The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Welcome back to the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. I'm your host, Maia. By this point, you probably know I love a theme. And with Halloween coming up, I always love to do some Halloween or fall-themed classes this time of year. So I wanted to share a couple of my ideas on how to incorporate that theme into your own classes. Let's talk about it.

Before we get too far into the episode today, I want to invite you right off the bat to join me in the Casual Dance Teachers network on Facebook, because I plan to share some resources there that will help you if you're looking to do Halloween or just fall/autumn-themed classes. I do have a playlist that I've been building up for the past couple years with a variety of different styles of Halloween themed music. So, I'll share that in the description below. And if you're the Facebook group, along with one of my favorite warm-ups to do this time of year. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast from the beginning, pretty early on, I mentioned how I love to use the Brain Dance exercise in different styles of dance to not only warm up students' bodies but also activate their brains in a really important way.

And there's a really fun spooky Brain Dance exercise that you can find online. And I'll share that in the Facebook group. That's the Casual Dance Teachers podcast. And I'll share that in the Facebook group. I like to use around this time. Basically, it uses the premise that the dancers are walking and wandering through a haunted house. And it uses all of this different sort of spooky imagery to have the students activate all of their different senses and using bilateral movement, tactile activation of different parts of their body. I find that students of all ages have fun with this. Now I do. Change up the way that I'm wording it and the way that I'm incorporating the movement depending on the age of the students and what style of dance we're doing.

But spooky brain dance is such a fun warm up for Halloween time in any dance class, in my opinion. Once you get into the actual body of the class, I think it goes without saying that you can incorporate this theme just by choosing any kind of Halloween, autumn, fall themed song and coming up with a fun combination to it. I've mentioned in the past that I like to use the theme of the dance class as a way to incorporate the that I try to always keep units within my dance classes of about a month. So I'm not just doing one special Halloween class in whatever week Halloween falls on. I'm actually doing a whole month of using the same combinations, the same material.

I'll use that spooky brain dance as the warm-up for a whole month leading up to this class. And that just gives me the consistency that the students really need in order to get something out of it without it just being a totally fun and frivolous class without really building technique, artistry, whatever skills I need to work on at that time. Just to give you a couple examples of combinations that we might work on during that unit. In ballet, there are a lot of ballet variations that delve into all different characters. You know, you don't have to go spooky or creepy, especially with younger kids. You don't want to do anything too scary because the students might not like any scary themes. And also I try to be really sensitive to the theme of the dance class.

So I'm not going to be doing a lot of things that don't accept, you know, supernatural themes that often come along with Halloween. So I try not to push that and really keep it in the theme of this is just a unit where we get to explore expressing different characters. This is not about anything scary or trying to scare anybody. But it's a good opportunity to embrace that idea of having the opportunity to dress up, having the opportunity to express a different character. So ballet variations are such a fun way of doing that. In other styles of dance, such as hip hop or jazz, it can be fun to revisit Michael Jackson's thriller and teach that as part of a Halloween class. I'm sure there's other examples.

So let me know in the casual dance teachers network on Facebook what some of your favorite Halloween combinations across different styles of dance might be. Now, as much as I'm using the whole month of October to work my way through a full unit, a combination or a series of combinations where I might use Halloween-themed music, I do tend to have a sort of special fun class on whatever week lands closest to Halloween, where the students are allowed to wear their costumes to class. Depending on the style and the level of dance, you might have to create certain limitations so that the dancers still are capable of dancing and not completely limited in their movement. But primarily, I find this to just be a fun, fun, fun thing to do.

So I'm going to show you a couple of ways that I do that. So a couple of ways that I do that would be one, as the students are coming into the room, I ask them to maybe do a couple warm-up steps, or do the combinations that we've been working on, or just do a very simple new phrase or combination across the floor in their character. So they are all getting the same movement style, but having to experiment with how do I portray this in a new way. So I'm showing what their character is. There's also so many improvisation activities that you can do with the students, improvising how their character would move, or maybe they have to choose one of the other student's costumes in the room.

