UNDERSTANDING LEVEL PLACEMENT
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At The Vive Movement, we know that the progression of our class levels can sometimes be a little confusing to understand! Dance and Aerial silks class placement can be different compared to other extracurricular activities. We hope the information here will help clarify how level placement works, and what you can expect as your child grows with us over the years.
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With our youngest dancers, level placement is typically determined by their age and peer group.This allows us to introduce the fundamentals of dance at the correct developmental stage, and ensure that we are teaching movement that is age-appropriate. With these classes, we also place more of an emphasis on gross motor skill development, versus technique so that a solid movement foundation is built first.
Dance class placements for the intermediate to advanced levels are determined with several factors in mind. Some of the biggest factors include physical safety, body awareness, developmental appropriateness, maturity, and skill mastery. This is also where we begin to focus more attention on growing your child’s technique, because their bodies are more equipped for those demands. At TVM, we take these things seriously so that we can develop emotionally mature and physically healthy dancers.
At a certain point in a dancer’s education, past the introductory years, more factors like friend groups are not considered. As they advance, each dancer’s progress is going to be very individual. Even if they’ve been exposed to the same teacher and the same curriculum, two friends might actually progress through our levels at different rates. This is completely normal and can be a benefit to a dancer’s progress. Being in a different class than your friends means there is more opportunity to focus on dance without becoming distracted.
In many ways, the way children learn dance is a lot like the way they learn math. Understanding basic addition and subtraction comes first, and after that, it’s then possible to move on to concepts like multiplication and division. Understanding each basic component then makes it possible to study more complex ideas, like algebra or geometry. Dance knowledge and growth is a similar progression. Students can’t skip ahead to more advanced material without first mastering the fundamentals.
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Although class levels might vary from studio to studio, it’s typical that they are set up in such a way that a student would be in the same level for more than one year. This is pretty different from what your child is used to at school, and/or other extracurricular activities, and sports. However, dance studios like ours, do not have thirteen grades like school, normally just a handful of levels. It is expected that students will require more than one year to truly master specific skills and be prepared for what’s next.
Our ViveAir (aerial silks) classes follow a similar structure to our dance classes. For safety and consistent development for all our “flyers”, we have levels for these courses as well which are determined by our aerial silks director. These class offerings have more flexibility with age as well, because it is very much so determined by skill and maturity. As safety is our highest priority, there will be no progression into the next level until we are sure it is safe for all dancers and staff.
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We encourage you to think of our class levels as the ladder your child can climb to achieve their greatest skills, improve strength, and be their best self. Moving up each rung of the ladder will allow them more opportunities to develop and grow. We are here to help guide this journey upward and ensure they never miss a step along the way!
