DANCEStudioLIFE dedicated to quality dance education February 2013 Volume 18 Issue 2 Splash Into Summer u.s. $6.95 Summertime teacher-training listings Do-it-yourself continuing ed Homegrown dance intensives Russian summer, Vaganova style Kick off summer with springtime samplers Plus www.dancestudiolife.com Dance honor societies A Better You: go with grace
Top of the Class Never mind the trophies and technique dance honor societies value effort and commitment The phone is ringing off the hook. Costume orders are due tomorrow and your assistant lost the measurements file. Your quarterly tax filing is late. And there s that notice inviting you to create a chapter of a dance honor society to benefit your students. You shuffle it to the bottom of your to-do pile. But wait dance honor societies are not about making more work for teachers and studio owners, says Susan Kirchner, chair of Towson University s dance department and membership director for National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). NDEO sponsors the National Honor Society for Dance Arts (NHSDA), one of two major honor society organizations for middle school, high school, and college-age dance students. The other is Nu Delta Alpha, sponsored by the National Dance Association (NDA), a division of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. Kirchner is frank about the value and promise dance honor societies hold. I would tell studio owners 88 DanceStudioLife dedicated to quality dance education February 2013 and teachers: you get your trophies and that s important in your genre, but how many students do you know are getting scholarships for going to college? she says. How can you talk to parents about what their students can do [with dance] besides go to L.A. and New York to try to make it? Above: Dancers at Greater York Dance met strict requirements for training and community service as they worked toward National Honor Society for Dance Arts certification. Photo courtesy Greater York Dance By Jennifer Kaplan
She sees NHSDA as a way to honor students and recognize their hard work, leadership, artistry, and academic achievement. Additionally, she hopes that it brings dance in parity with other academic pursuits in high schools and beyond. An added bonus for her: the next generation of teachers will already buy into the honor society concept. I m interested in having dance recognized as an academic core discipline, Kirchner says. We have some work to do at the high-school principal level. We also have parent-teacher organizations that need education. And we need to pull private dance studios into the academic discussion a bit more. Getting more people involved with the honor society is one way to promote those efforts. Her goals are lofty, but attaining them would be taking a large step toward ensuring that dedicated students of dance receive the recognition they deserve not only for their pirouettes, but for their passion, perseverance, leadership, and community service. Embracing the concept Teacher and studio owner Melanie Gibbs had sought a way to highlight the potential exhibited by her serious dance students at Boca Dance Studio in Boca Raton, Florida. Let s face it, the majority of my students will go on to college; few if any will go straight into a professional dance career, she says. Gibbs notes that in her region rigorous education is highly valued by parents and that the efforts, achievements, and commitment of her dance students (particularly those in high school) were often ignored. Why? Because private dance classes are outside the realm of high-school extracurricular activities. It was a parent who planted the seed for Gibbs, pointing out that if her daughter spent as much time engaged in any other pursuit from athletics to language study to community service as she did dancing, she would receive an honor at graduation and a notation on her high school transcript. So why not dance? Gibbs responded by signing on with Nu Delta Alpha. Last November she hosted an induction ceremony for more than 90 new members representing six cities in Broward and Palm Beach counties. They came from more than a half-dozen studios; just a third of them were her own students. Gibbs put the NDA chapter on her school s Facebook page and website, and her students also spread the word. Interest was so great and so many high school and middle school dancers qualified that Gibbs had to use a high school gymnasium to host the event, which received inkind support from a local bakery and a print/copy shop. Both honor societies strive to advance the field of dance within academia and in the community at large, recognizing artistic and academic achievement and emphasizing community service and leadership. The options In supporting honor societies, NDEO and NDA have similar goals and practices. The chapter sponsors teachers, studio directors, owners, or professors must belong to or join the parent organization. Ultimately, deciding which honor society to sign on to will depend on which parent organization is more suitable to a chapter sponsor s needs and interests. Both honor societies strive to advance the field of dance within academia and in the community at large. In addition, both recognize artistic and academic achievement by providing membership pins, graduation certificates, and honor cords for high school and college graduates to wear with their caps and gowns. And both emphasize community service and leadership. Since its founding in 2002, NDA s Nu Delta Alpha has inducted more than 6,000 members, including 1,443 in May 2012. These dance students meet or exceed requirements in commitment to technical dance training, community service, leadership, creativity, and scholarship in academics and dance. NDA honor society members are committed dancers who exhibit strength in academics and service to the community. Karen Smith, national advisory committee chair for Nu Delta Alpha and a professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, says the key is that students must be involved in dance each semester, whether in college or high school. They don t have to perform, but in addition to taking classes they should be involved in some other aspect of dance, such as working backstage, ushering, or organizing dance workshops for community groups like Girl Scouts. And they have to maintain a 3.0 grade point average or better on a 4.0 scale. As for competition trophies, they re beside the point, says Kirchner. For students who do perform, it s the experience that matters, whether in a recital, a high school February 2013 www.dancestudiolife.com Dance Studio Life 89
