BUDE Teacher

Swish! Goes a dancer as she leaped high in the air. Whirl! Goes another as she turns three times and lands so quietly. The dancers go through their routine with bright lights shining on their face. Looking at the dancers with their bright tomato red lip stick and slicked back hair in addition to their glitzy costumes. Only two minutes being shown of all the hard work through the first semester. Countless hours of rehearsal are being brought into that once performance. That one performance is how people see the hard works and wonder what these dancers do in their classes each week. The sweat, blisters, and body aches are all being put aside for their one big performance. The dancers show a big smile with all their sparkling white teeth even though they have are in a lot of pain. Pleased watching them is the audience members and they smile back at the dancers and are amazed with their moves. Every teachers dream is to have their dance go right. To have their dancers remember their choreography. To have their dancers smile. To have their  dance be a success. And for Kim Llyod that dream came true for her little jazz class of seven.

Figure 1 (Kim Llyod)

Kim Llyod is Junior at Bloomsburg University. She is apart of the Bloomsburg Dance Ensemble.(Click here for BUDE website).She participates in four different classes in which two of them she teachers.  Kim teaches Advance Jazz and Tap. Along with dance and school Kim also works. Time management is big for her. Kim told me that she has been doing this for a year or so now and that she improves with it more and more. She says, "I keep multiple checklists and a detailed planner that I check things off when I'm done."  That goes along with how comes up her dances. She describes to me that she bases it off of the time of the music. Her time management skills are important in her life for both the big things in life and the smaller things. 

You could describe Kim as the a little dynamite. Kim is short  ut she is like an explosive dynamite because when she starts dancing its crazy how large she becomes. 
Every Sunday night we walk in to Kim sitting on the wooden ground patiently waiting for us. She sits in the corner near the music. Her iPad is next to her side with the song on the screen. Aside from that are yellow papers with blue lining and black one marking. I always refer to these papers as her guide. All of the choreography is written on these papers. These yellow papers are always in Kim's right hand when she is giving us the steps. As we sit down Kim ties her strawberry-blonde hair into a half up half down look to get just the right amount out of her face.  (See Figure 1) Her cheeks are a blush color with a smile from ear to ear. She loves seeing all of the girls show up for class and being able to share more dance steps with us. As we got done stretching we would see Kim slowly start to stand and then folded her one sock under the palm of her left foot and have the other foot sockless. Kim walks over to the music in her long black jazz pants and tank top ready to press play. Time to start to dance. All of the girls sit down and watch Kim as she shows us what we will be added on. As soon she's done we look at each other and take a deep breathe for Kim's challenging but fun choreography. We all get up and start with the moves. Everyone starts their left foot out so it's like a horizontal line and then push off of their back right foot. Everyone is turning at once on the palm of their foot and as everyone is turning their hair from the pony-tail is whipping them in the eyes. Everybody stops and jumps out of their turn. Facing front we move onto the next step which involves the ground. We follow Kim through the rest of the choreography and hope we are pleasing her with her vision.

Our song for Jazz semester has a "funny story behind," exclaims Kim.
"I was at the gym listening to one of my Pandora stations and it came on. I'm not quite sure what it was but there something about it that made me brain start choreographing mid workout."

Figure 2 (Dance Studio)

We both chuckle at this and how it is a funny setting of how the song we use for jazz was picked. As we sit in the large dance room with the tan and brown wooden ground she talks about all the compliments she received from our jazz routine last semester. (See Figure 2) The studio is very large and is a perfect square. I like to think of this perfect square room as a baseball diamond field. Except it's turn on it's side. The corners (or bases on the diamond) are what we use for across the room. We go from my corner to the one diagonal from it then switch sides and do it again. It's almost like a little game. Right in front of the room you will see big clean mirrors that stretch from one end to the other. They tower from the ceiling all the way to the ground. The lights are very bright and shining, always keeping us wide-awake and focused. However, sometimes we turn into a relaxed setting with the main lights off and the chilled spotlights on. The pale white walls are dull but the big red and green exercise balls bring a little color to the room. There is one side of the perfect square wall that has a chocolate chip color brown barre on it. Along the back of the room there are pull out barres. The girls from our class loved our dance and we had a great time dancing it. Kim would spend time with us perfecting the piece and helping us remember. Kim is a fabulous teacher and made everything about jazz class fun. (See Video for 2015 Jazz routine)

In our fall showcase another BUDE member, Kayse, came to me with excitement and said, "I was so impressed with your jazz class, I saw there was only 7 of you  and thought oh, wow how can they do that with so many less people? But turns out you guys killed it and were one the best dances?" I was so overwhelmed with happiness because the class is little and we weren't quite sure how it would look. But we pulled it off and Kim's excellence was shown.

I, as one of her students have enjoyed Kim as my dance teacher. She always pushes to do great and helps us when we forget something. She always is prepared for class and has a vision of what she wants. Not only is that a great characteristic for a dancer teacher but for everyday life usage. The hard work of Kim pays off in the routines she produces. 

"Having one of your dancers come up to you and sat they enjoyed your dance is one of the best feelings in the world," said Kim in her soft, sweet voice of happiness. 

Kim spends about 30 minutes for just one minute of the dance. She likes to make it relate with the song and always show off technique.  The dedication she puts into her dance classes is unbelievable and amazing. It's a lot of hard work for just two minutes to be shown off at the end of the year. Without all of the hard work of Kim the Bloomsburg Dance Ensemble would not be so outstanding. Kim is a wonderful teacher and person. 

So the dance continues. The dance only has a minute left. The dancers show big smiles and excitement on their face to leave the performance on top. It's time for the big finish with the tricky turn section. And they nail it! The crowd is in all. And just like that the two minutes are over. The dancers stand in their final pose with their pearly whites showing. The stage goes dark and the curtains close.