UNLATCHED - THE FORMER DANCER'S FREEDOM FROM THE SHAME COFFIN

former dancer stories Mar 01, 2022

Grace grew up in the dance studio, bored her brothers with annual dance recitals, and learned everything she needed to know about discipline, hard work, respect, and perfection by the time she was 16. She took hundreds of ballet, jazz, and modern/contemporary dance classes between the ages of three and 18.

Her grit, drive, and determination enabled her to succeed outside the studio as well! She excelled in high school, later in college, and ultimately in her professional, non-dance career. In a way, now that she is an adult, she recognizes that her most significant life achievements became possible as a result of the discipline she learned as a young dancer.

Ultimately, Grace did not pursue a professional career in dance. Instead, she went to college and followed her academic training in finance; a few years later she got married and started a family. She became a Mom and a business woman, always juggling, prioritizing, delegating, solving, feeding, and comforting those who...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers: Learn How to Make Pliés and Tendus More Exciting for Adult Dancers using Pop Music - Video 1 is a good example

Adult dance students LOVE pop music! Want your adult students to fall in love with their pliés and tendus? 

In Video 1 of The Dancer’s Workout® (TDW) Treasure Chest you can see how we make pliés and tendus fun with two of our favorite pop songs! 

While visiting our trove of choreography, click around to learn the specific structure and content of our adult dance fitness classes. The videos in the TDW Treasure Chest demonstrate the precise type of masterclass that inspires our intermediate and advanced ballet, jazz, and contemporary dancers to return to class day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, and year-after-year - even during a pandemic!

Start with Video 1, which reveals the type of initial warm-up choreography that gets our adults moving, smiling, and coming back for more!

See you in class!

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 Jules Szabofounder of The...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, Have you lost your flexibility? Video 2 is for you!

The interesting truth is that many dance teachers have lost their flexibility. 

But if you think about it, the loss of flexibility makes sense, right? We are teaching, teaching, teaching and/or sitting at our desks all the time (not stretching), and we get less opportunity to stretch than we used to...

Unless we take and/or teach The Dancer's Workout® (TDW), that is. Those of us who teach a TDW class every day get to dance full-out each day, and this includes doing the awesome TDW stretch songs! These classes are great for our bodies and our flexibility!

We put a little jewel in Video 2 of our TDW Treasure Chest for the DSOs and Dance Teachers. Inside there we have two nice, slow, feel-good stretch songs which are the third and fourth songs in our one-hour, 15-song masterclass entitled, "Second Chances." But today, they are sitting in Video 2 of the TDW Treasure Chest all by themselves, just for you. If your neck, back, hips, and hamstrings feel tight,...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, Adult Ballet, Jazz, and Contemporary Dancers Need Cardio to Stay with you Long-term - Video 3 shows you how easy it is

Let's face it. Adult women are busy.

Between jobs, children, husbands, parents, and household responsibilities, they don't have much time.

They therefore expect the one meager hour they devote to themselves to be well worth their time. 

Yes, they love ballet, but they don't have 90 minutes to spare. They have one hour max - in and out, with perhaps 10 bonus minutes at the beginning or ending of class to quickly socialize with some likable women.

This means their one-hour dance class with you is likely the only exercise they can allow themselves; and while their spirits certainly appreciate the passionate aspects of the class, their "governor" will expect a kick-ass workout that makes them sweat. 

Dance cardio is key to the adult dancer's willingness to come back to class tomorrow, the next day, the next week, etc. It allows them to get a good, really excellent total body sweat on WHILE experiencing the utter and...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, Cardio for Adult Ballet, Jazz, and Contemporary Dancers - Video 4 shows you how we do it

Want to know why so many adult, former dancers go to mainstream gym classes instead of coming to your studio? 

Here's the likely reason: These adults have realized they need cardio to stay in shape. 

If we want them to cancel their gym memberships and come back to our studios, our classes need to keep them in shape, and this means we have to provide cardio.

And here's a big fat secret that works in our favor: Even though these adults need cardio, they are bored, bored, bored at the gym with those mainstream fitness classes that require NO dance training or skill and which offer very little in the way of choreography.

As you can see in Video 4 inside the TDW Treasure Chest, The Dancer's Workout® was designed to fill this gap and offer our current and former dancers the cardio they need with real dance choreography! Our classes use intermediate-level ballet, jazz, and contemporary choreography (with a periodic...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, Playful Dance Cardio Keeps Your Adult Dancers Engaged - Video 5 shows you how we play

Adults want to play.

