What Skills Does a Dance Teacher Need?

Job Qualifications Required of a Qualified Dance Instructor

Nov 2, 2009

A career as a dance teacher will offer a variety of job choices for the instructor to pick from.

Dance instructors can teach in many different settings which enables them to work in different types of jobs. They can teach at a school or college level, open a dance school of their own, teach part-time for local dance academy, work exclusively as choreographers or run the backstage areas of dance recitals. No matter which area of dance an instructor chooses to work in, there are some standard skills they’ll need to know in order to be well-rounded instructors.

Dance Classes

A well-rounded dance instructor will know how to teach several different styles of dance. These dance classes might include tap, ballet, jazz, hip hop, or modern technique. The instructor will usually teach hour-long combination classes of tap and ballet for the younger children.

Older children frequently specialize in one style or another, for instance they might choose a ballet class that exclusively teaches classical ballet. The dance instructor will need to teach more complicated classes as the students improve in technique.

Warm Up

One of the most important job aspects of the dance instructor is to teach the dancers proper warm-up techniques. If a dancer starts into her routine without warming up, she can damage her muscles and cause damage to her body. The teacher needs to watch each dancer carefully to make sure she’s doing the moves properly and that the dancer is progressing through the warm up routine in a way that will allow her to dance safely later.

Dance Instruction

The instructor will need to teach proper dance steps and technique for each dance move. If the dancer performs the moves incorrectly or improperly, it’ll be harder for her to learn future routines. The poorly-trained dancer will stand out when dancing in group settings like performances and recitals. Proper technique in dance, just like in warm-up, sets the body up for safe dance moves.

Choreography

The dance teacher is responsible for creating and teaching choreography to the dancers, staying current on the newest moves and styles being taught around the country and will advise and guide the dancers in putting the steps they’ve learned together into proper dance formation. The culmination of this training is usually rewarded with a dance recital in a public setting. The better the dancers, the better the recital will be.

Posture

Good posture is important in dance. An experienced teacher will be able to catch a dancer who isn’t doing moves with the best positioning. Off-balance posture will cause a dancer to fall or to crash into another dancer. The teacher will teach each dancer the technique of proper breathing, how to pull the abdomen in while stretching tall and how to pull the shoulders back and the ribs in. The teacher will also instruct the dancer how to breathe properly so she isn’t holding her breath between or during moves.

The copyright of the article What Skills Does a Dance Teacher Need? in Ballet/Jazz/Tap Dance is owned by Paige Dooly. Permission to republish What Skills Does a Dance Teacher Need? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.