And even though they're dressed up as say, a beautiful princess, they're going to have to do some improvisation of dancing like a spider or something creepier. So, doing improvisation to different types of music, or using different elements of artistry that you're working on is so easy when you already have all these different costumes and characters in play in the classroom. I also like to do a little dance charades. I think I've talked about this before in a previous episode. But in this unit, it's really fun to do dance charades that's themed around Halloween. So, you can put different action words in a hat, or I like to do in a pumpkin, so they're drawing out of the pumpkin. Things like, trick-or-treating, getting sick from eating too much candy, carving a jack-o'-lantern.

I make sure that they are action words. So the dancers have to act out that action using vocabulary that they've learned in the class so far. So I always make that rule. No one is allowed to guess what you're acting out until they've seen you actually use a step or steps from the style of dance that we're working on. So I always make that rule. No one is allowed to guess what you're acting out until because what can happen with the dance charades is that dancers get a little nervous when they're on the spot, and they're not really dancing. They're just trying to act it out like you would with normal charades. And I'm really trying to push the dance element of it. So we have that rule.

You have to not only act out the action, but you also need to show me that you know some steps that we've worked on in class and can show those to the students. Again, that's another way of utilizing your vocabulary. So I always make that rule. No one is allowed to guess what you're while layering on the idea of acting out a character on stage. As long as I have that pumpkin with the different dance charades cues in it, I might also use it just to throw some of the vocabulary in. So for example, I'll write down the names of different jumps we've been working on, the names of different traveling steps, even the names of different positions of the body and have them stand in center, throw them all in the pumpkin and you can pass the pumpkin around and just test the students out a little bit or just make it work.

So I always make that rule. No one is allowed to interact. So if you're doing something across the floor, have the first student pick something out of the pumpkin, they all do that step across the floor, and then the next student gets to pick what you do next. With young dancers, it's very easy to cut out paper pumpkins or use felt or you can buy pumpkin-shaped markers on Amazon. I like to do spot the pumpkin to help teach turns. So I'll put the pumpkin up about eye level height. I like to do spot the pumpkin to help teach turns. So I'll put the pumpkin up about eye level height. I like to do spot the pumpkin to help teach turns.

So I'll If you have those nice pumpkin candy buckets that they make, you can usually get them at the dollar store. And I find that that's also actually a great size for dancers to need to hold while turning or while performing different steps to give them that tension of squeezing down onto something, getting their hands a little bit apart, and their arms in the proper placement to turn. Effectively with that pumpkin in their hands. So working on turns, again, these are all super simple activities, but it's just fun to kind of reinvigorate those basics with the theme of Halloween. Young dancers might also like having pumpkins as their place markers. And I like to use them for things like when I'm doing ballet, I will sometimes remind my young ballet dancers, the difference between tendu and dégagé by putting a paper pumpkin under their toes.

And for tendu, they know they have to take the pumpkin out in front of them with their toe, and then slide it back as they bring their foot into first so the foot never leaves the pumpkin. Whereas dégagé, they release the pumpkin in front of them. Maybe we'll work on piqué and practice gently piqué-ing the toe right down on the ground. And then we'll work on piqué-ing the toe right down on the ground onto the pumpkin and picking it back up. I once actually did that same activity with some little plastic rats and bugs that I found very inexpensive. And I put the little rats and bugs under their toes and had them do piqué like they were scared, like 'eek', piqué, just to teach them it had to be a very quick and sharp movement.

And they had to keep their legs straight by trying to squish that bug or squish that rat under their toe. I know I use a lot of ballet examples, but I can think of tap being a really great place to use those same activities for young students if you're teaching them to dig or teaching them toe transferring weight, using pumpkins or using a little plastic bug or something like that, and having them act out that they're scared or that they're squishing or they're stamping through the pumpkin patch. There's a lot of fun imagery that can be incorporated to reinforce those concepts. I'm not a hip hop teacher, so I tend not to use any hip hop music. I'm not a hip hop teacher, so I tend not to use any hip hop music.

