Focus on the Feeling: A Dancer Empowerment Project

Do you cringe at video of your dance?

Problems, failure, embarrassment

Want to stop?

Dancers love to learn and grow. 

But performance video can be painful. We become so mortified by personal things, body issues, that we can’t even look at our dancing. It would help to have a way of evaluating our own performances that more objective, something that allowed us to take a step back and look with fresh eyes.

But where do we start?

It’s hard to grow as a dancer when you don’t get honest critique so you can improve. It’s frustrating to make a new dance–only to get compliments on your costume. Or complaints about your hairstyle. It would be sooo useful to get feedback on the dance itself.

And what about the feedback we do get? Many well-meaning people criticize us on things that have no relationship to our work—they just project their own opinions onto us. Or they tell us what to do, rather than helping us see our own possibilities in the dance. We need a way to ask for the feedback we want and focus the conversation so we get the information we crave.

What if we don’t like a friend’s dance? What do we say?

Everyone wants to get better, but no one wants to hurt anyone’s feelings. It can be hard to know what to praise–or how to break the bad news. Wouldn’t you love to have a format that allowed you to be honest AND supportive? Now you can!

Teachers! How do we help students improve?

Sometimes we have no idea what to say. Or we say what we think and watch our students’ faces fall. We want to encourage them. But where do we even start? And how do we say it in a way that helps rather than hurts? Wouldn’t it be great to have a checklist, a way to determine the important details of a performance? To know how to discover the dancer’s goals and how to help her reach them?

Wouldn’t you love a system that you could rely on?

A way to give thoughtful, kind, productive critique? A way to enjoy watching your own dances?

Here it is!

Focus on the Feeling

A Dancer Empowerment Project

FoF is a five-week online course to build confidence and skills with a range of tools for constructive, empowering, compassionate response to self and others.

  • This class is NOT for perfectionist nit-picking.
  • This class IS for objective understanding, group support, and targeted growth as a dancer, artist, and human being.

 

What we’ll do:

  • Look at the Response Relationship, Systems for Response, and Self-Response, among others.
  • Explore five methods of empowering response.
  • Learn to avoid perfectionism and get the details we need to thrive as artists.
  • Discover objective criteria so we can focus on our dance.

How do the classes work?

  • Each week, participants explore a different response method
  • Instructor explains and demos each week’s tools
  • Participants upload and self-critique a short video on Monday
  • Tuesday through Thursday, participants critique each others’ videos (one per day) using the week’s tools
  • Instructor provides daily process feedback (M-F)
  • Fridays we post our learning for the week

Why is this class special? 

  • Private forum (NOT on Facebook)
  • Modest work load
  • Premium support, with daily interaction and weekly phone calls
  • Experienced, professional, online instruction
  • Tools you can use right away
  • Focus on the good
  • A great crew and super useful information for you!
  •  
  •  
Treasure chest!
Discover what’s GOOD about your dance–and anyone else’s!

The course runs for 5 weeks
Dates TBA

This way, everyone will be poised for the holiday season with new tools and new confidence.

Don’t have time?

You can do this class in 20-30 minutes a day—at your convenience. The material is accessible, useful, and focused. What’s more, the principles apply to any kind of critique you might want to do–so you can take this and adapt it to your other interests.

It’s a super useful course. I’ve been teaching critique to dancers and writers for 20 years. I’m excited to present this system of objective criteria we can all use.

Afraid people will be mean?

We don’t allow it. The tools are designed to keep things positive, honest, and clear. Alia is in the course every day, multiple times, checking each response. Our rule is, Be helpful, be kind, or begone. 

Interested?

Watch this space for the next session!

Thanks for your interest in Focus on the Feeling.

This course is special because of all the angles.

It approaches the dance as an expression of shared joy, and encompasses any style or genre of belly dance–and pretty much any other thing you might want to evaluate.

  • Practical response methods you can use in any area of your life.
  • Honest, positive, growth-oriented models
  • Tested strategies to help you hear feedback and retain your confidence.
  • Productive, painless, self-response
  • Meet cool people
  • Have fun and dance with JOY!

Win-win!