Tip of the Day: How to relieve sore muscles from dance class

Q: My hamstring muscles are really sore from dance class, what advice to you give to relieve the pain of sore muscles or tendons?

A:  I always stick to the RICE Method. RICE= Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.  Rest to prevent any further injury to the sore muscle.  Ice provides short term pain relief and wards off swelling by reducing blood flow to the injured area.  Compression also helps limit and reduce swelling.  Lastly, Elevation can also help control swelling.  Click here for more information.

Around Here -Counting Crows Improvisation

Tip of the Day: Do I have to take ballet?

Q:  Do I have to take ballet? 

The answer is YES!  Why?  Classical ballet provides the technical foundation for all other dance forms. It is the most demanding, most disciplined of all dance forms; but also the most rewarding. With a solid ballet foundation, classically trained dancers can transfer their skills into jazz, tap, modern dance, or any other dance form or dance class they might decide to pursue. Accomplishing that solid ballet foundation is crucial to becoming an outstanding dancer in any dance form.

I would encourage dancers to try all forms of dance.  Training in all different forms gives a dancer more versatility if they ever decide to pursue a professional dancing career or teaching career.


Written by Shannon Thomas

Atlantic Center for the Arts NSB Winter Dance Workshop with Surfscape January 2012

Dance in the New Year with Surfscape Contemporary Dance Theatre!

SCDT's Winter Dance Intensive January 28 and 29 from 9am-3:30pm at Atlantic Center for the Arts. Tuition $85. 

To register or for more information, please contact SCDT at 386-233-4885 or email: register@surfscapedance.org

Surfscape Dancers

Dance Instruction for the New Year Port Orange, Daytona, and Ormond Beach

Dancebrought2u 

 http://www.dancebrought2u.com

Looking forward to teaching and choreographing  for the new dance year!   

Now booking private lessons, technique classes, and choreography!  Email:Shannon@dancebrought2u.com

Set Fire Improvisation Shannon Thomas Dance Daytona Beach

Favorite Dance Quotes

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I… I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”~ Robert Frost"

There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good.  ~Edwin Denby

You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart.  ~Author Unknown


You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart. ~Author Unknown

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.” - Martha Graham

Our profession creates illusions. It is not a matter of having a perfect body, but of dancing in such a way as to look perfect. ~ Wilheim Burmann

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.  ~William Stafford


Dancing: the vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music. ~George Bernard Shaw


Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? ~Friedrich Nietzsche


Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. ~Ted Shawn, Time, 25 July 1955


Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays. ~George Balanchine


There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. ~Vicki Baum


To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. ~Agnes De Mille


It takes an athlete to dance, but an artist to be a dancer. ~Shanna LaFleur

"You have to think big to be big." - Claude M. Bristol


“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

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