Jane Vorburger appeared well-qualified to show dance again in 2008, after dancing with American Ballet Theatre for 5 years, getting a grasp’s diploma in dance from New York College, and instructing at ABT and prime studios like Steps on Broadway. However there was one thing else she felt she wanted: a dance trainer certification.
“After I take a look at my lessons from once I first began instructing, they weren’t good,” she admits; efficiency experience doesn’t all the time translate to instructing experience. She turned licensed in all ranges of ABT’s Nationwide Coaching Curriculum in 2008 and 2009, then received one other certification from the 92NY Dance Training Laboratory in 2010. By way of these applications, she discovered the basics of age-appropriate and skill-appropriate growth, and creating robust relationships with college students. “That data has been the inspiration of how I developed my instructing,” she says.
Whereas nonprofit training organizations like Dance Masters of America and Dance Educators of America have lengthy supplied certificates, and coaching applications just like the Royal Academy of Dance have for many years required them, at present there’s a huge array of certification alternatives throughout many elements of the nation—and the dance business. You will get a street-dance trainer certification from Rennie Harris College. The Ailey College is about to launch an Ailey Horton method certification program. Many schools, together with California State College, Lengthy Seashore, are beginning to supply certifications tied to state-specific Okay–12 {qualifications}.
It’s no coincidence that extra of those applications are popping up post-pandemic. One of many causes is sensible: Dance organizations, stretched skinny after COVID-19 shutdowns, are testing out new income streams. “They’re moneymakers,” says Susan McGreevy-Nichols, govt director of the Nationwide Dance Training Group, which has supplied a Certificates in Dance Training since 2015. “Individuals must run programming to maintain their doorways open.”
COVID additionally taught us the right way to function just about. Whereas some certifications have in-person parts (and a few are utterly in-person), many enable college students to finish programs from anyplace, and sometimes at their very own tempo. That’s made applications extra interesting and reasonably priced, permitting artists to enroll with out worrying about journey or taking time without work from work. “Individuals have all of the tools, the expertise now—not solely the folks operating the applications, however the folks taking the applications,” McGreevy-Nichols says.
The overwhelming majority of dance instructing positions (outdoors of public colleges) don’t require a certification. And most dancers don’t have a number of disposable revenue to spend on persevering with training. However many educators need the additional credibility {that a} certification credit score provides them. “Any certification you may get is all the time helpful for an artist, as a result of our work just isn’t taken as critically as different professions,” says Angelina Ponzio Labate, who was a part of the inaugural cohort at Rennie Harris College, which launched in 2021. Tracy Inman, director of the brand new Ailey Trainer Certification Program: Ailey Horton Approach, provides {that a} certification reveals that an teacher has gone by means of verified channels to amass the information they’re passing on.
Certifications additionally impart a sure gravitas to the dance methods they cowl. For example, a part of the rationale Inman wished to launch the Ailey Horton certification was to “honor the legacy of Lester Horton and Alvin Ailey, the connection they’d,” he says. Or, because the Rennie Harris College program emphasizes, codifying the best way avenue dance is taught ensures it’s grounded in historic context and doesn’t get watered down—sending a message to the world: It issues that we get this proper.
Certification applications could be costly, they usually don’t routinely open doorways to jobs the best way a grasp’s diploma in training may. However having taught in lots of contexts, from Okay–12 to pre-professional coaching applications to greater ed, Vorburger says the knowledge she discovered by means of her certifications nonetheless informs her instructing at present. It additionally gave her a neighborhood by means of which she nonetheless will get visitor instructing gigs, lesson concepts, friendship, and help. “The worth that I received per greenback, it’s very a lot value it,” she says.
Labate says enrolling in a certification program has stored her studying and rising, deepening the pedagogical abilities that assist make her efficient on the entrance of the studio. “I’m a pupil myself,” Labate provides, “and I simply need to have the ability to obtain extra so I may give extra.”
California’s PK–12 Dance Trainer Increase
In California, certification applications are responding to a brand new demand for credentialed dance lecturers. The state handed Prop 28 in 2022, which offers further funding (to the tune of $900 million in 2024) for arts education schemes in PK–12 public and constitution colleges. There’s now a race to verify there are sufficient credentialed dance lecturers, in order that the cash goes to jobs in dance.
California dance instructors in public colleges used to show below a bodily training credential. However the dance credential, reinstated in 2016, trains lecturers on this precise material, and for this precise setting. “Educating dance within the public college sector may be very totally different from the non-public sector,” says Zakiya Atkinson, coordinator of the dance credential program at California State College, Lengthy Seashore, which launched in 2024.
Atkinson believes it is a crucial second to extend fairness in dance training by increasing entry past non-public studios. “There are usually fewer dance applications in public colleges than there are for different arts,” she says. However, she provides, a credentialed dance trainer can “stroll within the door with all of the issues that they should know to supply an inclusive, culturally responsive, culturally sustaining, and supportive dance training for all college students.”
What’s Included?
Since there are not any overarching necessities for what constitutes a dance trainer certification, applications differ broadly. However many certifications transcend steps and method and into the methodologies behind growing a dance artist, overlaying matters just like the science of childhood growth and classroom administration methods. There are usually studying, writing, and lesson-planning assignments. College students might need group discussions or interactive actions on platforms like Google Classroom. Generally they’re additionally required to finish a certain quantity of pupil instructing.
