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My First Ever Dance Class Experience

Jake Dukes

Professor Amanda Poitras

DANC 103: Foundations of Dance Techniques

December 5, 2022
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Throughout the experience of this dance class, I have learned and grown so much as a

person and as a dancer. To begin with, I am going to talk about how I have grown so much with

the control that I have over my body. I used to always care more about actually doing the dance

step or the move so that I could look good and better than everyone else; however, I now

understand the technique and control that it takes to actually execute each dance move. Dancing

is a lot more taxing than I originally thought but I have never loved it more. Now I am going to

list off a few examples of things I have learned that need more control that I originally thought

they were. One of the most important dance moves that I learned needs control is a pirouette.

When I was in highschool, I used to think that a pirouette was just something that you did when

you spin your body around and land. I never thought about all of the steps that it takes to even try

and execute a perfect pirouette. After learning how to do a pirouette the correct way, I have

gotten it down to wear so I can control the ending and land it in a visibly pleasing way.Another

dance step that I feel I have learned how to control better in the grand battement. I never realized

that you could not just go around swinging your leg as high as you want without any thought

because you could end up really hurting yourself. Throughout my life, I have always been really

flexible, so I could do grand battements really high but I never really knew the pain that they

could have caused me if I kept doing them the wrong way. This class has taught me how

important control is. Not only has it taught me that but it has taught me how to do it the right

way.

Another major thing that I have grown in through this class is the ability to feel the music

when I am performing or completing a dance step/combo. I have always been very in touch with

music, such as the aspects of performing it and reading, but until now I have never really been

able to feel the music and flow freely with my body movements. I feel now more than ever that I
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am able to start flowing my body movements together and making everything I do in dance

much more fluid. One major example of this that I can see every single day I am in this class is

whenever we are doing combos and dance steps across the floor as a class. Through this I can

really see how my fluidity has gotten better as a dancer. The very first time that we did a grand

allegro across the floor, I found myself thinking more about making sure that I was doing each

one of the moves perfectly and less about making the things that I was doing look like a dance

combo. The more I have had time to practice and just loosen up, the more I have come to realize

that I have grown so much in letting the music lead my body rather than letting my brain lead my

body. Musicality is a very important aspect of the entire realm of musical theatre, and I am so

glad that this class has allowed me to further my ability to interpret music.

Now that I have discussed what I feel like I have grown in, I am going to discuss some

areas of focus that I believe I still can get better at. The first area of improvement that I believe I

have to work on is balance. Throughout my life, I have had a really hard time with balance. It has

never really been a focus of mine to ever work on my balance. However, when I got to this dance

class, I never realized how important it is to be able to balance when you dance. That is why it is

very hard for me to do combos at a slower pace. I have realized that the slower that you go in a

combo the more balance you have to have to be able to execute the dance steps. For example,

one of our combos that we presented at showcase was very slow and required a lot of balance. It

was the tendu combo and I had a really hard time staying balanced during that piece. I eventually

got better at it but I still need to grow more and get better and balance. The second area of

improvement that I think I need to grow in are my jumps and leaps that are a part of almost every

combo. The leap that I struggled with the most is the leap at the end of the grande allegro. I do

not like the way that my legs look when I do that jump. It is crazy to me because I know how to
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do a toe touch and I can get my legs high enough in that, but when it comes to the leap in that

combo, I just can’t get my legs up high enough. Also, sissones and assembles are two of the most

challenging jumps that I have been taught. I have had to put a ton of effort into learning those

leaps. I still struggle with those jetes, but they are definitely the most fun and challenging jumps

that I have learned in this foundation class. With that being said, even though jumps are some of

the most challenging things for me as a dancer, my favorite combo that we learned is the third

one with all the jumps. Even though these are some of the areas that need improvement for me as

a dancer, I believe that next semester I can turn these areas of improvement into areas of

impressive growth.