Dance Camp: Rock Star Theme

What a great week of camp at the studio!


Our studio offers two types of camp: 5-day "Dance Camp" for ages 6-10 and 4-day "Princess Camp" for ages 4-6.  For both camps, the students come each day for three hours from 9am - noon and we dance and do arts and crafts.  It's a lot of fun and we've run both programs successfully for a few years (we've been doing Dance Camp for more than 10 years... Princess Camp we just started last year). 

Each year we do a different theme and base the week's lessons around that theme.  We hold an impromptu little "show" on the last day of camp for family and friends.

This year, the older kids' camp theme was "Rock Stars", which was a blast to plan and to do. I wanted to share our week with you and hopefully it will give you some ideas for your camp or even just some fun crafts to do at home this summer!

Our Rock Star Camp Schedule
Day 1:  Totally Tie-Dye
Day 2:  Rockin' Guitars & Hats
Day 3:  Glitter, Glitter, Everywhere!
Day 4:  Stars, Frames & Bling
Day 5:  Performance Day


This coming week, look for a new post every day with a breakdown of what we did, craft ideas and song suggestions for a rockin' week of camp!


Do you have camp at your studio?  What's the format?  Is it successful?  Comment below!

July Blog Challenge: Dance Outside The Box!

Feel free to grab this badge for your blog!

Are you ready?  It's time for July's Dance Blog Challenge!  This month, our challenge is a simple and fun photo challenge:  

Dance outside and share a photo or video of it!

What To Do:  
1) Grab a camera and head outdoors.  You might want a friend or at least a self-timer.
2) Dance!
3) Blog about your photo & leave a comment below or post it to the Facebook wall

I'll be sharing my photos for the challenge later in the month and I look forward to seeing lots of fun photos!

Ready... Set... Go!

Updated 7/14/12 with this month's participants:
Dancing In Virginia from Rince Go Bragh
Leaping on the beach from yours truly

Dance Etiquette & Advice

Kind of loving this post at These Are The Lives We Lead about dance etiquette.  My favorite parts:

Love dance!

• "NEVER mark. Why pay for a class and mark until you get into groups? Groups occur for MAYBE 10 minutes. Most of which you’ll spend trying to figure out the parts you’ve been marking."

• "Touching your toes and sitting in a grande plie 2nd for a minute does not a sufficient warm up make."

• "Be hungry to know everyTHING about your art; ESPECIALLY its history. you would not be here without those that came before you."

• "If you don’t make the youtube video, don’t get the job, or don’t get called out for the “special” group; it doesn’t mean you stop coming to class. In fact, the very opposite. You KEEP SHOWING UP. perseverance and SHOWING UP is often how a job is booked."

• ".. know that dance does not come over night.  Or over months.  Or even years.  It happens throughout a LIFETIME process that is to be adored despite struggle.  Love every second of it for genuine reason and you will probably find yourself doing all this naturally."

I wish all of my students read and understood this.  Good advice for getting the most out of your classes!

200 Posts: Thank You!

How To Get A Clean Music Edit Using GarageBand

For our 200th post, I am excited to debut the second video in our GarageBand Tutorial Series:  How To Get A Clean Edit Using GarageBand (see How To Fade a Song here)!

Check out the tutorial below or click the jump for a full transcript with additional notes that aren't in the video.





Side note...  200 posts!  I feel like that is an exciting milestone.  Fellow bloggers - do you get excited for "milestone" posts?  Or do you celebrate your blog's "birthday"?  Or am I alone in being dorky?

Travis Wall Dance Company: Shaping Sound

I recently noticed that one of The Dance Buzz's most popular posts was about Travis Wall creating a dance company.  Well it's been two years since that post and I wanted to share an update so anyone who arrived here via Google would find what they were looking for!
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In 2012, Travis Wall created "Shaping Sound", a contemporary dance company. complete While he auditioned over 400 dancers, he ended up with 26 fantastic dancers, including Nick Lazzarini, Teddy Forance, Kyle Robinson, Allison Holker, Melanie Moore and Taja Riley.  In his interview with Dance Spirit magazine, when asked what he was looking for at the audition, Travis said he likes "girls with pretty feet, nice long legs and open hips."

You may have already seen Shaping Sound perform if you watched them on Dancing With The Stars:




Want more Travis?  

• Get an inside look at the company by watching Oxygen's "All The Right Moves", a reality docu-series that premies July 31.
• Follow them on Twitter @Shaping_Sound
• Like them on Facebook

Review: Ballet Words of the Week

I am happy to report back with a review of the "Ballet Words of the Week" that I received from Dance Teacher Press in Dance Advantage's giveaway back in February.