I'm not a hip hop teacher, so I tend not to use any hip hop music. I'm not a hip hop teacher, so I tend not to use any imagine when you're doing anything where you have to place your hands or your head or shoulder on the floor, which you might be doing in hip hop if you're teaching freezes. I certainly do that in my modern classes because we incorporate some inversion and transferring the weight to different parts of the body in modern. This is where you could use pumpkin place markers on the floor, almost like playing a game of Twister. So, you know, you want this hand on the orange pumpkin, this hand on the green pumpkin, and this hand on the blue pumpkin, and this hand on the yellow pumpkin.

The side of your head on the red pumpkin. And that brings me into another fun game that I like to incorporate this time of year, which instead of trick or treat, I call this tricks for treats. And I use the term tricks loosely. So if you're working with dancers that have some trick steps, you know, inversions and freezes could fall under that category or more complex leaps, turns, tricks, acro things that you're incorporating into your class. Tricks for treats is really fun. I use a segment of the class to assign different dancers that they have to do a trick cleanly. And then I have some sort of simple treat, could be a piece of candy, could be a sticker. I've even done little slips like they get to be the teacher for five minutes of the class.

That's usually for something, you know, they have to work pretty hard to get that I'm not going to give out a whole bunch of those and let them take over half of one of my classes. But for older students, to say, here's: You can be the teacher for five minutes, you get to start the warm up next week. They enjoy that because it's like they get to stall having to do the hard work of having me be the teacher and they get to also kind of show off by being up front, be the teacher. So you can do any kind of treat that you want. It doesn't have to be food or candy, of course. Even if they're not doing trick steps, you can still call it tricks for treats and use even basic vocabulary.

It's a way to test and give them a little pop quiz of the vocabulary, and put them on the spot a little bit. So I do instead of drawing from a hat for this, I tend to go based on what I know each dancer needs to work on, and what her level is in my class. So, if I have a little bit of variation in the dancers' abilities, I'll ask one dancer to do a more simple step, but it has to be clean in order for them to get their treat. And then a dancer that's at a slightly higher level, I'll assign something different. That way, everyone's getting a little extra testing without it being something that is out of their ability, where they're not going to be able to get the treat.

Obviously, you want everyone to get the treat. And there's another way that I use the trick or treat theme, which is that if we're working on a certain step, I will say, 'you tell me, is this a trick or a treat', I will perform the step and they have to tell me if I performed it correctly. Or if there are some issues, that I need to correct. And it was a trick, I wasn’t performing it correctly. Now these dancers are brutal. So if you're going to do this game 'trick or treat', and you’re going to be the one performing and having them correct you and tell you everything that you did wrong, be prepared to be eviscerated.

My students will tell me any tiny little thing, my hand was in the wrong position, one shoulder was slightly lifted, you know, it's great, I want them to be that perceptive and be looking for things. I can do my very, very best on a step that maybe isn't even that complicated. And they will just tear it to shreds. So be prepared for that. But I think it's really fun, again, to give the students and this is any age, you know, older, younger, any age, throw that in there and let them take on the role of teacher and you're taking on the role of student and letting them correct you. It's an introduction to having them think critically and give corrections, and then hopefully apply those to their own bodies.

So those are just a couple of my quick Halloween dance class ideas. I know this was pretty simple, basic stuff. But again, leaning into that theme is always fun. And I always bring these topics up to you guys, because I want feedback myself. I by no means think that this is going to cover every single class, any situation, any age group that you have. But those are some starting ideas. And I want to hear back from you. So look for additional resources in the description box below. In the Facebook group, that's the Casual Dance Teachers Network, I will be posting additional resources that I referred to here as well as other ideas that might come up for me and other things that might be working currently for me in my dance classes around this Halloween or autumn theme. And as always, I want to give a big shout out to GB Mystical for the fun theme music. And of course, because of the theme, I had to end with a quote that ties in the theme of autumn and of dancing. This is a quote by Anne Drake. You can smell autumn dancing in the breeze, the sweet chill of pumpkin and crisp sunburned leaves.