Minute Masterclass Episode 183

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’re prepping our studio space. 

When it comes to prepping the studio for the new dance season, I like to start with a clean dance floor. I remove old tape markings, give the floor a good cleaning, then apply fresh floor tape. My go-to floor tape is the 1-inch floor marking tape from S&S Worldwide. It comes in a variety of colors and I order them all! 

First, I mark the center of the studio with an X and place a vertical floor marking tape on downstage and upstage center all of the same color. I’ll take a new color and mark an X at the upstage left corner and downstage right corner and along the opposite diagonal with a different color. This makes cueing diagonally across the floor a breeze. If you perform across-the-floor from stage right to left (and vice versa), I would mark those with a different color X with the same color on the opposite side of the studio. For example, if going three at a time across-the-floor, tape a blue, green, and white X on stage left and a blue, green, and white X on stage right so the dancers can see that they are traveling from blue X to blue X, green X to green X, and white X to white X. Lastly, I tape small horizontal lines in two lines to indicate the dancers self-space markers. I like to alternate colors so the dancers can navigate to them easily. 

The last thing I like to do to set up my space is have visuals on the walls indicating stage directions, as well as visuals for spotting. This is important if your walls are usually empty. It is helpful for the dancers to have a visual at eye level that they can see as they travel across-the-floor. Visit our Instagram page @DiscoverDance_Education to see my latest reel on prepping the studio space.  

For more information, to enroll in the Foundations Course, or to join the DiscoverDance Experience, visit DiscoverDance.com.