Benefits of Modern Dance?

[ParentTaxi]

At DD's school, there are separate classes for ballet, Modern theatre and Tap right from the beginning (it's an ISTD-for-everything school, does ISTD ballet as well). In general, simply because the school misses out the very first Modern exam , while doing it for Tap and ballet, children who do all 3 will tend to be around 1 grade ahead in Modern compared with ballet and tap (DD did her grade 5 modern first, then her grade 5 ballet, and is doing grade 5 tap in a couple of weeks).

 

The older Modern Theatre classes have started doing the Jazz exams (Bronze, Silver and Gold) as an 'along the way' intermediate exam between Modern grades, as quite a lot of the current cohort working on Grade 6 Modern are relatively young and could benefit from a broadening of their knowledge of different styles. So DD and her cohort did Bronze Jazz a couple of terms after they did their Grade 5 (DD felt it to be very easy, but fun), and may well do Silver or Gold  after their Grade 6. I don't think they have thought it out perfectly quite yet, as tbh DD feels they could have done bronze and Grade 5 the other way round, but I can understand the intention

 

As far as lyrical and contemporary goes, the ISTD MT sylabus has a fair amount of lyrical, and DD and her friends all dance lyrical solos and groups as a matter of course based on their Modern technique. Their teacher has been playing around with contemporary ballet styles to add variation to their 'classical ballet' work - DD (12) currently has a trio with a contemporary feel, and there is a group dance which has a very similar flavour. - but like lyrical it isn't taught as a separate lesson.

[Dance*is*life]

Grade 3 is very late to start modern! Children at dds previous school tended to start around the age of 5/6, just slightly after tap.

 

Contemporary is started later around the age of 11.

I suppose it depends on the technique they teach. When I wrote modern that might well be what you mean by contemporary - I'm afraid I'm not really up to date on the differences nowadays - our teachers don't teach the modern that I learnt at school any more!  Unless that's what the original poster meant when she said the modern work seemed old-fashioned - perhaps they still do teach my modern in the UK!

[Picturesinthefirelight]

Modern in the UK is Modern Theatre, completely different from contemporary.

 

Modern is very very much alive & kicking in the UK. The syllabus starts with Primary aimed at 5 year olds.

 

http://www.istd.org/modern-theatre/

[annaliesey]

Yes I did mean modern rather than contemporary. The modern my daughter does is kind of a bit disco-ish

I've attached a link to one of the dances for istd modern grade 3 that she was using for practise before exam so you can see. It's private unlisted on YouTube so only watchable via the link. Hope it's helpful
 

(edited to remove link)

I've also attached a link to one of the istd gold jazz videos for practise so people can see the difference
 

(edited to remove link)

They both happen to be Isolations

Maybe I just see things differently as a mum rather than the way student or teacher would see things but to me the jazz seems more beneficial / interesting / current which was why I was questionning benefits of modern theatre syllabus individually

Also I watched some YouTube videos by searching "Janet cram awards" where people had posted rehearsal type movies and interestingly a lot of these are lyrical style (rather than modern) so that begs the question whether lyrical should be in its own syllabus rather than bundled in with Modern.

thanks for comments

Edited December 17, 2015 by JulieW
Edited to remove links that identify dancer

[Mrs Brown]

sorry if I have missed it but how old is she? there is a huge difference in level I personally would think between the gold jazz award and grade 3 modern theatre.  In our dance school the children would be taking grade 3 around age 9 but I thought the jazz awards were aimed at older, more alongside grade 5 or something. I could be wrong but looking at those two dances/exercises there it would look like that.  Have you seen the grade 5 or 6 modern to see what that is like? perhaps that is more in line with the gold jazz whilst being a different style.

[annaliesey]

Thanks Mrs Brown. She's 10 and I've just been discussing same thing with Katymac as maybe I'm feeling like this because of what dd has been doing in silver and now gold jazz but has got stuck in a group of slow students at G3 modern. Her teacher has recognised this and invited her to take g4&5 modern concurrently starting just recently.

 

I think when I first started this thread it was because I'd seen a load of modern dances at a festival for range of age groups in competitive environment but just thought the style looked a bit old fashioned across the board in terms of modern. I could appreciate the lyrical styles and jazz but struggled with the modern I saw as it just left me thinking it might not be such a worthwhile use of time and money that could be better spent pursuing a different syllabus instead

[Katymac]

I also don't think 'competitions' are really a fair reflection of the syllabus  - they certainly wouldn't be in the area of Latin & Ballroom

[taxi4ballet]

We don't follow a syllabus for anything but ballet in our school, but I can assure you that there is a huge difference in modern/contemporary and jazz dance.  We have separate teachers for both genres and I think the dances for the end of year performance are quite distinctive.  The interesting thing is that none of the teachers will accept a child in their classes who hasn't done ballet.  In our school that wouldn't happen, but I believe they apply that rule elsewhere too, because they all insist on a level of technique which is not possible without a ballet foundation.  We start preparatory modern around Grade 3 level and jazz is introduced in Grade 5. 

Just out of curiosity, would your school be happy to teach just modern/jazz/contemporary to students who did ballet at another school, or would you prefer them to take ballet with you as well?

 

edited for rubbish spelling!

Edited March 16, 2015 by taxi4ballet

[Guest]

Looking at the videos I would say the gold jazz looks very much like the Standard of inter foundation modern(ISTD). I didn't do grade six( I did grade 3, 5 and intermediate) so can't say of it was around that standard also x

[ParentTaxi]

I can see that if she is doing silver / gold jazz at the same time as Grade 3 modern the modern will feel more basic - because it is.

 

DD and her friends will do Silver / Gold jazz interspersed with Grade 6 / Intermediate Foundation (?) modern: as i said above, she felt that Bronze should come before Grade 5 not after. So if your DD is doing Grade 3 MT alongside Gold Jazz, she is doing syllabi at very different levels and, in many ways, targhetd at very different ages.

[Katymac]

DD did Bronze Jazz, Modern Grade 5, Silver Jazz then Modern Grade 6 I think.....(better check her CV)

 

 

 

Edited to add - I checked that is the right order

Edited March 16, 2015 by Katymac

[ParentTaxi]

KatyMac, DD would agree with you that that is the sensible order in terms of challenge of the syllabus. Her dance school doesn't do the jazz awards as a matteer of course, so they got the order / pitch slightly wrong in her case. Certainly she had no trouble learning Bronze Jazz from scratch in a term after Grade 5.