LET'S HAVE A DANCE RECITAL (A GOOD ONE!)

The studio is doing well and the students are getting better every day so it is time to reward them with the most exciting thing that could happen in a child's life. Let's put them on stage. Let's get them some gorgeous costumes. Let's have them dance to some wonderful music to help inspire them.

Let's have a recital!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It all sounds so good. And it is. Especially if everything goes well and it comes off like we planned. And why not?

We have all the necessary ingredients and we know what we are doing, so it should be a piece of cake. Well, let's talk about it and make sure it really does go off as we would like.

First things first. We have to find a place to hold the recital and decide when we are going to have it.

It has to take place sometime at the end of the dance year - Probably in late May or sometime in June. Just be sure that it is not during some major happening in your town. You do not want to announce the date of your show and then find out that there is a major sporting event taking place that involves all the kids at the local high school and many of your students will be going to that instead of coming to perform, or it might be graduation weekend or prom night. So pick your date carefully and maybe that could be time of year that you could have your show every year. It would be nice if your parents all knew that every year such and such weekend is reserved for the dance recital from your school.

For example, I know of one teacher who had her show every year on Memorial Day Weekend and when she retired after forty years, the town named that weekend after her. (Nancy Stone, nee Nancy Robison, in Jackson, Georgia.)

Once you have picked the date, you now need a place to have this wonderful recital. Start with your local schools. Many of them have nice auditoriums with good stages and enough seats to hold the parents, the grand parents, the siblings and all the friends that will be anxious to come and see their neighbors perform.

Start with the best one in town and then work your way down to the others. You have to be a little flexible with your date if you have waited very long to book this event since there are other things happening in your town besides your recital, or the school might have their own agenda such as the proms, graduation, and sporting events that we discussed previously.

Now we have our date and place to hold it. What's next?

How about notifying your students and their parents. Make it the big thing that it is. Let them know how wonderful it will be for the children to perform in this show and how much confidence they will gain from the performance, and how proud they will be to have d one their best to show off all they have learned from their hard work during the year. This show is something special and they will love every minute of it.

Start thinking about the show itself...

Will it be a show that presents all the students starting with the youngest to the oldest?

Will it have a theme?

What about music? Once you decide what your show is going to be all about, it is necessary to pick out good music for the students to dance to. You will need good exciting music that your students will love and that your audience will enjoy. Whether it is ballet, lyrical, tap or jazz or hip-hop, the music can set the pace and make the dance recital an evening to remember for everyone concerned.

Costumes! They are very important and you will have to start immediately going through all the catalogs that you have been receiving from the various costume houses. Make your decisions and let the parents know as soon as possible when they have to get their deposits in so that you can order early enough to get the costumes on time without any hassles.

How about props? If you need props for some of the numbers can you get some of the fathers in your studio to help make them, and when they are finished will they be able to help you get them on and off the stage during the show?

With all this and more to consider, you are going to need some help. Perhaps you have some older students who have been with you for a while who can help rehearse the students during the rest of the year while you spend a few hours on the preparations for the show itself.

And the night of the show you definitely can use all the help you can get. Try and get some of the fathers involved. There will be a lot of heavy things to move in and out of the theatre and if there is some extra muscle around it sure would make it easier for you. Anything that makes it a little easier and takes some of the load off your shoulders is a God send, so see what you can do to get some volunteers.

The dance recital can be your biggest source of advertising since many of the students will have their non dancing friends come to
see them on stage and many of them will be so impressed that they will want to register for classes next season. (It wouldn't be a bad idea to take registration right at the show. Perhaps offer a discount for any new students that sign up that evening. You know that old expression: "Strike while the iron is hot!".)

A dance recital takes a lot of work but if you prepare properly and do as much work as far in advance as possible trying to take care of any problems long before they arise, you can have a fabulous evening that your students and their parents will love, and YOU will go home with a smile on your face.