SHORT COURSE ARCHIVES
VDM SHORT COURSE ARCHIVES
Links to the Virtual Dalcroze SHORT COURSES can be accessed through the registration site.
Descriptions of the courses are listed below.
Short-Course with Dawn Pratson (USA)
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Virtual Dance with Dawn: Series 4This course will be presented November 2025
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Short-Course with Selma Odom (Canada)
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Communities TogetherThis course will be presented November 2025 |
Short-Course with Françoise Lombard (Canada)
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Dalcroze Essentials: Improvisation
Wherever you are on your Dalcroze journey, this short course will help you work on improvisation for movement. It will be tailored to what the students need and want to work on. The short course will help enhance and open up your improvisation and deepen your practice. It will also be very pragmatic, sharing easy tools which are immediately applicable. The first session will focus on single-line melodies on any instrument. The second session will be about improvising in 2 voices on the piano, with support from Francoise for those who don’t feel as comfortable on the piano. In the third session we might explore 3 voices or other approaches. Please bring your instruments, and if you are a non-pianist, try to be in a room with a piano. This course was originally presented April/May 2025.
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Short-Course with Ruth Alperson (USA)
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Dalcroze Essentials: Elementary Pedagogy, the Dalcroze way
For this short course, I recorded videos of myself teaching children’s classes. My goals for the children in this 1st-2nd grade class include developing listening skills and concentration through movement. I use Dalcroze exercises such as quick reaction and follow. These students love to use materials, including hoops, balls and scarves, and they are beginning to improvise rhythm patterns, playing on small percussion instruments. I want the children to feel confidence in their singing voices--I hope they will love to sing. We use hand/arm/body movement to feel the motion of pitches in a melody.
In our first two sessions of this short course, you will be shown a video of portions of eurhythmics classes for these children. At the end of each session, there will be time for questions. In the third session, I will again entertain your questions and comments and we will discuss the Dalcroze approach in more detail. For me, improvising at the piano is a necessary tool in teaching the Dalcroze way. What if you do not feel comfortable at the piano? How can you use one-line instruments in this teaching? We can deal with these and other questions and issues. This short course was originally given March 4-19, 2025. This course was originally presented March 2025. |
Short-Course with Anthony Molinaro (USA) and Stephen Neely (USA)
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Dalcroze Essentials: Make it Music – Pedagogy
In this three-session short course, Anthony and Stephen will introduce their new Dalcroze pedagogy book, Make it Music — Dalcroze Strategies for Every Classroom, and guide the participants through the tools to create over 125,000 unique Dalcroze inspired activities and games. In addition to the hands-on activities, Stephen and Anthony will also discuss the philosophy behind “open-ended lesson planning” and encourage all participants to take on the "teaching artist" title. Through the hands-on interactions in our classrooms, we all can transform our teaching practices to be characterized by playful, musical, and artful interactions with our students.
This course was originally presented February 2025. |
Short-Course with
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Dalcroze Essentials: Thinking, Making, and Doing Dalcroze
"Dalcroze Essentials: Thinking, Making, and Doing Dalcroze" In the course we will brainstorm Dalcroze subjects for classes, make sense of Dalcroze philosophy in a practical way, and work with musical repertoire in a Dalcroze way. Depending on the interests of the participants signing up, Andrew will consider all three branches of Dalcroze education - rhythmics, solfege, and improvisation - and tailor the sessions to people's contexts.
This course was originally presented November 2024.
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Short-Course with
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Dalcroze Essentials: For the Private LessonGain new tools for incorporating movement, discovery, and improvisation into your private lesson studio. Some topics we’ll explore include:
You'll leave the course with ready-to-use activities tailored to your current students, and we’ll try them out together so you’ll be ready to implement them in your next lesson! This course was originally presented October 2024.
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Short-Course with
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Dalcroze Essentials: Creating Sequences of LessonsJoan looks back on some seventy years of inventing sessions for a wide range of people and situations. She extracts the essential ingredients that make them ‘Dalcroze Experiences’. She will focus one session on children, another on teens and student-teachers, and the third on adults in local choirs, drama groups, and seniors in retirement settings. This course was originally presented September 2024.
