WASHINGTON: Age 2½-5 Saturdays & Wednesdays
FARRINGDON: Age 2½-5 Tuesdays
See the 'Tap' page for details on the Dinky Tappers class.
See the 'Cheer & Majorettes' page for details on the Dinky Cheer class.
“Children cannot technically refine or stylise
movements until the quality of the raw movement is established. Children who do
attempt specialised skills before reaching mature forms of fundamental skills
run the risk of performing poorer quality specialised skills. Poor patterns of
movement are difficult to eradicate. It is more efficient to teach properly
from the very beginning than to retrain. The development of fundamental
movements is central to the Pre-School Dance Curriculum” - Royal Academy of Dance
The pre-school dance curriculum is designed to enable children to participate in dance activities that are developmentally appropriate, helping to facilitate the learning of dance skills at a later age, in particular it leads well in Ballet and Modern Jazz. The main aims of these classes are:
- To
enhance movement abilities, physical fitness and spatial awareness
- To
encourage expressive movement and build confidence and self esteem
- To encourage co-operation, social skills and stimulate listening skills
Although the description of the curriculum may sound very technical, it doesn’t seem this way to the children. They don’t realise that by pretending to fly they are developing their own fundamental movements (such as balancing, starting and stopping etc). At this age they don’t understand that passing and rolling a ball round the circle to different musical instruments is teaching them musicality, rhythm, teamwork and listening skills and that impersonating animals is encouraging creativity and developing speech and language. As far as the children are aware, they are simply playing games, singing songs and having fun.
“Let us first teach little children to breathe, to vibrate, to feel, and to become one with the general harmony and movement of nature. Let us first produce a beautiful human being, a dancing child”
- Isadora Duncan
Each
week the children explore a theme through the use of imagery, stories and
props, with each theme lasting approximately half a term. Some of the themes
used are “The Enchanted Castle”, “The Toy Kingdom” and “The Jungle”. During the Dinky Dance Stars classes
(level 2) some basic technical Ballet steps are also learned.
Of
course, everybody knows that young children love pop music and some classes are finished off with a quick bop to the children’s favourite chart hits, whether
it be Kylie, Busted or even Bob the Builder!