Minute Masterclass Episode 106

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 DiscoverJAZZ dance class. For our example, we are exploring the concept of BODY PARTS during this lesson. After our jazz freeze dance and ritual hello song, we perform a jazz braindance identifying and emphasizing our BODY PARTS. We isolate our HEAD, SHOULDERS, HIPS, and KNEES, we battement our LEGS, we coordinate our ARMS, and stretch our LEGS, BACK, and UPPER BODY (to name a few) all intertwined with the developmental patterns of the braindance. Now we are warm, stretched, and have already accomplished so much! 

When it’s time for our obstacle course, we will retiré walk with high KNEES from spot to spot, leap over cones with straight LEGS, navigate a spatial pattern skipping with high KNEES , and improvise with all our BODY PARTS in the exploration station. For our final skill development, we will be working on developing our jazz lines, specifically our flat back. We will break off into partners and use empty paper cups as reinforcement props to make sure our back is in fact staying straight. We may even try to plié while keeping the cup balanced upon our flat back.

We have successfully developed our jazz 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.