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Short-Course with
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Dalcroze Entrepreneurship: Building a Community ProgramDalcroze Entrepreneurship: Building a Community Program Course Description: Weronika Balewski and Emma Shubin, with a combined 20 years of experience in the Dalcroze community, are passionate about creating opportunities for teachers and increasing accessibility to this approach across diverse communities. Through their work at Integral Steps in Colorado and Massachusetts, they have successfully implemented various approaches to partnerships, registration, scheduling, and funding, serving thousands of students and families over the past 12 years. Integral Steps currently offers year-round programming for ages 0-18 with over 25 weekly classes and 3-6 weeks of summer camps; community events and partnerships with local schools and organizations; as well as educational opportunities for teachers. During Sessions 1-4, participants will dig into the nuts and bolts of creating a vibrant and sustainable program and will engage in reflection and brainstorming assignments. In Sessions 5 and 6, they will present their ideas, receiving valuable feedback from both the group and instructors. This personalized approach ensures that each participant's unique questions are addressed in greater detail. Session 1: Breaking into New Communities Session 2: Curriculum & Development (E only) Session 3: Preparing to Launch and Ongoing Marketing (W only) Session 4: Retention, Mental Health, & Budget Sessions 5 & 6: Project Pitch and Wrap-Up Join "Dalcroze Entrepreneurship" to transform your passion for Dalcroze education into a thriving community program! We are so excited to share with you what we have learned and empower you to succeed. 🎶✨ This course was originally presented March-April 2024.
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Short-Course with
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Game-ify the Curriculum
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Short-Course with
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Latinamerican music: a rich source for Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Music ClassroomsAre you curious about finding novel repertoire to enhance your teaching practice? This short course will take you through a journey of discovery of Latinamerican traditional music rich in rhythmic patterns and beautiful melodies. We will work through Dalcroze eurhythmics exercises which can fit students of all ages and musical backgrounds. We will explore traditional music from different Latinamerican countries and short piano pieces written for didactical purposes: music in simple and compound meters both regular and irregular, pentatonic, tonal, modal melodies, and dance music. Through a journey of discovery, we will emphasize musical aspects such as rhythmic patterns, melodic contours, phrasing, harmony, and character, which offer opportunities to work on the four areas of study of the Dalcroze pedagogy: eurhythmics, solfège, improvisation, and plastique animé. Furthermore, we will explore various excerpts of concert music based on Latinamerican dance rhythms suitable for plastique animé. A lead sheet (music notation) with the lyrics in English and Spanish will be provided along with the links for recorded versions of the music available in public platforms. This course does not require prior background or experience with Dalcroze Eurhythmics.
This course was originally presented May–June, 2023.
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Short-Course with
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The Self and The Shared Gesture
In this 6-session short course, Stephen Neely will lead us through common Dalcrozian interactions with a focus connection, community, empathy, shared gesture, awareness of self, risk, intimacy, and vulnerability – lessons critical for advanced musicianship, but also central to a healthy and rewarding participation in our extra-musical worlds.
This course was originally presented June 1–22, 2022. |
Short-Course with
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Virtual Dance with Dawn Series 3New in Series 3: We will explore the meaning and practice of somatics, with a little history. Dawn will also share an activity each week which teachers can immediately apply in their classroom.
This is a weekly, 80-minute long, Dalcroze-inspired movement class to develop and maintain functional, expressive and musical fitness. Principles of grounding, alignment, efficiency of movement, spatial intention, rhythm and phrasing, among other concepts, will be addressed through guided activities and improvisation.
This course was originally presented September 25–November 7, 2022. |
Short-Course with
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Virtual Dance with Dawn Series 2This is the second series of a weekly, 75-minute long, Dalcroze-inspired dance-movement practice to develop and maintain functional, expressive and musical fitness. Principles of grounding, alignment, efficiency of movement, spatial intention, rhythm and phrasing, among other concepts, will be addressed. We will play with movement as personal and communal metaphor, and other material as it arises. Some vocal and tonal play will also be included. “We see light etched by shadows, feel joy emerging from sorrow; the present hovers between the past and the future. Between all these opposites, there is a sense of movement that renews the clarity of each experience.” Irmgard Bartenieff, with Dori Lewis, from Body Movement: Coping with the Environment. This course was originally presented March 28-May 9, 2021. |
Short-Course with
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Virtual Dance with Dawn Series 1Six hour-long dance-movement classes to develop and maintain functional and expressive fitness. Principles of grounding, alignment, efficiency of movement, spatial intention, rhythm and phrasing, among other concepts, will be addressed. We will also play with movement as personal and communal metaphor, and other material as it arises. “ We see light etched by shadows, feel joy emerging from sorrow; the present hovers between the past and the future. Between all these opposites, there is a sense of movement that renews the clarity of each experience.”– Irmgard Bartenieff, with Dori Lewis, from Body Movement: Coping with the Environment.
This course was originally presented Januaru 31–March 15, 2021. |
