Talent Abounds by Robert F. Arnove

Author:Robert F. Arnove [Arnove, Robert F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317251019
Google: _QjvCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-17T02:49:59+00:00

Tina Ramirez

Like Parsons and Muller, Ramirez views her role as dance educator as having two major components: outreach for novices and professional training for individuals pursuing a career. She rightly argues that the best teachers should be instructing beginners, something that often does not occur because the most experienced instructors are assigned to advanced classes. To make dancing come alive for young students, Ramirez advises her teachers to use imaging techniques similar to those discussed by Parsons and Muller. For example, teachers might say, "Stretch your spine to the ceiling and let me see how tall you are going to grow two years from today." As Ramirez notes, "Say that to a six-year-old and they'll show you."

Although initially considering it appropriate to wait until age seven to begin formal dance instruction, Ramirez established a "pretechnical program" for children ages three to six. Her ideas changed when she saw how preballet creative dance could be taught well. The children are taught where dancing takes place in the body, different rates of movement, and "pathways" (straight lines, zigzags, and the like). Students learn "to move on the floor like an amoeba, swim like a fish"—all illustrative of the creative imaging of bodies moving in space in seemingly unbounded ways.

Although Ramirez would very much like those serious about dance to have what she calls an "intellectual/creative approach" to performance, time constraints (inherent in an American educational system that does not follow a conservatory model) require that eventually more emphasis be placed on the learning of technique.17 She regrets that "you usually learn ballet twice a week, which is never enough." Still, for Ramirez, "the wonderful thing about ballet is that you have to do it over and over again—and you get to perfect it."

An important focus of Ramirez's education program is Spanish dance and culture. In the first year of the program, students take two ballet classes and one Spanish dance class. This, Ramirez believes, is the appropriate time to teach the rather difficult tasks of coordinating Castanet playing with dance steps—which can be accomplished within a ten-month period—as "they are young enough to do it without even thinking." She stresses the importance of the Castanet exercises in enhancing hand-eye coordination, in addition to developing the child's ear for multilayered rhythms in the music. With Spanish dance, as with ballet, expert teachers are required if students are to acquire "the feeling of dance."

For Ramirez, master teachers are "very rounded in their subject matter." The members of her company, similarly, need to be well grounded in ballet as well as in modern movement. Moreover, they must be able to "move in an ethnic way." She believes that if dancers have only one technique, it doesn't fulfill their needs while limiting career options. Dancers also must learn to be dramatic. The requirements for a full-fledged professional career are such that perhaps only one or two out of one hundred students will be able to succeed. Nevertheless, many of Ramirez's students have gone on to successful careers.

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