A Teacher Who Keeps Them on Their Toes (Article)

On one of my Ballet classes, our instructor assigned us to read an article. The article talks about a 73 year old professor, by the name of Wilhelm Burmann who danced with New York City Ballet and Joffrey Ballet but now focuses his career on teaching. I thought this article resembles my idea of the arts and how I see myself teacher in the near future. This instructor focuses on stage presentation and personality in movement. The class price is $17 which is affordable for the dancers and it is a great opportunity to train with such a talented and aficionado instructor. He says that he is not tough, the profession is. I completely agree with him. If an instructor does not set rules and it is not serious about his career, now one will take this person seriously. One needs to set discipline, consistency and work ethic in order to have integrity throughout the process of learning.

On another note, I want to point out some relative phrases he says: "It's not about the steps. It's how you put it to music.” “I love good, honest dancing people who have something that you cannot explain." It’s not one, two, three, four. It’s one, two, three, fooooour. Musicality should come from within us. If we are true passionate dancers, musicality should come really easily. I started learning how to count steps just about months ago after I took my Music for Dance class. Before that, I only when where I saw the music moved me to go to the next step and for me that is the best way to move through a dance, only thinking about your movements, knowing the music well, and feeling the steps. He is a sharp professor, meaning he would say the ballet combination once, cued the pianist and the dancers are supposed to do as told because then the instructor just focuses on going around correcting the dancers.

I like a phrase he says at the end of the article: It’s not that I was the greatest teacher, we were the greatest together” This to me means that this career is not about ourselves individually only but our cast as well. It is about being an ensemble and sharing the knowledge and support to one another. Working together and feeling every single dancer in a single space is much more powerful than having individualism.

This article was such a great thing to keep for the rest of my life. When my teaching career begins, I am sure I will go back once in a while and read through this remarkable article to keep reminding myself of what a wonderful career I will have in the near future.