Learning Dance

We had such great classes last week! Thanks again for sharing your kids with me and I enjoy teaching them dance! I want to share a little more about me and the teaching your child is receiving!
Many of you have said, 'my daughter kept asking to do this' and 'she has been wanting to do this for a long time!' When you say, 'do this' I assume you are saying to learn 'ballet' and she is actually learning so much more!  I am teaching the children praise dance as the main goal and ballet skills as needed.

Growing up I was in a few different ballet classes and I longed for something more. I knew there had to be more in regards to the purpose of dance than just dressing up like a Christmas tree, for example, for a Christmas Recital. I also realized the temptations for young girls to think they have to 'look' a certain way to dance and work so hard to be the 'best' so to speak. Dance can become very self-serving and self indulgent and can lead to unhealthy competition among dancers and eating disorders. This type of dance world hindered me from wanting to be a part of it. As a Bible teacher at heart and a Bible Ministry major in college with a love of dance and a few years of ballet training, I long to create an environment for young dancers to flourish and learn all that God has called them to be as dancers. Dancing was God's idea as it says in Zephaniah 3:17, "The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice (DANCE) over you with singing.”

There is much verbal teaching that goes along with this type of dance and I will be doing this in classes along with teaching some physical ballet skills. The ballet skills are secondary to the praise dance and are taught to enhance the interpretation of the songs. At some point in the future, Master's Dance may offer 'ballet only' classes for students to gain more extensive ballet skills.  The current classes are a good foundation for all their dancing!