Minute Masterclass Episode 102

Welcome to your one-minute masterclass. I’m Andrea Trench, founder of DiscoverDance and creator of the Foundations Course for Early Childhood Dance Educators and the DiscoverDance Experience Membership. Today we are talking about how we apply the concepts of dance in our DiscoverDance curriculum. In Minute Masterclass episodes 45-56, I define the conceptual approach and break down the eleven concepts we explore throughout a dance season. I recommend listening to those episodes, if you haven’t already, before moving forward with this series. 

All DiscoverDance classes explore the concepts in the same order no matter the style of dance being taught. If I am teaching a ballet class, my first lesson plan will be the concept of PLACE. As I move through the lesson, I will emphasize what movements keep us on our spot: a plié for example, and what movements take us through space: a grande jeté for example. As we move to the next concept of SIZE, I will emphasize the size of our plié. We start small with our legs together then make a big shape with our knees apart. For our grande jeté, we begin with small runs as our preparation then perform a big run as we leap through the air. The accumulation of the understanding of the concepts and how they apply to each specialized dance skill is how we know our students truly understand the skill we are presenting to them. They are not just mimicking our movement or copying our shapes. They are executing the skill by discovering the concepts that create that skill. To learn about our complete lesson plan frameworks, enroll in the Foundations Course for Early Childhood Dance Educators at DiscoverDance.com.