"We're going to KICK YOUR BUTT!!!"

The comment above was left in our website Guestbook from a dancer training at another studio just before a convention we were preparing to attend. Normally, we'd ignore such a thing and delete the entry, but after some thought, this seemed to be begging for a reply!

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I am replying to this message as an artist, a teacher, a director, and as a representative for my dancers.

I feel that it is a shame that "kicking someone's butt" at a competition is the highest goal any dancer would wish to attain. I have tried to teach all my students in my own company, and other companies when I'm a guest instructor, that competition is a place dancers and teachers attend to learn more about themselves and to admire the great work of others. It's a place to learn how much they have attained technically and artistically, and to see how far they've come in their goals at becoming better at their art.

Dance is not a sport to be "won" like a football game. There are no national rankings and when a dancer is ready to enter the professional world, nobody cares what competition or convention they've attended. Dance is a wonderful art form and an expression of beauty to be admired, whether it is our company or any other company.

I know your teacher, and I truly believe she has not instilled this attitude in her dancers. Trophies don't make great dancers; the single-minded goal to win them doesn't either. It's not about that.

Long after high school graduation and competitions, dancers will face either auditioning for a professional career, or for college scholarships and placement into a scholastic dance program. Will they, as an individual, be ready for this? As a teacher, I feel that preparing any student I teach for this next step is the most important thing I can do.

I wish you and your company the best of luck at JUMP. I hope to enjoy your pieces this coming weekend and hope you enjoy ours. I send you the best of luck in obtaining your wish. We've already obtained ours, which is to become better performers, train harder, work with some of the best instructors and choreographers in the country, and to help all our fellow dancers in giving 110% in everything they do.

"Kicking butt" is not our goal. It only brings jealousy, anger, and a false sense of pride and power to a world that already has way too much of all of that.

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Dale Lam - Artistic Director
Les Mizzell - Technical Director
The Columbia City Jazz Dance Company Website
Dale and Les on Twitter

On the Passing of Michael

To some it might seem odd, but some people like me never really knew what fans we actually were until the passing of Michael Jackson. As I grew up I knew as a small child that I really thought "ABC" was a cool catchy song. Even cooler was the whole "Off the Wall" thing. It was great music to sing to while driving to one of my first paid dance jobs in Tennessee. "Rock with You", "Workin' Day And Night", then later the dance impact of "Thriller" and "Beat It" ... all great music.


Now, as a dance teacher, I still love this music, using “Gone Too Soon” for a student's solo, "Billie Jean" for a young group number, "Wanna Be Startin Something" and others. But still, I just never connected the dots, the part his music played in my entire life as a child, a dancer, a teacher, a choreographer.

There are personal memories attached to many of his songs, like the time I traveled back late to school just to stick around at home and watch the whole Motown thing with the moonwalk with my parents. My dad was still alive then, and this is a special memory for me. I never stopped to think about the impact that walk or anything else associated with Michael Jackson actually had on my life, or the influence it had on many dancers from that point on. I only saw it for the cool thing it was at the time.

I guess like so many of us I thought he had plenty of hits to go, new horizons to thrill us. It came as a shock during rehearsal for a July show at the Koger center here when I received a text from my husband telling me that Michael Jackson was gone. It seemed so unreal.

In the few days that have lead up to the memorial, I've actually had time to think about the impact his music made on my life. While writing this on the day of the memorial, I decided to listen to my library of his music. It's my iPod now, not a cassette deck or portable CD player like years ago! I thought he'd want all of us to do that on this day of all days, and I was singing "Rock With You" just like I did in my car so long ago. The memories flooded in. "I'll be There" then, "Never Can Say Goodbye" ... that's when the tears started to pour. I hadn't listened to those songs in a very long time. Those songs are my history, my past, your past, our past.

It seems the end of an era. There will never be another Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin, Audrey Hepburn, James Brown, John Lennon, Gene Kelley, or Michael Jackson. I'm grateful that I have been around long enough to experience their brightness in the span of my life. Stars like that burn so bright, and there seem to be none like these left. Michael has left a void and I find this so sad because generations of dancers, musicians, and kids will only know the legend of the "King of Pop" without actually being able to experience it the way so many of us were fortunate enough to experience while he was still alive and creating his phenomenal music.

So today of all days, I now know, I was and am a huge fan of Michael Jackson. My dancers, my dance children will forever be touched by his music and his dancing because he touched my life and in turn , I touched theirs.

One final thought several days after writing the above: Today during Nationals I counted over 20 entries choreographed to Michael Jackson songs from "Thriller" to "PYT". The legacy continues...

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Dale Lam - Artistic Director
Les Mizzell - Technical Director
The Columbia City Jazz Dance Company Website
Dale and Les on Twitter

The Choices We Make In Life

It's funny how some of us find our way onto the path of teaching. Perhaps we began as a professional dancer and soon got tired of the life of a gypsy, going from show to show. There's no stability, it gets harder and more physically demanding as we get older… and then what? …or…perhaps we always knew from the start that all we wanted to do was teach, or we really didn't like the dancing itself as much as the creating of choreography and teaching gave us a way to do that. There are so many reasons we arrived at where we are now: Dance Teacher.

Most of the time we just do it. It's like automatic. We got here, we teach, we keep teaching, we teach some more, maybe we get better at it….then what?

I bring this up because I never thought about this path before. It was a natural progression of events for me. Student dancer. Professional dancer. Teacher. Choreographer….and one December several years ago I was faced with a very hard decision that I never in my wildest dreams could anticipate.

