Minute Masterclass Episode 6

Welcome to your one-minute masterclass. I’m Andrea Trench, founder of DiscoverDance. Today, I’m sharing the difference between Foundational and Specialized skills. To create a solid foundation, children must be given the opportunity to explore basic gross motor skills such as walking, running, crawling, jumping, hopping, galloping, and leaping. 

We must also allow plenty of opportunity during this period of optimal brain growth for balancing, spatial awareness, body awareness, and self-regulation development. When children have a solid foundation in these skilled areas, they can then achieve Specialized Dance Skills such as mobility, flexibility, stamina, retention, alignment, body control, and coordination that all lead to technical mastery. Think about your older dancers who may be struggling with a certain skill. If you retraced their path that led to this particular struggle, could the solution be a missing piece of their foundation? For more information, visit DiscoverDance.com.