All dance teachers want their students to practice outside of dance class. Do you give your students the opportunity to have a copy of their recital music?
Back in the day, when I was a child, my dance teacher would assign a day that we would bring in our little tape recorders or boom boxes. My teacher would put on the record of our recital song and we would push our record buttons all at the same time and record our song, along with the occasional cough, footsteps, or telephone ring that happened during that brief time. Now days technology is so much better. We have Cd's, recordable Cd's, CD burners, ipods, and iTunes. Do you give your students a chance to own their own copy of their recital music?
Some dance studios sell Cd's of the annual recital music. You can create Cd's of the music of the entire show, just Act I or Act II, or only the song from each individual class. You can give everyone an opportunity to buy the CD or they don't have to if they don't want to. There are also dance studios that charge an extra fee of $1 or $2 onto the costume cost, so that each child receives a copy of their song along with their costume. Some dance studios also decided to burn the Cd's and give them away for free. If copying music is too time consuming or if you are concerned about the legal issues of copying music, you can just release the name of the song and artist and let students and parents know where they can find a copy of the song. Most people now days have ipods and know how to access iTunes or another online music website. Students can go online and purchase their song off the Internet very cheaply. Another idea is to have an assigned day when parents can come in and video tape their child's class performing their recital dance in the studio. You can also have the instructor perform the dance along with the students, so that the correct choreography is captured on the videotape. This allows students to receive a copy of the music, along with a copy of the choreography. Hint- Have parents videotape into the mirror so that the dancers don't confuse their right and left or reverse the choreography.
I would like to know if you give your dance students the opportunity to have a copy of the dance recital music. How do you do it? Do you charge? Do you think it helps your dancers? Please leave comments and let us know!!!!
