Dancing with Partners
In Week 8 I introduced a new concept to our ballerinas…dancing with partners!
This is a great skill to learn, although it can be really tricky especially with our younger children. So I made sure we had some engaging activities to introduce this new skill.
Galloping with Friends
The children paired up with a friend, facing each other and holding hands.
‘Point your toe the way you want to go’, the children set themselves up and then gallop, gallop, galloped all the way down the other end of the room!
The challenge here is to match their steps to their partner.
If they go too fast, one child will be dragging the other and they will drop hands. If this happens, they go back and start again. This is a great way for our dancers to expand their sense of awareness to what their partner is doing. By holding hands, they notice straight away if they are pulling ahead or falling behind.
I intended to keep it short and sweet but the children had so much fun with this activity that we did it numerous times! We finished off by giving our partner a big hug.
Skipping with Scarves
Similar to the above exercise, except the children are facing the front and holding a scarf between them. In pairs, they skip together, keeping the scarf between them, down the other end of the room.
This is harder as the children aren’t facing each other, so it takes more skill to remember their partner, rather than just race ahead! But this is balanced out as the scarf gives the children more space between them before letting go.
Shadow Dance
This is a dance game that is so much fun!
The children paired up and between them chose one to be the lead and the other to be the shadow. We counted 1, 2, 3, make a shape! The lead would make a shape which the shadow would try to copy.
We made all sorts of shapes; big, small, tall, stretched, silly, high, low, balanced, off center, wacky. Then the children swapped roles so that each child got a turn being the lead and being the shadow. This was lots of fun and also a great way to encourage our dancers creativity as they came up with different shapes.
Stretching Friendships... Friendships often start to develop in class between 3 and 4 years.
It’s a beautiful thing to see and our dancers often take a lot of comfort and enjoyment from having a favourite friend (or 2!) in class.
As long as y
our ballerina is confident enough when her friend is not there, then this is something I encourage with our preschoolers.
However, once our dancers reach Primary school age, I believe it’s also important to stretch them out of their comfort zone. From age 5, friendships can begin to become clicky which left unchecked can lead to other children feeling excluded.
At Amelia’s Ballerinas, we don’t want that excluding, clicky, and dare I say…b*tchy...environment that can leave some young girls left out in the cold...(this is NOT **Dance Moms**!)
We offer a safe place where everyone is made to feel welcome, supported, and valued.
A simple way to instill this value is to have the children rotate who they are partnered with.
During our exercises in Week 8, our Senior and Primary Ballerinas would change partners with each exercise. This was a great way to mix it up, getting our children who are in tight friendships out to stretch out and try things with their other classmates. Who knows, they might even find a new friend!
Enjoy this video of our Junior Ballerinas trying our Galloping with Partners exercise!
