Do YOU know how to teach music to your dancers? Why should you?

How do you do that anyway?

Good questions that deserve an answer!

Do you know how to teach music? I have no idea, but you'll have a solid idea how after reading this blog post!

Why should you teach music to your dancers? Well, that's like asking why a home cook should learn the attributes of different cooking ingredients. If you know that you can thicken a sauce with corn starch (keeping the sauce more transparent looking) or with flour...

Time to talk..

Music for Plies

When I think about plies as a musician, my mind immediately goes to long and slow. When I was first learning to accompany for ballet, plies were a safe haven since they were the easiest to play for. Later on, as I became more confident in my ability and in my understanding of accents, rhythms, etc, it became something dull and often boring for me. Now, in my 'old' age of experience accompanying ballet, I love them.

I love the weight and elasticity of the movement. I love...

I have a confession to make, I have a song in my head. Almost always! Do you?

That song that you've got stuck in your head..

This concept, or annoyance in some cases, is called an 'Earworm'. It's not a parasite, but it is the name of an phenomenon where a song or piece of music gets stuck in your head for the day before it wanders away. Earworms can be contagious, as we all know!  Interestingly, "..women, musicians and people who are neurotic, tired or stressed are most prone to earworm...

It's spring time here in Calgary, AB, and with that comes gardening and planting!  We decided to mulch in some manure from a local farm to give our soil more nutrition. While we were doing that, we did a lot of digging and exploring in the soil and found lots of worms, bugs, old garbage, big rocks, etc.  It always seems to happen that as you dig into something, you learn more about it, right?

I've been diligently working on the Complete Music Training Course for Ballet Teachers (sign up here to...

Choices..We all have to make them

Have you ever been at a restaurant and said to the waiter, "I'm not sure what I want, the lemon seared trout with risotto or the chickpea/chicken curry bowl with naan..which would you recommend?" So often we're faced with a situation where 2 options would work, but we don't know which one we want.. or why! (After months of social isolation, you can see where my mind is at, a meal I don't have to make!! lol)

Like this little story, you, too, are faced with this daily...

I was listening to a business podcast recently and they were interviewing James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. That man is seriously brilliant and at least 1 out of every 5 sentences he spoke was quotable, but the one that stuck in my brain the most was this..

Every action you take is like a vote for the kind of person that you want to become. -James Clear (Author of Atomic Habits)

So true, right? And interesting.. When I walk through the grocery store and grab a bag of chips instead of a some...

We all know that we gravitate to the familiar. There’s something comforting about doing something you’ve done before because you know it works. My challenge to you for this week is to stop ‘getting in the groove’ and instead, decide that you’re ‘stuck in a rut’ of ease.

Every ballet teacher has their favorites. Maybe it’s a tango for your fondu exercise. Maybe it’s a 6/8 for your plies. Maybe it’s a horn pipe for your sautés. Let’s...