Jennifer Kaiser of Dance Company of Wylie organizes induction ceremonies to recognize new NHSDA inductees such as Ashley Benner. musical, a competition, or a student dance company. But both groups are about more than trophies. Getting involved NHSDA was founded in 2005 and now has 235 active chapters across 30 states, serving public and private middle and high school students whose schools have dance programs as well as private studios and performing arts and community centers. Its popularity has grown it showed an 18 percent increase in the last year alone, according to NDEO spokesperson Melissa Greenblatt. How much work does it take to initiate a chapter? Not much, insists Lynn Monson, executive assistant for Arizona DEO (AZDEO) and a state representative on the NDEO board. Yes, it takes some work [on the part of school owners], but it s not an overwhelming amount, she says. In both honor societies, students must track their hours, grades, performances, and more. They earn points for taking dance classes, participating in dance performances and chapter extracurricular activities, doing choreographic projects, working behind the scenes, and attending professional performances and writing response papers. For NHSDA, students who acquire 30 points and have a qualifying GPA are eligible for induction. A similar point system applies to NDA s Nu Delta Alpha. While the teacher or chapter sponsor must verify a student s points for both NDA and NHSDA, it s the student s job to track them. (Worksheets are available on the groups websites for this purpose.) If the teacher is tracking hours and bugging students to turn in the forms, then the students aren t living up to honor society expectations. I would tell my students, If you want to be inducted you have to do the work, or you don t deserve the honor, says Monson, a former dance teacher at a charter school. I say, It s not my honor; it s your honor. You have to track the points. Jennifer Kaiser, artistic director of Dance Company of Wylie, a suburb of Dallas, began a chapter of NHSDA in 2009. I love how easy NDEO is to work with, she says. All the materials, forms, point-tracking sheets, and more are available online, and each chapter receives a handbook with step-by-step instructions on how to hold an induction, organize meetings, and plan community service events. Even better, Kaiser says, is that she can call a colleague in NDEO if she has any questions. The benefit for her students outweighs the effort she puts in, Kaiser says. It s been a blessing for us because it brings us back to what matters, when we re working on our competition side. The honor society helps keep me in check, she says. Yes, we re preparing for this competition, but what else are we doing? This year, for the community-service component of the honor society, Kaiser hopes to bring her students to Dallas Children s Hospital to dance for and with sick children. It makes me step back and get involved somewhere else and think about what we can do to help others. At Washington College, Smith s students in Nu Delta Alpha and those hoping to join do one service project each semester, which they plan and execute entirely on their own. Through the dance department, the students sponsor a Saturday com- Photo by Dori Jeane Photography 90 Dance Studio Life dedicated to quality dance education February 2013
munity dance day for children in kindergarten through eighth grade. The students teach them creative dance, Broadway, and a little hip-hop, says Smith. Other service projects initiated by Smith s chapter members have sent students to high school PE classes or Girl Scout troops to teach dance. One year the Washington College students worked closely with a Girl Scout troop to help the girls earn a dance badge. Dance Honor Societies NDA s Nu Delta Alpha: Any middle school, high school, college, university, or studio can join or start a chapter. To register your chapter, visit aahperd.org/nda/. NDEO s NHSDA: Any private or public middle school or high school, dance studio, academy, performing arts center, or community center is eligible to establish a chapter. Studios or schools must become institutional members of NDEO. Visit ndeo.org or call 301.585.2880. Putting the program in action Lori Pergament, owner and teacher of Greater York Dance in York, Pennsylvania, appreciates that each NHSDA chapter has flexibility in setting up parameters for honor society membership. One of ours is that dancers have to be training 20 hours a week. It s very strict, she It s been a blessing for us because it brings us back to what matters.... Yes, we re preparing for this competition, but what else are we doing? school owner Jennifer Kaiser says, but I have 15 or 20 dancers who attain that and maintain it. These are all overachieving kids. Their achievement happens to be dance, but often small-town dancers get ignored, without the opportunities for recognition that might be found in a larger community. We re working really hard in our community not to let that happen, Pergament says. Pergament is lobbying York-area high schools to publically recognize NHSDA members at graduation, alongside members of the National Honor Society and the Science Honor Society, for example. In addition to NHSDA s flexibility, Pergament likes the emphasis on community service. Her honor society dancers, with the supervision of some staff dance teachers, participate in an outreach program she calls Dance It Forward. Our goal at Greater York Dance is to open the world of dance to people it may not be touching currently. We re trying to reach people who maybe can t afford to dance or are underserved in some way. Last season her students and teachers offered six-week dance workshops at seven elementary school afterschool programs. We taught them how to dance at no charge, and it culminated in a performance with 100 children. It was very, very successful, she says, both in reaching out to the community and allowing her students to play important roles in carrying out a community service project. The benefits For Monson, of AZDEO, one of the most rewarding aspects of the honor society is that it recognizes hard work and commitment over even extraordinary technical ability, facility, and talent. Not everybody can come home [from a competition] with a trophy, she says. One of the nicest things about the honor society is that by earning the points, it s not all about being the best dancer technically. You earn points for taking class, so if you really put in the hours and your best effort, you get a point. It s not about your skill level. It s about dedication and passion for dance and for doing the work that the teacher has designated you to do. Kirchner points out that dance departments in colleges and universities, dance programs in high schools, and private studios offer many valuable resources to their students and communities. Most people just don t realize what dance has to offer in terms of health, well-being, community building, and artistry. I m here to make suggestions and connections; perhaps [with the honor society] you connect with one other person in your community. This could start more of a synergy about mobilizing support for dance. We ve been siloed for too long. F February 2013 www.dancestudiolife.com Dance Studio Life 91