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 educating at ABT and prime studios like Steps on Broadway. However there was one thing else she felt she wanted: a dance instructor certification.
“After I have a look at my lessons from once I first began educating, they weren’t good,” she admits; efficiency experience doesn’t all the time translate to educating experience. She turned licensed in all ranges of ABT’s Nationwide Coaching Curriculum in 2008 and 2009, then bought one other certification from the 92NY Dance Training Laboratory in 2010. By these applications, she realized the basics of age-appropriate and skill-appropriate growth, and creating robust relationships with college students. “That info has been the muse of how I developed my educating,” she says.
Whereas nonprofit training organizations like Dance Masters of America and Dance Educators of America have lengthy provided certificates, and coaching applications just like the Royal Academy of Dance have for many years required them, right now there’s a huge array of certification alternatives throughout many elements of the nation—and the dance trade. You will get a street-dance instructor certification from Rennie Harris College. The Ailey College is about to launch an Ailey Horton method certification program. Many faculties, together with California State College, Lengthy Seashore, are beginning to supply certifications tied to state-specific Ok–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 provided a Certificates in Dance Training since 2015. “Folks need to run programming to maintain their doorways open.”
COVID additionally taught us function nearly. Whereas some certifications have in-person parts (and a few are fully in-person), many permit college students to finish programs from wherever, 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 break day from work. “Folks have all of the tools, the expertise now—not solely the individuals working the applications, however the individuals taking the applications,” McGreevy-Nichols says.
The overwhelming majority of dance educating positions (outdoors of public colleges) don’t require a certification. And most dancers don’t have plenty of disposable revenue to spend on persevering with training. However many educators need the additional credibility {that a} certification credit score offers them. “Any certification you will get is all the time useful for an artist, as a result of our work is just not taken as severely 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 Method, provides {that a} certification exhibits that an teacher has gone by way of verified channels to amass the data they’re passing on.
Certifications additionally impart a sure gravitas to the dance strategies they cowl. As an illustration, a part of the explanation Inman needed to launch the Ailey Horton certification was to “honor the legacy of Lester Horton and Alvin Ailey, the connection that they had,” he says. Or, because the Rennie Harris College program emphasizes, codifying the way in which 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 will be costly, they usually don’t robotically open doorways to jobs the way in which a grasp’s diploma in training may. However having taught in lots of contexts, from Ok–12 to pre-professional coaching applications to greater ed, Vorburger says the knowledge she realized by way of her certifications nonetheless informs her educating right now. It additionally gave her a neighborhood by way of which she nonetheless will get visitor educating gigs, lesson concepts, friendship, and help. “The worth that I bought per greenback, it’s very a lot price it,” she says.
Labate says enrolling in a certification program has stored her studying and rising, deepening the pedagogical expertise 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 can provide extra.”
California’s PK–12 Dance Trainer Growth
In California, certification applications are responding to a brand new demand for credentialed dance lecturers. The state handed Prop 28 in 2022, which offers extra funding (to the tune of $900 million in 2024) for arts teaching programs in PK–12 public and constitution colleges. There’s now a race to ensure 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 underneath a bodily training credential. However the dance credential, reinstated in 2016, trains lecturers on this actual material, and for this actual setting. “Educating dance within the public faculty sector may be very totally different from the personal sector,” says Zakiya Atkinson, coordinator of the dance credential program at California State College, Lengthy Seashore, which launched in 2024.
Atkinson believes this can be a vital second to extend fairness in dance training by increasing entry past personal studios. “There are usually fewer dance applications in public colleges than there are for different arts,” she says. However, she provides, a credentialed dance instructor 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 aren’t any overarching necessities for what constitutes a dance instructor certification, applications differ broadly. However many certifications transcend steps and method and into the methodologies behind creating a dance artist, protecting 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. Typically they’re additionally required to finish a specific amount of pupil educating.