My company was in Singapore performing and a woman from a college there approached me about teaching for 3 months. I was touched that she liked my work. I was excited! Wow! Three months! All expenses paid. Really good pay. See the other side of the world! The credibility I'd gain on my resume alone was almost worth it. But then I began to think….three months away from my dancers? Many of their pieces for the season weren't even finished yet! Basically everything with my company would come to a screeching halt. I thought hard. I thought about what was best for my company and not what was best for me. I thought some more. My heart told me to decline. I listened to it. Then I declined.

I've always made decisions as they arose based on emotion, not practicality. Obviously this hasn't been a bad idea so far because the decisions I have made have taken the development of my company further than I ever thought possible. And, just as important as that, I've been able to live with those decisions.

Sometimes you do things in this business to get ahead and once you get there you really don't like the person you've become. I'm glad that this is not the case for me. Maybe it's age - being older - or maybe it's something deeper which I really can't explain, but now in my 40s I guess I was finally tested as to what I actually wanted and it wasn't the "BIG DREAM" of fame or money. It was what I have right now, my company, despite the ups and downs.

I thought about this in reference to young dancers on the brink of their careers and career choices. We dance because we were meant to. We're good at it and some of us get really good at it. With this comes opportunity. Making choices. Going for the BIG DREAM. Maybe Broadway. Maybe to be in a professional performance company. Maybe commercial.

These choices and opportunities will rise. For some of you this will happen sooner than you think. For some, like myself, much later than you think. Pay attention to what your heart says. It will show you the way. It is the only thing you can really trust because you are the only one who can live with your choices day after day. Not you parents, not your teachers, not your boyfriends, girlfriends or husbands.

Listen to your heart! Good luck!

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Dale Lam - Artistic Director
Les Mizzell - Technical Director
The Columbia City Jazz Dance Company Website
Dale and Les on Twitter

The Importance of Improvisation

Early one season, I watched Frank Hatchett strike terror in the hearts of a class of dancers while working on combinations across the floor.

Was the combination so hard that nobody could complete it?

Was it so complicated that nobody could remember it?

Well, no. It wasn't.

Exactly what was the problem then? The combination was only 4 eights long. Frank choreographed the first two eights and the last eight. The third eight?

"Make something up! I want to see you dance for yourself! You've got a full eight! Go for it!"

Students that could perfectly execute every single choreographed move suddenly froze when they got to the "free eight". Others stumbled on their feet and tripped all over themselves. Some just did absolutely nothing. I don't need to say what Franks reaction was at the end of the first attempt of this horrible mess.

Improvisation is the fundamental basis of all jazz music. Why isn't it taught in jazz dance more often? If practiced, improvisation is not a difficult art.
There are many benefits for the student that is comfortable with improvisation. Their confidence is higher. They are more poised on stage. They are more likely to dance right through a forgotten section or recover from a mistake without the audience ever knowing anything was wrong. It helps free the creative mind.

Teaching your students to improvise is easy. It's simply a matter of having them do it often enough to be comfortable with the idea. Small exercises work great. Give them a few beats here or there. As they become more confidants with their ability, gradually increase the number of beats they have to themselves. Use different styles of music.

Improvising to lyrical is a lot different than percussive jazz or the more funky styles.

Teach them to not just dance, but to think.

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Dale Lam - Artistic Director
Les Mizzell - Technical Director
The Columbia City Jazz Dance Company Website
Dale and Les on Twitter

Dancing in a Box

Dale and I have coined a term that expresses an attitude we occasionally encounter while she's teaching master classes, or attending various competitions and performances with the company: "Dancing in a Box".

Jazz is a medium that is constantly evolving. New elements, taken from modern, street, and daily life experiences are constantly being added to the vocabulary. It is very important to keep an open mind to new ideas and to experience and learn from as much as possible from them.

For the dance student, it is very important to keep an open mind and be free to learn from every source possible. You must not be afraid to leave your "comfort zone", to get outside the "box" that may be limiting your growth as a dancer. If you are afraid to attempt a style that feels foreign, afraid to try something that you KNOW will make you look like an idiot on your first few attempts, you will be seriously limiting yourself. At conventions, take every single master class you can fit into your schedule. Don't hide in the back or sit on the sidelines because the instructor is doing something that you haven't tried before. Nobody is watching you! They're struggling to figure it out themselves!

Convince your teacher that it's important to find a way to New York or LA to take classes with the very choreographers that are on the cutting edge of jazz. Watch the schedules of the nearest performance venue closest to you and go see live performances of professional companies, especially those that are doing something different. You could learn more here than the class you may have to skip to get there! Keep an open mind and strive to increase the vocabulary of tools you use to dance. Leave fear at home, don't be afraid to dance free! Widening your horizons as a teacher is even more difficult than for your students.

First, you are going to have to develop a strong bond of trust with your students and not be afraid to let them take classes outside your studio from time to time, especially if you can't afford to bring in instructors for master classes. While this may rub against your business sense as you're trying to make a living from your studio, your main goal should be to help guide your students to become versatile and open minded. Help them to have every opportunity possible to learn, to grow, and to experience new things.

Second, and even more difficult for some teachers, is that you need to continue to take classes yourself whenever possible. Even if you're 52 and haven't danced much lately, how are you going to help your students advance and grow if you don't keep up with the current trends and experience them for yourself? Nobody expects you to have the flexibility or extension of a 16 year old, and you may even have to mark through certain things, but you will become a more rounded and versatile instructor for the experience. Take a few days during the summer, go to New York, and take classes at Steps or the Broadway Dance Center. Better yet, take some of your students with you get them into classes as well. Don't just take jazz either. Modern and African offer some wonderful techniques that you can incorporate into your classes. The more tools you have to offer as a teacher, the more interesting, challenging and fun your classes will become. Your students will be willing to work harder to learn and will become better dancers!

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Dale Lam - Artistic Director
Les Mizzell - Technical Director
The Columbia City Jazz Dance Company Website
Dale and Les on Twitter