Month: February 2020

GONE GREEN

We appreciate all of your support; please help us by keeping your email up to date and checking it regularly.  We will continue to send reminders, receipts, and invoices via email!!  With Concert and Tumbling Exhibition approaching receiving emails is vital to staying up-to-date please help us out!

We always have SO MUCH fun at our Parent’s Night Out! Mark your calendar for your DATE NIGHT and we will take the kids…Friday, March 13th from 6-10 pm. We have lots of fun activities planned for the kids and you can enjoy a night out child-free!  Only $15 per child. We will be serving Pizza.
 
You can sign up right on the website by logging into your account and picking the PNO schedule!

In celebration of St Patrick’s day, the week of 16-20th will be wear green week… Be creative!! You still need to be dressed in appropriate dance attire!!

Wear your Studio 56 sweats, jackets, hoodies or shirts to school on Friday, MARCH 2Oth to show your Studio 56 SPIRIT!

The studio will be closed March 30 – April 3 for Spring Break!

We are excited about our upcoming show!

Consent Form:  We are working hard on preparing for the BIG show.  We still have a handful of students with the “unknown” performing status. If you have not turned in your Concert Consent form please get that to us TODAY!!  We are starting to order costumes and need our final numbers.

Concert Information: As the season progresses additional concert information or updates will be posted on our concert page in the portal our website, in monthly newsletters and on the school bulletin board. Make it your responsibility to keep informed of this important information. Our goal is to make the concert an organized, exciting experience for everyone involved. The success of the show is a team effort of students, their parents, the teachers, and the director.

Home Study:  Now that our enrollment has closed it’s time to start concert routines.  Please encourage good attendance and practice at home.

To ensure that the students feel confident about their performance, we ask parents and guardians to encourage them to rehearse their concert choreography regularly. Choreography and music can be found on the concert page, by selecting Practice Videos in the menu dropdown.  

CONCERT COSTUMES: Costume measuring has begun, we have been measuring during scheduled class times. All children will be measured to determine their proper costume size(s).

PAYMENT FOR THE PERFORMANCE PACKAGE: Costume manufacturers do not accept cancellations or offer refunds, therefore the school does not refund costume deposits.

CALLING ALL DADS!  Each year we have a special DAD dance at our concert. Dancers and dads of all ages are invited to join us for this special occasion! This is one of the most looked forward to numbers of the night…especially by our moms!  If you would like to participate and have yet to signup please click here.  Be sure to include a t-shirt size for dad.  (Moms, feel free to volunteer your husband’s!)  Daddy dance fee is $30.  We will have Friday rehearsals starting in April as well as posting the choreography in a dropbox and emailing it out. 

We are currently working on finalizing our headcount and will send out an updated practice schedule.  Dates will stay the same as posted, however, the times may change. 

CLICK HERE to learn more and see the tentative schedule.

This dance is open to ALL of our students.  You DO NOT want to miss this!

FOR PARENTS OF SCHOOL AGED TUMBLING/ACRO STUDENTS

March Stretch of the Month- Lunge  |  Strength Challenge- Handstand

We are so excited this year to have a “stretch of the month” and a “strength challenge” in our acro/tumbling classes! Encourage your child to work on these skills at home to help them improve even faster!  Be more involved by printing off the at-home practice tracker HERE.

We are preparing for our Tumbling Exhibition coming up on June 10^th.  If you have not registered to participate please CLICK HERE so we know to plan on you!

FOR PARENTS OF PRESCHOOL DANCERS- MARCH THEME

In March our theme is “Leavin on a Jet Plane.”  Each class will be traveling to a fun destination from Hawaii to Mexico. This month we are focusing on Passé (ballet and jazz), toe-heel rocks, chasse, balance, hands to self and sad face. We hope you can find time to review these elements with your dancer at home.  It is a great way to get EVERYONE moving!! 

SUMMER CAMPS @ STUDIO 56 DANCE CENTER

We are opening enrollment for summer camps on March 1st! Mark your calendars now, we will have LOTS of options to fit your summer schedule! Early bird pricing available until April 1st.

Of all the benefits your child gains as a competitive dancer, artistry is arguably the one that becomes most personal to them.  With Studio 56 Dance Center’s competition team, we aim to teach the style and finesse that give performances their polish … but the true nature of being an artist comes from within the dancers themselves.

Along with a deeper understanding of dance, artistry flourishes as dancers mature.  The way a student dances at age eight is certainly different than at age 12 or at age 16.  The combination of technique, skill, and artistry develop in harmony over time, sometimes in striking ways and other times with more subtlety.

The advantage for your young dancer’s future is that dance combines athleticism with artistry in a way no other activity does!  They are learning more than just the athletic feats and technical skills needed to become the best dancer they can be; they are unveiling their artistic potential.

With our competition team experience at Studio 56 Dance Center, we strive for our students to benefit from this artistic edge at every stage of their education.  It allows them to become more comfortable with expressing themselves, it challenges them to be vulnerable at times, and it develops their humility.  And what a bonus it is to also form bonds with their team members who are immersed in the same type of artistic experience!

