82: 5 Steps to Cleaning Your Dance Routine While Building Leadership

Summary: If I know our dance world, then I know that one thing you can count on every season is you’re going to have to clean your routines. Whether your dance team is game-day focused, you're preparing for a championship, or you're performing the nutcracker this holiday season, we all want our routines to be as clean as possible. I always, personally, admire the routines that are exceptionally polished. It makes the artistic message easier to read and understand (and it’s just plain impressive) but cleaning can get really monotonous.   From the mental side of things, I know that’s one of the times where we really need our dancers to be more mentally tough. We need them to dig down and stick with us. Learning how to stick with a long, boring task is a good skill to have, so challenge your dancers to stay with you even if you’re spending a long time on one small section. That said, sometimes we all need a break and a little motivation boost.   Today, I’m going to share a cleaning idea that I learned from fellow coaches who were using this a lot during the pandemic when they had to stay in small groups, but, truly, it’s great anytime because of the mental break, the built-in leadership challenge, and that shift in focus.   Pull Quote - Chelsea: “This Station Cleaning Method is a great way to take a mostly-clean routine that isn’t quite consistent yet and give it that last polish. It allows your leaders some autonomy, each dancer has some time for more feedback, and it’s simply just a way to change it up when cleaning monotony is just obnoxious and we can’t do it anymore.”    Key Highlights - [3m 12s] The Station Cleaning Method [3m 57s] Step One: Divide the Routine into Sections [4m 28s] Step Two: Divide the Team into Four Equal Groups [5m 28s] Step Three: Add Giant Sticky Notes to Each Section [6m 36s] Step Four: Send Each Group to Their Station to Clean [7m 35s] Step Five: Come Back Together and Run Each Section as a Whole Group [8m 27s] Recap of The Station Cleaning Method   Resources - Show Notes, Transcript, and Resources: https://chelseapierotti.com/82 Submit your question for the upcoming Q&A episode about building confidence here: https://speakpipe.com/passionfordance ------  Did you enjoy today’s episode? Please leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform! Be sure to visit me on Instagram @dr.chelsea.pierotti for more mental skills advice for dancers.