With summer upon us, and vacations taking students in and out of our classes, it’s a good time to start revamping your curriculum for the fall semester. If you don’t take a break for your classes over the summer then this would still be a good time to add new things in. I want to present to you 5 innovative approaches to improving your bellydance class.
- Ask your students to create a combo. It’s great to include combos in your dance class as it helps your students start to put together the individual movements that they have learned. But how about letting them get a little creative and create a combo of their own. You can ask them to demonstrate it or even teach it to the class. This gets them to interact more with each other and get their own creative juices flowing.
- Break them off into groups to create something. Have each group create an 8 count combo and then at the end, put all of the groups combos together in a song.
- Add emotion to their movements. Create a list of emotions and turn them into flashcards. Have each student pick one but not share with the group. Then have each one create an entrance using that emotion. The rest of the group has to guess what the emotion is and so on. You can also have each student express an array of emotions and have the rest guess. This will start them on the road to not just stepping through the movements but actually feeling them and help in performances later.
- Encourage Improv. It’s very easy to always provide combos or choreography when teaching. Why not throw in a jam session? Put on a piece o music and just have everyone move! The only way to get “good” at improv is to just embrace a piece of music. Turn the last few minutes of class into a circle jam
- Folk Dance. Teach a folk dance whether it be a line dance, partner or single, adding it a folkloric element not only adds the cultural element back in but also challenges students in a different way. The different rhythms, footwork, body placement can help add another layer t class that your students weren’t expecting.
There you have it! 5 ways that you can add innovation to your bellydance class. I am sure that there are more so if you have ideas, please put them in the comment section below. I’d love to see what you have to say!