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Formation
Dancing as a 'base' in a
Junior/Juvenile School
This
is one of a series of articles written by members of the Ballroom Teachers'
Committee of the Dance Sport Faculties on various subjects of interest
to teachers.
It
is hard to over-emphasise the advantages of using Formation Dancing
as a base for a Junior/Juvenile dancing school.
To
get the maximum benefit for the school it is necessary to create the
situation that competition to be accepted into a team becomes the aim
of virtually every child as soon as they become aware that the teams
exist. This usually happens fairly quickly with the new pupils as the
photographs of the current teams are displayed in the foyer of the studio.
Annual auditions are held for admission to the teams and the child must
have attained the appropriate medal level for the team that they wish
to join. Usually, the 'beginner' teams will only need to have attained
Bronze level if they wish to be considered, whereas to achieve entry
to the more established teams will require a higher medal level. This
then is an added incentive for the children to improve their standard
by the taking of Medal Tests.
The
Junior/Juvenile Blackpool Festival, held in Easter week each year, is
the mecca for these teams and all new choreography, costumes etc. will
be prepared for this event. There are occasionally other competitions
during the year, but mostly the teams go on to provide local displays
for fetes and other local functions, where leaflets about adult as well
as children's classes can be distributed and where extra funds may be
gathered from grateful organisers, all of which is of course excellent
publicity for the school in general.
The
fundraising is a problem to be solved. Discos can be run in half term
holidays in the studio, fundraising family fun days can include all
sorts of attractions such as a buffet, quizzes, bouncy castle, face
painting and all sorts of fete type stalls and can be run on Bank Holidays.
Perhaps top of this list should come tombola. Local sponsorship is not
always difficult to obtain - even some supermarkets offer local sponsorship
occasionally. These funds are needed for costumes - the children do
grow rather quickly - for make-up, for coach travel to competitions
etc. The children do pay their own rehearsal fees and for their shoes,
although these must be kept for formation.
At
Blackpool this year there were 46 teams over the two days of formation
competitions. The Friday is for teams of four couples and the Saturday
for teams of six to eight couples. Each event is further divided into
separate Juvenile and Junior teams. It is possible with these teams
to have all girl teams or a mixture of boys and girls, not necessarily
in equal numbers, for example several teams have two boys and six girls
in the four couple events or perhaps four boys and twelve girls in the
eight couple event. The girls then dancing as boys may be dressed to
match the boys, although not all trainers do this.
My
daughter, Margaret Preedy's teams were the only ISTD teams in these
events this year, three teams in the four couple event and three teams
in the eight couple event. This is partly the reason for the writing
of this article, because it would be good to encourage other ISTD schools
to start Formation and several younger teachers on the Ballroom Teachers'
Committee remarked that they had not been aware that there was so much
to be gained from using Formation Dancing as a competitive 'sport' in
their schools.
The
group of Formation trainers are like a special club and we all greet
each other at Blackpool each year like long lost friends! Personally
I have been involved in Formation Dancing since the late 60's, although
there was a gap during the Disco boom of the late 70's when it was difficult
to get the children to take any dancing except Disco seriously! Margaret
meets one of her Junior competitive rivals from some years ago, now
also training Junior teams, so the events become a real gathering of
the clans.
To
start a team is relatively easy and one can learn in stages, from using
simple group dancing in one rhythm, perhaps with a Paso Doble 'march
on' and 'march off' and which can be used for a Medal Test team, through
to having professional produced segue music arranged using all five
rhythms, Ballroom or Latin - not difficult to achieve, as all areas
nowadays have professional music studios - and using of course choreography
which still does not need to incorporate advanced figures. The time
allowance in the BDC rule book must be observed and it is always advisable
to aim for a little less time than the maximum as different sound systems
do play at slightly different tempos.
This
article could go on and on! We could talk about discipline, mandatory
rehearsals, contracts etc., but these things could put you off when
you read them, when in reality the joy you can get from the achievement
of producing a team and the added loyalty to your school and to each
other of the teams' members through Formation work make all the solvable
problems a worthwhile exercise.
Anne
Lingard
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