Artistry isn’t something that can be taught in the same way as technique.  With artistry, we must encourage our students to tap into themselves and connect with each other.  They learn to go beyond the skills to reach emotions and details in their experience.  Sometimes artistry is about big moments, like using certain facial expressions at just the right time.  Sometimes it’s more about the stretch of your fingertips, or the energy from your core strength.

Discovering their inner artist means that each competition team student is also expanding their critical thinking skills individually and collectively as a team.  They are cultivating a thought process where they might need to reflect on a personal experience, create a character or mood, self-edit, ask for specific feedback, or offer feedback to others.

If artistry sounds difficult to develop, it certainly can be!  Some dancers find that artistry is quite tricky; others find it very natural.  At Studio 56 Dance Center, we teach that there is no right or wrong way to become an artist in dance.  

As a competition team dancer, your child will notice this growth in their artistry each year as they gain more and more performance experience and apply what they learn.  The benefit to them will be in their personal journey and progress, not in the awards they achieve.  While it’s wonderful to be recognized, it’s the personal fulfillment that will keep driving each dancer forward as an artist.

You know when you’re on the way out the door and find yourself literally skidding to a stop because you (or your kid) forgot something super important?  Your laptop, that homework folder, those lunchboxes, someone’s phone … 

We’ve ALL been there!  And as we approach each competition, we want to help you feel as prepared as possible with these quick and easy organization tips.  No more last-minute-forgotten-shoes.  No more oops-I-didn’t-bring-my-makeup-kit.  Keep reading; we’ve got you covered:

• First and foremost, help your dancer prepare a packing list!  We recommend starting to pack a few days prior to each event so the day-of feels much less stressful.  Jot down everything that needs to get packed, which will likely include all of the following items:

Costumes, accessories, makeup kit, tights (and backup tights), shoes (and backup shoes), undergarments, hair supplies, warm-ups and other team-branded layering items, water bottle, snacks, phone charger

• Build a “survival pack” if you don’t have one packed already.  Think of all the extras that might come in handy: bobby pins, safety pins, clear nail polish, Q-tips, baby wipes, hand sanitizer, deodorant, band-aids, a single-use ice pack, elastic, a small sewing kit, etc.

• Label your dancer’s belongings wherever possible.  Add their name or initials (in a small, inconspicuous place) to each item to reduce the chance of something getting lost and disappearing forever!

• Read back through all of the communications we’ve sent regarding the competition.  We know life is BUSY so we ask that you take a few moments to ensure all of our reminders are clear.  Double-check that you and your dancer understand their commitments during the entire event from start to finish.

• Make sure all of your dancer’s travel plans have been confirmed, including directions and parking for the venue if you’ll be attending the event yourself.

• The night before the competition, bring the packing list back out and check everything off one more time.  It can’t hurt!

We may not have learned how to control time yet (or especially how to control time at competitions!) but we CAN control our own readiness.  While we are getting organized at the studio, we hope you’ll use these tips to get organized at home.  As always, reach out to us with any questions!

The concert may seem far away right now, but months of preparation are needed to make sure every dancer is as ready as they can be.  Just as football teams must practice for months before the Super Bowl, dancers must practice for months before the concert!  

The time required for concert preparation helps teach our students how to work towards a goal—a goal they can take personal pride in achieving.  Some dancers may also be reaching for individual goals, such as improving on a specific step in the choreography or dancing with more poise and confidence than they did last year.

So, what are some of the ways our students are working toward their goals?

Well, as soon as we begin learning choreography in class, each dancer is beginning to develop their memorization skills, both in their mind and in their muscles!  Our instructors are also continually offering corrections and adjustments for the dancers to apply; these small tweaks help each student fine-tune their individual part in the group’s dance.

Once the full routine has been taught, “cleaning” the choreography begins.  This is a simple way to say that our teachers will be helping the dancers improve their routine by practicing the concert dance many times, making it stronger and more polished with every run-through.  This process makes it possible for the dancers to reach their full confidence with the steps, which in turn makes the goal feel truly achievable!

With the outcome of their concert performance in mind, many dancers also take it upon themselves to practice at home.  Others write down their corrections from class in a journal, so they can remind themselves what to work on between classes.  And still others spend time building up their mindset, using positive self-talk and affirmations to strengthen the belief that they can accomplish the goal they’ve set.

What’s extra-awesome about working toward the goal of concert is that it’s a long-term goal and can’t be met by immediate gratification.  Through dance, your child is learning what the “compound effect” is, how small efforts over long periods of time contribute to success.  This lesson is going to benefit them time and time again as they set new goals.

Even our youngest dancers are beginning to understand what it means to work toward a goal.  Although they are still developing their sense of time, the seeds are planted for them to know that we are practicing with a special event in mind … one where they’ll get to show off everything they’ve learned!

Performing in the concert, after all of the preparations and hard work in the classroom, is the ultimate example of goal achievement.  Though the months and weeks leading up the show can feel long, your child will experience the incredible thrill of achievement once the performance is complete!