
always
black and blue Hallelujah I love JAZZ so Hallelujah I
dig JAZZ so
Yeah JAZZ IS MY RELIGION…….

How to Act (and React) Like a Professional by Nichelle @ DanceAdvantage

A consummate professional is constructive, positive, is motivated and has the ability to motivate others, displays generosity, and takes the high road. If you want to be seen as a professional in your career and in your life, you must develop strong leadership skills. And leaders are most often defined by their reactions to situations, rather than their actions.

Alvin Ailey’s Uptown by Mikey Pedroza

This past Saturday night, I went to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. They a modern dance group based out of New York and they are in a word INSPIRING! You don’t just “go to see them,” you experience them. This new production featured a new piece called “UPTOWN”. This was a piece choreographed by Matthew Rushing and inspired by the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th-century.

How to Opt Out of the Facebook Mistake at Technology in the Arts

Opt in policies are generally the most effective and considered to be best practice. This is where Facebook made their fatal mistake and where arts organizations need to ensure they are excelling. Organizations only want people to receive information that want to receive it. By allowing people to opt in to programs, the organization is letting the individual take responsibility and targeting individuals who want more contact with the organization.

The Lindy-Loggers by Jerry Almonte

The Lindy blogosphere is surprisingly larger than you think. When I started this post I thought I was just going to describe a handful of sites, but once I was done compiling URL’s I came up with over 50.

If you any suggestions for articles and resources for dancers, send them my way.

There were 9 entries for the contest and I picked six using Random.org and a spreadsheet of the entrants.

I will be contacting them shortly to schedule a virtual private lesson.

Winners are:

• Shortyjoy
• Carla Heiney
• Danielle Jacobowitz
• Olivier L
• Glenn Katzen
• David Lau

As a followup to the Giveaway I’ll be opening up shop for Virtual Dance Lessons shortly, so stay tuned.

That’s not what we need, right?

Right. Dance studios are generally small businesses that don’t have the time, budget or personnel to work like that, nor do we want to engage with our customers that way.

The traditional take on Marketing 101 is that there are 4 (sometimes 5) P’s. These are Product, Price, Place and Promotion, the fifth being Positioning.

Products are what you are selling. For dance studios this may be services like group classes, private lessons, wedding packages, or event performance. They may also include products you sell at your studio, dance shoes and clothing, DVDs, magazines, etc.

Price is how much you sell your products for. For dance studios this can range from inexpensive group lessons to thousand+ dollar products productions.

Place is where your products are selling. This may be a physical location, out of studio lessons, performances in your city. It also includes your demographics, who is buying your product and where you can find your audience.

Promotion is how you get your product in front of your market. We may think of ad pages in newspapers or bulletin boards but there are many ways to promote your products without relying on traditional advertising.

Positioning is where your product fits in your customers minds. This has a lot to do with perception, branding and engagement. Are you the high-end wedding package dance studio? Are you the corporate event performance dancers? Are you the community space for dancers, students and people to gather?

So where do we start out of all of these Ps?

Let’s use an example dance business that we’ll call Urban Jump.

Urban Jump is a small collective of young adult modern, hip hop and break dancers who get together regularly to practice and trade skills. They rent space out for practices. They’ve been asked on occasion to perform at various events and are looking to establish a more solid reputation as performers as well as branch out into teaching group classes in their particular styles of urban dance.

Products

Look at what products (that includes services, goods, etc.) that your business provides.

Urban Jump is looking to provide two different products: event performance and group classes.

Event performances have been usually five to fifteen minute gigs for organizations, community events, and companies that their members have been involved with in the past.

Group classes are new to Urban Jump but will most likely target young adults who are looking to learn basic hip hop, modern and break dance.

Have a core product that your business provides – for Urban Jump they want it to be their event performances.

What is your dance businesses core product?

Have supplementary products that can feed off your core product – Urban Jump is going to teach group classes to supplement their performance income.

Supplementary products are the little bit extra that can make ends meet on tight months or give your dance business a bonus to invest in itself.

What supplementary products can your business sell?

Place

Placing your products means doing some research.

Urban Jump is looking to target large corporate events for performance with their core product.  There are a couple other local dance groups that do similar event performance so the market is existing but not saturated. Urban Jump currently has been getting 1 to 2 gigs a month on average before deciding to pursue it as a business.

Their target market is corporate event producers and the demand is definitely present if an unofficial troupe is getting 1 to 2 gigs a month.

What is your target market?

How much money do they have to spend? Where are they located? What kind of value do they place on your product? What are their values?

What is the demand for your product?

Are there a lot of similar products that saturate the market?

Positioning

Similar to place, positioning will involve some research and some decisions on how you want your products to be perceived.

Urban Jump wants to be a professional performance group. Their work is polished and strong and they’ve always been exceptionally timely working with event producers.

They want to have a professional and smooth relationship with customers and don’t want to haggle over cost.

They should make sure their promotion and pricing reflects this.

Positioning has to do with where you want to be perceived in the mind of your customer. Are you the high end brand that works professionally, looks good and delivers on time? Are you the budget group that gets it done?

These decisions go a long way in establishing your price point and determining how you will market yourself. Good example: Apple Computers vs. HP.

Price

Pricing your products requires a bit of finesse and experimentation but using research of placing and your investigation on positioning will help you determine your sweet spot.

Urban Jump’s principal market is corporate event performance. These events usually involve a good amount of money for production and producers are willing to spend money for a good show.

