Dancing Down Broadway

We started this morning by going to our local dance supply store to buy Coppelia some tap shoes.  She really wanted me to order them online (yes, those were her words).  But tap shoes have to fit just right and I needed to know I was getting the right size.  For the last few weeks she has been dancing in shoes a size to big and it is not safe!  Seeing as how it is BROADWAY week we really needed to get her those shoes so we could step it up a notch.

We started with our basic march warm up but this week we marched to numbers that were placed inside hula hoops, when we got to the hoop we did hip circles.

not quite as good as Shakira.

We then brought our story to Broadway.  We began by getting on an airplane and flying to NY.  Once we go their we hailed a cab that drove us to 42nd Street.  We marched along the crowded streets admiring all the brightly lit marquee's

We then bought our tickets, entered the lobby of a fabulous theatre and found our seats.

We then pulled out our hula hoops again and talked about space.  We each stood in our own hula hoop, inside that hoop was our personal space and all the area outside of the hoops was general space.  

We stood in our personal space and did our dance to form our dancer bodies.  

Estee has been wanting to learn hula dancing for awhile now.  I told her all about my friend in high school who knew how to hula.  This friend told me to tell her that the hula was all about telling a story with our hands (thank you Mieke).  So today we did just that, we told the story of the Itsy Bitsy Spider using our hands (and using our hip circles from warm up).  

She wont be performing at any Luau's in the near future but maybe someday she can put it on her resume.

Later we worked on our Grand Jetés (leaps) across the floor.  

We were pretending it was raining in NY and all the streets were flooding.  We were on our way to an audition and did not want to get our outfit all wet and ruined so we had to leap over the puddles.

here is my little teacher tip for teaching these.

I've seen many teachers put down a single object like a scarf or maybe a baton or two and this can be useful in teaching them to jump over the object.  Most kids will do a little pony prance type jump and that is not the goal.  I give my obstacle some dimensions, this way the student has to use their straight legs and stretch them across.  I think a little height and width give it a stronger visual.

Today was a much better day for tapping outside.  The weather was cooler and we had on and off showers to cool things down.  

I also discovered how nice it was to mark things on the cement with chalk. 

(although not the safest place to tap)

I'm thinking I want chalk dance floors in my studio someday.

we were using heel, toe walks across the floor

I held the middle of the rope as well and we tried hard to keep the rope straight by dancing together.

We also used some pom-poms to break up our tap skills

and who doesn't love pom-poms?

We've been working on a number to "Broadway Baby" but I didn't get a chance to film it so hopefully soon.

The rest of our day was pretty relaxing, Estee set up a tea party and we all had to be a new character.  

Estee was Fanny from Fan's.  It is so hot in fans that you have to fan yourself.  Fanny is a wonderful hostess who likes to overfeed her guests.

Coppelia was (Cockala from _____?) it is south of Pittsburgh and everyone there speaks Spanish.

Mommy was Petunia Potts from Savannah (they wouldn't let me wear a turban to tea but trust me I tried)