Audio Transcript
Hi. It’s What’s Happening at Silver Creek Clogging for the week of June 7th. I’m Ruth, I’m here at your Silver Creek Clogging Dance and Movement Center in Silverton, Oregon; it’s the home of Dance Classes that Make Kids HappyTM.
And, we had a lot of happiness in the studio this last week, as we kept our recital celebration going. We had activities, we handed out post recital medals and awards. It was so great to keep celebrating, to have our dancers celebrate each other and themselves, and, yeah, it was really great.
We, as part of our post-recital celebration, we conducted our student evaluations; our first, very first, formal student evaluations. We talked with students and parents about the progress we’ve seen in their students, where we see them going, and how we can help them get there. And, it was really, really great.
And, we’re going to keep doing that ongoing format. So, just plan on that in the future. That’s what we’re gonna do.
So, our leadership focus for the month of June is communication and we have been telling the following story in classes. It’s a little bit funny and also has a really good communication lesson.
So, a woman needed some things to make a cake. She asked her husband if he would go to the store to get those things for her. He was gonna be out anyway, he had a sporting event to go to, and so he said, “Yes, I can go. I just need to get very few things, so that I can go through the express line, so it won’t hold up my event.”
So, the wife gave her husband the list, he came home. He had taken quite a lot longer than she expected; she was just about ready to call when she heard him coming down the driveway. And, anyway, he came in the house with arms full of grocery bags, put them down said, “I got to go out and get some more,” and he came back in with arms full of grocery bags.
She was so confused, because she had only given him a short list. And, anyway, he went back out to get some more bags and, while he was doing that, she started kind of going through the bags to see what he had gotten, and she ran across the list that she had given him. And, when she did that, she realized what had happened. So, here’s what she did she had numbered each of the items: 1 pound of butter, 2 bag of icing sugar, 3 bottle of vanilla, 4 dozen eggs, and so on. Yeah. So, it was a little bit confusing.
He brought some more items in, which were six large bags of flour and seven large cartons of milk, and he said, “Oh my gosh, I obviously didn’t go through the express line, and there was too much stuff. But, by the time I realized what had happened, I just wanted to get out of the store, because people were kind of laughing at me.”
And, the moral of the story is, communication is hard. It’s so important to ask questions and get clarification. And, more often than not, the breakdown in our communication isn’t quite so obvious as how the numbered list went, but still the principles are the same.
We can miss out on things because we have different understandings of what each other is trying to communicate.
So that’s just one example of communication. And, what we know is that, a lot of times students in dance who struggle with something, when they learn how to communicate differently in order to get their needs met, they can get the help that they need. When it all makes sense, and then their progress just skyrockets.
So, of course, this applies in a lot of areas of our lives, so we’ll be continuing to talk about communication in our leadership focus, in our class chats this month.
And what else is coming up this month is the clog down showdown. We are starting to learn the clog down showdown routine this very week in classes. It’ll take us a few weeks to learn it, and then on July 16th, which is a Friday, we will have our clog down showdown event. Yes? Woohoo! It’s a little bit of a competition, it’s an internal studio only competition, kind of for some fun and it’s, anyway, it’s one of our most popular and most fun events of the year. So, definitely plan on that.
Also, coming up next week, All Around Solo DVDs are going to be handed out in classes. We will be working on those as well. And, yeah, that’s what we have on the studio calendar.
Also, we have several community performances lined up for the summer, so please keep these on your calendar. One, Saturday, August 7th is the Homer Davenport Parade. So, we’re participating in the parade this year, please plan on that. Saturday, August 21st is the Silverton Fine Arts Festival and we will be dancing in that this year, on Saturday August 21st.
Please also keep on your calendar Saturday, October 2nd. That’s the Silverton sidewalk shindig. And, we are working to see if we can get in on that one and have some performers at our studio, where we can maybe dance with the performers live; which should be really fun, if we can make that happen. So, keep that on your calendars.
And then, we’re going to see if we can line up a performance at the Silverton Farmers Market this year, once our COVID restrictions are a little bit more relaxed.
And, of course, we had (prior to COVID) set up a performance at the Davenport House, we’re going to try to get that rescheduled, even if we dance outside.
So, please keep on your calendars community performances. I’m super excited that we get to be back to those and back to participating in the community. It’ll be, yeah, I’m really looking forward to that.
So, that’s what we have on the studio calendar. Get ready for some clog down showdown fun this week in classes and, until then, happy dancing.