Urban Jump is new on the scene so it’s unlikely they’ll be able to command top dollar although competition is not fierce and demand is there so prices aren’t driven down by saturation.  Competitive products average around $100 an hour per dance.

They could start by asking for $100 an hour per dancer for their event performances keeping in line with their position.

What are competitive products priced at?

Look at similar dance businesses and see what they are charging for similar products. How would you place your products in comparison to theirs.

Combined with your market research and the demand for your product, you will be able to more easily identify price points that work for your product.

Be aware that competing for the bottom price point is a losing game usually, someone can always undercut you in the long run. Don’t race to the bottom.

Promotion

Now that you have your pricing, your products, your place and position, it’s time to get your products in front of your market.

Urban Jump needs to reach out principally to corporate event producers for their core product.

Their first move is to let events and event producers they’ve worked with in the past that they are officially open for business, then contact other event producers to let them know.  This could be a press package including a demo reel of compiled footage and basic information about services.

Having a professional website with media and contact information along with business cards would be a good place to start.

How does your target market get their information for products like yours?

Are they web savvy, on Facebook and Twitter? Do they rely on classified ads and event listings to find dance classes? Or are they used to traditional press packages from performance groups.

Have the basics.

This means have a website, have basic promotional materials like business cards and flyers, and make it easy for people to pass this information around.

It’s easy to have the basics these days and quite affordably for many small businesses. Don’t neglect them.

Put up your shingle.

Nobody knows you’re open for business until you tell them. Hell, tell everybody. You’ll never know when a simple referral will get you a new client and it doesn’t help to keep quiet about it.

Have any questions about dance marketing 101 for your dance business?

Please contact me with any questions you have or if you want professional help with marketing your dance business.

Creativity & Competitions by Jerry Almonte

Great dancing, or art in general, isn t just about technical skill, or even how creative you can be.  Important factors?  Certainly.  But there’s also the ability to reach out to an audience and get them to react on an emotional level; to see what you see rather than settling by just giving them what they want, whatever you think that is.

Thought Leadership on Social Media Strategy by Adam Singer

How often have you been in a meeting and heard things like “we need to be on Facebook, let’s get on Twitter, or why don’t we start blogging?”  In the social web, it’s analogous to inviting people to a theme party and not telling them what the theme is (or even knowing yourself).  If you approach social media in this way, expect your returns to be as predictable as the costumes your guests at the party will wear.

FREE AGENT by Evita Arce

I used to think I wanted to be “So and So” but that changed as I met new talented role models who I then wanted to emulate.  Now I realize I can not be any of those people.  It is impossible for me to re-create anything or anyone.  I have to discover “me” and be who “I” am suppose to be, so that eventually I am that role model for some one else.

Social Media Strategy: 10 Experts Reveal Their Strategies by Glen Allsop

Together, these people have been involved in social media as long as anyone else and discovered tactics to help you get the most out of the services. Not only that, but they’ve helped shape the way that marketers utilise these services and they teach how to do it in an honest, ethical manner.

As dancers we’re constantly striving to create art with our bodies.

Sometimes we feel like we’re stuck in a rut, like we’re performing the same motions in the same uninspired, rote manner.

Sometimes we feel like we’re on fire, ideas, rhythms and variations pouring out of us raw and unbridled.

Creativity is a “seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity.”

~William James

How do we channel that seething cauldron of ideas?

Attempting to force creativity is akin to catch a river with your bare hands. It just doesn’t work that well.

Recent studies in creativity suggest that by recalling a time where we were free to act without worrying about doing the wrong thing, ala childhood, we unstifle the imagination. By casting ourselves as children, we unburden ourselves from the inner critic who tells us we are doing it wrong.

How then we do apply this knowledge to our creative pursuit–dance?

Visualization and Recollection

By visualizing ourselves or describing what we would do if we were seven years old, we incorporate that character into our creative process.

Take 5 to 10 minutes before creating and imagine yourself as a child, write down what you would do with your day if you had the entire day off and you were a child of seven years old.

Then go on to create.

A study at North Dakota State University by Darya Zabelina and Michael Robinson used this technique to test creative solutions in a group of undergraduate students. They discovered that those students who were instructed to recall that childhood playfulness scored higher on creativity tests following the exercise than those who did not recall their childhood.

Experimentation

When creating place specific restricting criteria on your movement, or add an element to your movement that is unfamilar to your normal repertoire.

Once you have those restrictions, just go. Don’t take the the time to diagnose everything.

By releasing yourself from the requirements of knowing all of the elements or being fully comfortable with the situation at hand you force yourself to improvise.

A few years ago I danced almost solely in rubber soled shoes, but on the occasion when I was having an off night I kept a pair of leather soled shoes with me. I would change out my shoes and this unfamiliar element (slippery shoes) would release a whole different set of creative impulses that were bound up when wearing sticky shoes.

Play

Take the two exercises above and you’ll see similar elements of play in both of them.  Children play a majority of the time, we don’t have the inhibited impulses of adults questioning ourselves, we don’t know all the answers, and we’re looking to explore.

Before creating take some time to play around. Goof off, mess around, whatever you want to call it. Be humourous, take risks, get on all fours and roll on the ground. Play a game that you played growing up (four square, tag, clapping games, etc.).

Exercise the physical playfulness of the body to release the tensions that inhibit creation.

Then shift modes into dancing.

How do you release your creative dancer?