so fresh and so clean, clean: hit & freeze

Congratulations! You've choreographed a great routine your audience will love...now what?  It's time to clean, of course!  Having been a studio dancer for most of my life, and then a drill teamer during high school, one major difference I noticed is the lack of a cleaning phase at the studio level.  This is a very important step in the performing process that I think many studios could benefit from.  There are a number of ways to polish and perfect your team's performance to ensure excellence on the field/floor/stage and I find that I often use a variety myself.

One way to save yourself a lot of time in this phase is to start teaching correct placements, style, and technique right off the bat.  My girls already know that when I teach choreography, I am showing them exactly what it should look like when it is performed.  They know the precise placement of each part of their body as they learn the steps.  If I teach that our right arm is in a high-V with hands turned out and we are looking to the left, then that is the way I want to see it done every single time. 

Because not all dancers catch every detail while an instructor is teaching, routines must still be cleaned.  Always start at the beginning of the routine.  I am a big fan of the "Hit & Freeze" method (very technically named, I know).  This is when the dancers, as the name suggests, hit whatever they are supposed to be doing on each count and freeze.  I inspect each part of every dancer to ensure that they are all consistent and uniform.  I check my officers first so that I can then enlist them to check the rest of the team.  The girls don't always enjoy this type of cleaning because they often end up in awkward body positions that are uncomfortable to hold for longer than the 1-2 counts intended.  However, they know that the sooner everyone gets in the correct position, the sooner everyone can recover.  (About halfway through the routine is when I like to remind them that had they paid closer attention during the teaching, they would already know the correct placements and we wouldn't have to be doing this.) 

You certainly don't have to go through the entire routine like this. Watch it with music a few times and note the sections in the dance that don't look uniform and synchronized.  Maybe there are just a few trouble spots that need the "Hit & Freeze" and you can focus just on them.

I'll continue sharing cleaning methods and tips in this series.  What are somethings that work for you in polishing your routines and getting them performance ready?