Introduction

In Dance, students are encouraged to embrace a mind-body approach in learning about the body’s capabilities for movement and expression. Students are encouraged to be curious and reflective as they develop analytical and critical thinking skills. Students reflect on their progress and/or jot down corrections from teachers, noting down their strengths, weaknesses and lessons they’ve learnt when journalling, allowing them to refer when they encounter struggles in their art form later on. Jotting down their progress and corrections allow students to organise their thoughts so that they have more awareness about how they dance and take note of more of their mistakes.

Other than studying ballet, students also do basic contemporary dance techniques and improvisation under Movement and Improvisation, Music Awareness and Movement (MAM), and body conditioning.

Body conditioning

Students are taught to heightened their body and spatial awareness. Body conditioning classes teach dance students pilates exercises and basic body anatomy to strengthen their bodies, prevent injuries and have a better understanding of how different body parts work together to perform a certain movement.

An example is "ab prep" exercises. This exercise strengthens the core muscles. As students get stronger, the teacher increases the level of difficulty in the "ab prep" exercise. For example, bringing the legs up to a tabletop position while maintaining good form in the "ab prep" position.

Movement and improvisation

In Movement and Improvisation (M&I), basic contemporary dance technique is taught as well as improvisation; the latter being about creating and performing spontaneous movements without preparation. One everyday example is having a conversation with someone.

While improvisation and contemporary techniques might not be seen to be in relation with each other, improvisation helps with technique and vice versa. Not having technique will impact how experimental a dancer can be as there is not much that a dancer can question and explore. Likewise, improvisation enforces a dancers technique because the dancer is trying out new things which will ensure that one’s skill is present, not due to muscle memory but strength and flexibility etc that a dancer has. While contemporary dance techniques are often used for warm-up, improvisation can be used as well. While contemporary dance techniques is more systematic, allowing students to focus more on corrections given before. However, improvisation can sometimes allow dancers to warm up faster as there is no fixed choreography, allowing students to be more mobile.

Ballet

In ballet classes, classical ballet is taught. Moves like battement tendus and arabesque are taught and perfected in ballet classes. One common misconception is that in arabesque, ballerinas legs have to be at 120° and above. An arabesque can be at any height depending on the flexibility of the dancer and the choreography given. In ballet, arabesque is a position where the body is supported on one leg, with the other leg extended directly behind the body with a straight knee.

When Ms Poh leaves the studio and it's a dance student's duty to photo bomb your friends "Instagramable" photo.