They want to leave their bills, chores, and stress behind and have a minute.

EVERY TIME I think my choreography is just too darn silly or sexy for grown women, they rise up and play along with me.  EVERY.TIME.

Case in point... The featured song in Video 5 of our TDW Treasure Chest includes some playful "shirt-tails" and it shows us that we do, indeed, have a "Good Thing..." 

You are invited to grab your "shirt-tails" and play along with us! (And nobody wants to hear that you're too "grown" for this. You're not!)

Grab ahold and join us for the third of six dance cardio songs in the TDW masterclass entitled, "Second Chances."

See you in class!

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 Jules Szabofounder of The Dancer’s Workout® (TDW) is a classically trained ballerina from the UNC School of the Arts and former corporate executive who helps...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, Our Dancers are Athletes. In Class, Like in Life, There are Moments When You have to Show Yourself and the World What You're Made Of - Video 6

In class, like in life, there are moments when you have to show yourself and the world what you're made of.

Things stop being easy. All of a sudden it's time to buckle down, grit your teeth, and get it done.

In these moments, there are no free rides, no knights on white horses, and no easy way out.

The 4th and 5th dance cardio songs in The Dancer's Workout® masterclass "Second Chances" are a bit like that. Fortunately they are super-fun; but even so, there is no escaping the fact that when powering through the 4th and 5th dance cardio songs, you are actually smack-dab-in-the-middle of the 8th and 9th songs in this one-hour, 15-song class. You have been going for quite a while and you are tired.

Are you a quitter? No.

Remember what Dad said, "Winners never quit and quitters never win." "You are tougher than you think." "You can do this..." 

Watch these girls kill it with sheer determination while reminding themselves, "Keep your shoulders down....

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, The "Performance" Moment in Each Masterclass Makes Ditching Meetings and Running to Class Worth it! Video 7 shows you why

Each one-hour class of The Dancer's Workout® peaks with the final dance cardio song!

We call the final song in the dance cardio segment of each TDW masterclass our "pull-together song" because this is when the choreography taught during the first 40 minutes of class gets "pulled together" into an exciting mini-performance!

It's a total rush to be pushed to the limit and then expected to perform that final number!

The featured song in Video 7 inside the TDW Treasure Chest is the pull-together song for our TDW masterclass entitled, "Second Chances." It is the dance cardio crescendo! The last hurrah! The moment of truth! The final exhibit of dancer grit and determination after five consecutive dance cardio songs that were full of sweeping balancés and waltzes. This is where we pull the whole dance cardio segment together and perform it like champs.

Just imagine if you and your students had danced full out for the past 40 minutes,...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, This is How We Cool Our Adult Dancers Down and Maintain the Endorphins - Video 8

Imagine your adult dance students have been in class now for about 45 minutes and have just completed an exhilarating set of cardio dance songs. They are breathing hard and sweating and feeling like they just hiked to the top of a mountain where they were greeted with a glorious burst of cool air.

How do we keep them feeling like they want to throw their arms into the air screaming "life is amazing - I'm on top of the world!" 

Let's help them savor this moment of exhilaration with the cutest little cool down song ever! 

After all the split-second mental and physical processing of the choreography  learned and executed in the previous six dance cardio songs, we do a cool-down song that we've used in some of our previous TDW masterclasses as well. This song provides the dancers a chance to do something fun and familiar while we systematically lower our heart rates and get ready for our upcoming Bikini Bootcamp portion of the class.  

Our...

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DSO's/Dance Teachers, Adult Dancers are Interested in Maintaining an Outstanding Dancer's "Bikini" - Video 9 demonstrates how we do it

Over here at The Dancer's Workout®, it's time for our toning exercises, which we refer to as the bikini bootcamp portion of our classes. But don't let the name of it scare you!

For context, imagine that you've nearly made it through a one-hour class with The Dancer's Workout®.  At this point you've warmed up, stretched out, danced your guts out, and cooled off. 

Now we'll start into the last 15 minutes of class where we focus on toning exercises before the final song at the end of our exhilarating hour together.

In Video 9 inside our TDW Treasure Chest we share THREE bikini bootcamp songs, one for your abs, one for your booty, and one for your legs. Let me go on a limb and say these songs are the best things you will do for your bikini all day - maybe even all week! 

So gurrrl… Stop what you're doing, lock the door, click the TDW Treasure Chest, and get yourself down on the...

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