Taking Dance to a Wider Audience
What does dance mean to you?
What does dance mean to you? I expect there would be as many different answers as there are readers. To ensure a secure, high status for Dancesport, it is crucial that teachers consider the whole spectrum of potential for future development.
It was this avenue I decided to explore when I discovered I was eligible to enter for the Phyllis Haylor Scholarship. I chose the title 'How to attract a wide range of Young People into Dance', and in 2008, the ISTD awarded me the scholarship of £1000. I used the funds to continue my own training for finishing my Associate Classical Sequence, and towards my Licentiate Latin American.
As part of my presentation, I described how, as a teacher working in a variety of settings, I train dancers who have a wide range of goals. There are talented and ambitious competitors; social dancers; primary school pupils who dance in curriculum time and as an out of hours activity; and those for whom dance is a kind of therapy for physical, behavioural or emotional conditions. I have long been aware of the huge variety of reasons that people have for wanting to dance, so, during the last few years, I have developed a number of different approaches to meet this range of needs, alongside strategies to bring dance to new (and unsuspecting!) audiences.
One way I bring dance to new audiences is through showcasing work from classes at charity events and local community fetes, which is very effective. Such demonstrations give my existing dancers an opportunity to contribute to their local communities by providing entertainment and fundraising, as well as developing their personal performance skills. At the same time, a new audience is able to discover a form of dance that they may not have been aware of, and many decide to give it a try.
In addition to my own classes, I currently teach in local schools three to four times a week, with regular slots at Foxton and Meldreth Primary Schools. Some of my work is in curriculum time during PE lessons, whilst other sessions are out of hours. I teach Ballroom, Latin, Sequence, Rock 'n' Roll, Street and Disco Freestyle, which is very different from the less technical ‘movement and dance’ sessions that non specialist teachers usually offer in schools. Foxton was one of the first schools in Cambridgeshire to run a Breakfast Club and they decided to use my dance classes as their first activity for this venture. All my students from the Breakfast Clubs have taken ISTD examinations, and many other local schools now follow suit, as a result of a touring showcase from my pupils.
My commitment to bringing Dancesport to the wider community was recognised in the latter months of 2009, when to my surprise, I discovered that I had been nominated as The West Anglia Sports Partnership (WASP) Coach of the Year. This organisation works within the community to support sport and physical activities in the Forest Heath District. Their work in the last two years has included claiming funding of £56,000 to develop sport in the Forest Heath area. Projects range from organising The Suffolk Disability Showcase Day, which gave disabled people the chance to try a range of sports, to building a state of the art Swimming Pool and Sports Centre in Newmarket, where they are now working to become an approved teaching centre so local people can become involved in training.
WASP is supported by Forest Heath District Council, and in partnership they help to provide assistance for community sporting clubs, celebrating excellence in sport. This year was the first time Dancesport featured in any of the categories, alongside more traditionally recognised sports such as swimming, rowing, football and gymnastics. I attended a gala awards night where I met the two other finalists for Coach of the Year: Kirk Bonus for Basket Ball and Jenny Grimwood for Athletics.
I was very proud to be representing dance in this arena. For many, dance is often seen only as a performance art or a social pleasure, so to be recognised by other sporting professionals for the skill, fitness and high levels of technical training in our field was a great honour. Simply being nominated and accepted in this category was amazing, but words cannot describe the elation I felt when I heard my name announced as the overall winner of Coach of the Year 2009!
It was a wonderful personal achievement, but one that I also hope will bring benefits to Dancesport as a whole – a way that I can ‘give something back’ to a profession that I love, and that has so much to offer so many people.
Claire Thompson |
