Dance Observation

This assignment was my first experience of watching both and dance technique class and an actual dance rehearsal. For this assignment, I watched a rehearsal for the University Dance theater, where students who choose to be dance majors affiliate with, I was personally blown away by what I saw in both courses. While observing these two I saw the passion in some of the students had for dance and noticed just how hard they work on their craft. I noticed a few things that I already predicted on seeing and a few more things I did not. What predicted on seeing was a big fancy area the dancer used to performed, the stage where the dancers performed had clear glass windows near upstage that showed the view of the city from the second floor. Another

I chose this course because Jazz music and Hip-hop are the two types of music I grew up on, my parents raised me around the world of Jazz, from Kenny G to James Brown to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, these two types of music were huge influences. Going into this observation I saw exactly what I predicted, a huge class consisting about 30 students with exactly one instructor with the hopes a T.A. being in the room, like the dance class I took in highschool. The students enrolled in this course were of all majors and were enrolled to earn their GE credits. For most the class, students danced to several songs that were played by the instructor. While observing, I noticed that all the students were at different levels of dance from each other, some students had trouble keeping up with the routines while others were moving at the pace of the instructor. The music in this course was energizing and loud and was the one thing I really enjoyed about this observation, the movements in the routines danced consisted high amounts of percussive and lyrical movements and used just about every part in the human body. What I really disliked about this observation was the size of the room, in contrast to the rehearsal, the room where this class was being held was relatively small and with all the students in the class it really made it difficult to find a spot to observe without getting in the way of

For example, the dance rehearsal was far more intense compared to the dance technique class mainly because the dancers in the dance rehearsal were preparing for a big performance in Modesto that was weeks away and had an increasing about of pressure on their shoulders and time was one thing they could not waste, unlike the dance technique where students were there for either GE or a workout. Another key difference was the seriousness of the instructors and their interactions with the students. In the dance rehearsal both instructors were on the ball pointing out every flaw out and explained exactly how things needed to be to the dancers, the instructors here connected one on one with the students and had a big family vibe established, while the instructor in the technique class on the other hand got lost in the music and danced more than taught, he even took 20 minutes of the class time to get the students going on their first set of dance routines because he was busy on his computer and because the class was so big, it made it hard for him to develop relationships with each and every student. Despite their differences, these two courses did have a set of similarities overall. Both the rehearsal and the technique course had routines that used every part of the human body and required full body participation from their lyrical movements and percussive