Hi everyone! Christina and I have wondered how to teach body movements in the digital world. Having a video dialogue on Skype makes it quite difficult to show the whole body, because of the limitations in the camera.
For many years Christina has been a dance teacher, teaching people how to become better dancers almost every day. Some of her students are professional dancers, competing all over Europe. When she moved to London a couple of months ago she had to let go of her classes but not necessarily of her students.
When conversing with her performer students she decided to keep on teaching them but from distance. They share the same passion for dance and that passion made her think about how to put a new perspective on teaching body movements through skype meetings.
In this playful online dialogue Christina had some reflections on how to do it:
To begin with, she was aware that teaching through Skype would give some challenges and that she had to plan her session very carefully. She knew what they were gonna talk about in the lesson and what they were gonna work on. Based on her knowledge of the students and the field, she planned it like this:
1. What do I need: Computer with working Skype, charger, links to videos to be used in the class, any material that I wanna talk about.
2: When teaching: I begin with an intro, making sure that my students and I are on the same page. To avoid misunderstandings I try to make sure that we have the same expectations before starting. Then I listen to and look at their progression from last time to now and build on top of them.
3. The dancing: You can dance in front of the camera but to make sure you are in an environment meant for that and underline what you mean with videos, pictures or links to youtube
From my experience, it is not the easiest way to teach dancing but it is possible as long as you can see and talk to each other. Maybe Skype is not yet made for full body figure teaching, but if your students know your pedagogical way of teaching already, my experience tells me that it can work.
As Christina’s video shows she has a lot of things to improve on, such as lightning, preparation, and environment, but through the work, with online dialogue, she will keep on improving
Based on dialogue with the dancing couple and Christina showings on Skype, this became the result: