Minute Masterclass Episode 104

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 going inside a DiscoverBALLET dance class. For our example, we are exploring the concept of BODY SHAPES during this lesson. After our ballet freeze dance and ritual hello song, we perform a ballet braindance emphasizing STRAIGHT, CURVY, TWISTED, and ANGULAR BODY SHAPES. Our braindance includes our CURVY port de bras, ANGULAR pliés, STRAIGHT relevés, STRAIGHT tendus, STRAIGHT boureé turns with CURVY arms, STRAIGHT piques, and STRAIGHT battements (to name a few) intertwined with the developmental patterns of the braindance. Now we are warm, stretched, and already have accomplished so much! 

When it’s time for our obstacle course, we will tip toe across our balance beam with our arms in a CURVY first, develop our STRAIGHT and ANGULAR échappés with our poly spots and agility hoops, navigate a spatial pattern with ANGULAR ballet marches, and finish with a concept exploration. Since our concept is BODY SHAPES, we will copy a ballet position from our ballet flashcards and say what BODY SHAPES our body parts are making. For our final skill development, we will be working on developing our balance. Using bean bags, we will perform Marie Barnett’s Beanbag Balance with a STRAIGHT spine and CURVY first position arms. 

We have successfully developed our ballet skills while exploring and discovering the concept of the day! To learn about our complete lesson plan frameworks, enroll in the Foundations Course for Early Childhood Dance Educators at DiscoverDance.com.