Dancing provides one with wonderful physical and mental benefits, regardless of age. While increasing coordination and flexibility and cultivating confidence and creativity, entering a dance studio in Pearland, TX, can revitalize your exercise schedule and calendar of events. Because there are so many types of dance classes to be explored in dance studios across the country, finding a compatible class could be overwhelming. All styles have distinctive moves, tunes, and techniques to suit those with various personalities and exercise needs.
To choose classes for a child or by yourself, knowing what’s included with every style of dance will assist with a better understanding. Check here for five popular types of dance lessons.
Ballet: The Origins of Dance
Ballet provides a cornerstone to any dance major, with a focus on posture, grace, and proper technique. The dance major begins with barre work, where students work with fundamentals, pliés, and tendus, transitions to center floor work.
Be sure to wear body-tight dance clothing so that teachers can view your alignment – leotards and leggings are common for females, while body-tight tops and shorts or leggings are common for males. Ballet shoes are gentle and respectful, so dancers can see where they are but still cushion their feet.
Ballet classes are slow and technical. The new students are instructed five basic positions and easy movements, but intermediate students are instructed with hard turns and jumps. The structure of ballet being formal gives body consciousness and discipline, and they are very helpful with other kinds of dance classes.
Hip-Hop: Power from Personal Identity
Hip hop classes introduce street dance to the dance studio with lively music and dynamic movement. The genre promotes students to be spontaneous and create their own style, so it’s especially popular with teenagers and young adults.
Lessons begin with a warm-up exercise with isolation—with body parts being isolated singly. Groundwork dance techniques including body waves, popping, and locking are then taught, and combinations are developed from those. The hip hop moves rely a great deal on rhythm, attitude, and dance storytelling.
Comfortable, loose-fitting apparel and stretch athletic wear are a requirement. The apparel allows for the hard, extreme angles that come with hip hop dance but provides flexibility to be able to dance across the floor.
Jazz: Theatricality and Tech Capability
Jazz dance pairs technical precision with stage presence to achieve a lively, entertaining style. Dancing emphasizes snappy, crisp motion, leaps, turns, and dramatic body actions reminiscent of a story or a feeling.
Most classes involve a long, formal warm-up involving stretches and isolation, shoulders and spine, specifically. The students then learn across-the-floor progressions with jazz walks, chassés, combinations with leaps, to be then finished with center choreography.
Jazz dancers wear body-tight dance wear, similar to ballet, but with an inch or so heel and a stiffer sole to their shoes. The dance music varies from songs from Broadway shows to popular hits, so classes are fast-paced and fun. Jazz is one of the most engaging dance class types.
Contemporary: Using Movement to Express Emotion
Contemporary dance combines aspects from ballet, jazz, and modern dance to achieve a fluid, expressive dance. The classes involve work with emotional expression, breathing, and using gravity and momentum to achieve lovely lines and shapes.
Look for long floor work, such as rolls, spirals, and changing weight. Falling and rising are effectively done by dancers, and they move across the entire space of a room. The technique encourages vulnerability and interpretation of personal movement.
It’s customary to dance barefoot to be closer to earth and be capable to perform smooth, fluid motion. The clothing needs to be loose-fitting and stretchable to be able to achieve full motion that’s needed in contemporary’s wide movement.
Tap: Rhythmic Accuracy and Musicality
Tap dance transforms feet into percussion, developing mature rhythms and percussive accents. Lessons involve developing smooth, crisp feet work, time development, and musicality.
Dancers wear special tap shoes with metal plates, a heel and a toe plate. Trainees are instructed with beginning sounds, including shuffles, flapping, and time steps, then advance to elaborate combinations and improvisation.
Tap classes are just as likely to be dance classes as they are music classes. The students refine their sense of rhythm as they practice developing their ankle strength and coordination to get crisp, snappy sounds.
Finding Your Personal Dance Style
Each dance technique provides something unique. Ballet provides technical structure and discipline, hip hop provides creativity and personal expression, jazz provides athletic ability with corresponding performing ability, contemporary provides emotional release, and tap provides musicality and precision.
Attempt a few styles to get a sense of what feels suitable to yourself or to your child. Studios typically offer a beginner’s trial session or starter session where some options are attempted to assess what to invest in.