We were more then mid-year through our classes when I won the Words of the Week booklet, Ballet Combination Book and Ballet Step by Step.  I brought all three tools into the studio for my teachers to use and I will say the one getting used the most is the Ballet "Words of the Week", probably because it was the easiest to integrate into our syllabus.

The Words of the Week is made out of calendar-sized sturdy cardstock and is spiral bound.  It fits nicely in a dance bag or it could be hung on a wall.  We keep ours on our studio bookshelf.  The colors are bright and not too girly, which was nice since I have a few boys at the studio.  It includes 50 terms, which cover basics to more advanced vocabulary.

I ended up using the word booklet once a month with my Ballet I class and they always looked forward to it.  This class is age 7-9 and it is their first year of ballet.  I would bring out the book after our stretching time.

NMM: Home - Grace Aplin

One of my graduating seniors picked this song for her senior solo this year and I can't get enough of this song!

"Home" is a beautiful song and Gabrielle Aplin has such a unique-sounding voice, although she does remind me of Ellie Goulding.  Grab the song on iTunes: 

SYTYCD Season 9: Best Music (So Far)

Audition from Season 9, Episode 2

Dance recital's over, summer classes haven't started yet.. so that means its So You Think You Can Dance season!  Yippee!

Aside from the dancing, my favorite part is the fantastic music finds that come out of each episode.  The only downside is you can expect to hear some of these songs getting overplayed on the competition circuit next year.  But for summer, who cares?  They are deliciously good and I love the variety of genres.

Here are my favorites so far.  I know there's only been three episodes, but can you believe that between the three episodes there's been over 100 songs?  Some are great to dance to, but others are just fun to listen to in the car and at home!

Hot Artists so far:  PP Music (UK), James Dooley and District 78 already seem really popular choice, and have been used in all three episodes.

Great Songs To Dance To (links open in iTunes)
Candyland - CocoRosie: Just enough creepiness mixed in with a lovely melody to make something unique and interesting

Guardians At the Gate - Audiomachine:  There seems to be a lot of "cinematic" or soundtrack music this year.  Its very powerful music and I love this particular piece.  It's also nice for a solo as its only 2 minutes and 12 seconds long.  For a less intense instrumental, check out Moving Cities by Faze Action

Invaderz - Excision & Datsik:  Such a cool electronic song, full of sound effects that are just begging to be danced to.

Mouvement Introductif - Yann Tiersen:  A beautiful classical piece of music.

It's Good to See You Again - Scott Alan:  I might just love this song because I loved the audition that went along with it.  It was a very touching moment in the show, and it totally got me tearing up.

Non je ne regrette rien - Edith Piaf:  Another great audition - I loved this choice of music as well. Bonus points if you can name a movie this song is used in!

Here's the video of that last song's audition:


Great Songs Just To Listen To
So High - LA-EX
Heavy Cross - Gossip
D-D Dance - The Concept
The Only Place - Best Coast

Looking for another song you heard on SYTYCD, but don't see it here?  
Check out some of these sites - they are the most comprehensive places I've found to look for the SYTYCD music:
Pure SYTYCD
Tunefind.com
Your Daily Dance
and of course: FOX SYTYCD Official site

I Survived Recital Weekend!

Recital weekend was this past weekend for my studio and it was exciting, exhausting and most importantly is OVER!  I can now join the "Done" Club for Studio Owners who are done with their show!  Hooray!

We crammed five shows into three days and it was great, but I'm glad to be done.  Here's a peek into the weekend, and my entry for May's "Performance Pic" Challenge.

This year we rented a local school for our shows.  The auditorium holds about 1000 people.  We got in around 2pm on Friday to set-up the stage and theater for the 6pm show.

I let the students sit in the auditorium - I feel like they enjoy watching the show.  I have alumni students who volunteer as aisle monitors.  They are responsible for two to three classes and oversee them in their seats and making sure they are brought backstage on time.  The teachers also patrol the seats, and help with their rowdiest classes.

Pre-show chaos!

June Blog Challenge: Confident & Humbled

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on your blog if you participate!

It's that time again!  Blog Challenge time!  June's writing prompt is this (writing prompt? I feel like an English teacher now):

Dance is both confidence building and humbling... write about a time you experienced either.

Not sure what to write? Here are a few ideas to get you going.

• Teachers... share how you inspire confidence in your students
• Students... share a time you felt confident after a class or performance
• Is it possible to feel both confident and be humbled at the same time?
• Is there a good balance?

No matter what you decide to write about, make sure you come back and leave a comment below with a link to your post.

Challenge Participants

Rince Go Braugh:  "Confidence at my first Oireachtas"

No blog?  No worries!  Share your thoughts in the comments below!