Dance Teacher Magazine: Constructing Criticism

In David Kinsella’s A Beautiful Tragedy, a documentary about a 15- year-old studying at Russia’s famed Perm State Ballet School, teacher Lidiya Grigorievna Ulanova bellows at the young students, calling them insolent, stuffed dummies. “You idiots,” she shouts, as tears stream from the girls’ eyes. “You haven’t done it right once! Not once!”

Negative criticism can have a lasting impact on students, and most often, it isn’t even effective in terms of improving performance. “Beating up or demeaning dancers is not going to make them work harder,” says Bojan Spassoff, who, with his wife Stephanie Wolff Spassoff, directs The Rock School in Philadelphia. “It just turns out kids who can barely move because the ballet training is like a military regime.”

Ballet instructor Kristine Elliott, who teaches at Zohar Dance Studio in Palo Alto, California, believes that belittling and destructive comments can also lead to low self-esteem or body image issues. “It’s too easy for it to become a personal affront,” she explains. “Our body is the instrument, so it’s hard for any student to differentiate ‘My body isn’t doing exactly what I want it to do at the moment’ from ‘I’m really ugly and defective.’”

While every teacher wants to push his or her students to grow and move past boundaries, the trick is being able to challenge students while maintaining an encouraging atmosphere. Here, we talk with several educators who share how they provide constructive criticism in the classroom.

Read more at Dance Teacher Magazine.