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 high studios like Steps on Broadway. However there was one thing else she felt she wanted: a dance trainer certification.
“Once I take a look at my courses from once I first began instructing, they weren’t good,” she admits; efficiency experience doesn’t at all times translate to instructing experience. She grew to become licensed in all ranges of ABT’s Nationwide Coaching Curriculum in 2008 and 2009, then obtained one other certification from the 92NY Dance Training Laboratory in 2010. By means of these packages, 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 instructing,” she says.
Whereas nonprofit training organizations like Dance Masters of America and Dance Educators of America have lengthy supplied certificates, and coaching packages just like the Royal Academy of Dance have for many years required them, in the present day there’s a huge array of certification alternatives throughout many components of the nation—and the dance trade. You may get a street-dance trainer certification from Rennie Harris College. The Ailey Faculty is about to launch an Ailey Horton approach certification program. Many schools, together with California State College, Lengthy Seaside, are beginning to provide certifications tied to state-specific Ok–12 {qualifications}.
It’s no coincidence that extra of those packages 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. “Folks must run programming to maintain their doorways open.”
COVID additionally taught us methods to function nearly. Whereas some certifications have in-person parts (and a few are utterly in-person), many enable college students to finish programs from wherever, and infrequently at their very own tempo. That’s made packages extra interesting and inexpensive, permitting artists to enroll with out worrying about journey or taking day off from work. “Folks have all of the tools, the expertise now—not solely the folks working the packages, however the folks taking the packages,” McGreevy-Nichols says.
The overwhelming majority of dance instructing positions (exterior of public faculties) don’t require a certification. And most dancers don’t have numerous 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 may get is at all times useful for an artist, as a result of our work isn’t taken as significantly 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 exhibits that an teacher has gone by means of verified channels to accumulate the information 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 wished 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 road 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 packages could be costly, they usually don’t routinely open doorways to jobs the way in which a grasp’s diploma in training would possibly. However having taught in lots of contexts, from Ok–12 to pre-professional coaching packages to greater ed, Vorburger says the data she realized by means of her certifications nonetheless informs her instructing in the present day. It additionally gave her a group by means of which she nonetheless will get visitor instructing gigs, lesson concepts, friendship, and help. “The worth that I obtained per greenback, it’s very a lot value it,” she says.
Labate says enrolling in a certification program has saved 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 Growth
In California, certification packages are responding to a brand new demand for credentialed dance academics. 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 faculties. There’s now a race to ensure there are sufficient credentialed dance academics, in order that the cash goes to jobs in dance.
California dance instructors in public faculties used to show underneath a bodily training credential. However the dance credential, reinstated in 2016, trains academics on this actual subject material, and for this actual setting. “Instructing dance within the public college sector could be very completely different from the non-public sector,” says Zakiya Atkinson, coordinator of the dance credential program at California State College, Lengthy Seaside, which launched in 2024.
Atkinson believes this can be a essential second to extend fairness in dance training by increasing entry past non-public studios. “There are usually fewer dance packages in public faculties 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, packages fluctuate broadly. However many certifications transcend steps and approach and into the methodologies behind growing a dance artist, masking subjects just like the science of childhood growth and classroom administration methods. There are sometimes 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 instructing.
