I asked the SO's this question regarding teachers and I'd like to know how your SO goes about letting you choose costumes.

Does she give you the books and the price lists? Or is there a Costume meeting and everyone goes through the books?

What other freedoms / restrictions do you have regarding the recital?

Do you choose your music?

Are there time restrictions to your music choices?

Is there a theme you are confined to? If so, does she help you with music choices?

If you teach little ones, do they have to stand on certain marks on stage?

If there are any other logistics involving the show you can think of, please add them.

When It comes to choosing costumes, all the teachers get to choose their own. Our SO takes all the price books out of the catalogs and then leaves them behind our front desk for the teachers to look at. After all the teachers have chosen she will go through and make sure non are TOO expensive and determine the price we are going to charge the parents; as well as veto any ugly costumes that some of out teachers try to use every year! She tries to even everything out to cost around the same; because we have crazy parents who will switch their kids into a different class because the costume is 5 dollars cheaper.

We usually have to have song choices and costumes decided by the middle of February. We order everything the first week in March as our Recital is the 3rd weekend in June.

We do not have a theme because she feels that limiting the teachers choices on music would block creativity. She is pretty open about whatever we choose as long as it is of course clean and age appropriate. Our only time limit is that she doesn't like anything to be over 3 minutes. We have 350+ students and our recitals are already 30 numbers long and we have 4 of them; she doesn't want people to have to sit there for more than 2 hours.

We have our recital at a new local high school and there is a line and the that the babies stand on during their dance as well as a dotted line about 4 feet back for our older (but still young) dancers who have line switches and such.

One other thing we do just involving the little ones is we have their parents sign them in and they are confined to a theatre room (huge) and have to stay there until they are escorted to and from the stage. We try to have all classes under 8 dance in the first half so the parents can sign them out at intermission.

AHHH this turned into an essay!! Hope it is what you were asking. Anything else feel free to ask, oh and I don't know if it matters but we are in Southern California as well.

You're near me! How close are you??

Those are exactly the questions I wanted answered.

It sounds like your SO runs it similarly to the way that I do. I am just wondering if I should give out the costume books or just get an idea of what the teachers want and then look for the ones that fit into the budget. I am also afraid of the yellow/pink/orange things with boas and don't want to use them in the show.

I charge a fixed fee for each age group, so they have to fall under that budgeted amount. Plus, I am working through the Parks & Rec, so I don't have an office to house the books. I'd have to give them to the teachers to take home and look through.

Would you mind if your SO got ideas from you and then provided you with options or would it seem really limiting?

It sounds like the rest of the recital we do pretty much the same. No theme so total freedom with music unless inappropriate. Babies on a line on stage. Some line changes for young students. Full staging for older students.

I am giving my instructors time limits of 2:00 - 2:15 for itty bitties. Under 3:00 for the older groups.

We are in Riverside County, I live in Moreno Valley and the studio is about 20 minutes from me.

I personally like looking through the books because sometimes I see something that I hadn't really thought of...or certain costumes give me an idea for a song, things like that. Maybe you could have a little meeting where everyone goes through whatever catalogs you have chosen and sort of shows you what they want and then you can make sure it fits in your budget, and is cute; if not then you can look for a better alternative?

Hope That Helps!
-BreAnne

^^^ That was my other thought. If I had a meeting and had them spend a couple of hours looking at books, then I don't have to send the books or the price lists home with them. Sounds like a good alternative.

You are about an hour from me. I am in Orange County.

Thanks!
Mia

I work for two studios and at one we had a meeting, picked our costumes - the SO held on to the price guide and yea'd or nay'd our selection based on both price and recent use of that style. For music we submitted our music to a list and she had to sign off on our choice before we could begin choreography. The themes were general and chosen by all of us (the students got to write in names for the recital and we picked the winner).

The other studio gave us free reign over the costume books (they were kept in the office) however we had to fill out a form per class with the costume info and prices. On the sheet was a reminder of whether the costume fit within the rate listed for their class. Music was posted on a big sign up sheet in the office and it was first come first serve, no specific theme. You wrote in what you planned on using and if someone claimed the song you wanted first then you had to change accordingly.

Babies are 2ish minutes long, older dancers up to 4 mins. Company dances can be longer. Students are charged a flat rate, x amount for baby classes, y amount for combo class with two dances/costumes, z amount for older students per single class. All is paid by Dec 15th. Recital fee is a flat rate charged and due by Feb. Costumes are handed out two weeks before recital for alterations but teachers confiscate small pieces (arm bands, head pieces, bows, etc) and hand out at recital so none get lost. The parents have no input on the costume, after the costumes have been ordered we're allowed to show them pictures. When costumes arrive they are tried on to check for major size discrepancies and and malfunctions (like the broken O ring or the unfinished bra slider) and dealt with immediately.

Does she give you the books and the price lists? Or is there a Costume meeting and everyone goes through the books? We are able to go through the books on our own to see what we feel is good for our class. Then, we make a list of 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice to give to the Office Manager to check prices. If it's in our price range (which most aren't, lol) then we're okay.

What other freedoms / restrictions do you have regarding the recital? We really have creative freedom over our class and choices as long as it's age-appropriate.

Do you choose your music? Yes, thank God.

Are there time restrictions to your music choices? Between 2-3 minutes. Some of my advanced classes are 3.5.

Is there a theme you are confined to? If so, does she help you with music choices? We do not have a theme.

If you teach little ones, do they have to stand on certain marks on stage? We have colored shapes in our studio. We tape them down in the auditorium for recitals.

The only restriction we have is time limits on our songs, however, if you have a special routine you can go over on time. The ideas is to have a base but my SO is not a stick in the mud, she's pretty open.

As for music choice and costumes we have free reign. She selects which companies she wants to order from and then we can sign out the books to take home and peruse. We have to let her know our music choices by Jan, but only so she can make sure two teachers aren't using the same music for different classes.

I've actually had instances where the SO chose the music and costumes for us, and others where we chose our own. I love picking the costumes on my own but I also like the SO to pick out my music(it saves me a lot of time and I am not a full time teacher and don't know music the way most do.) As far as choosing the costume, they give us the books and we make our selections. If for some reason they are too expensive or they don't agree, they will let us know and we choose something else.

Typically for recital we have a theme for the studio, so we try to choose songs that closely relate to that. We all have some leniency in meeting the theme. For me it's because it is so hard to find clean hip hop music anyway that it doesn't necessarily have to meet the theme. We try to stay within a certain time frame. Depending on the class it may be longer or shorter(productions tend to be a long number, whereas our pre-schools stay around 2:15.

Our little ones do have certain spaces on the stage. We do in studio rehersals usually the week or so before recital, and we stick letters on the mirrors and give each child a letter. The same letters corespond on the stage for recital so they know to go right to their letters. We also have little plastic chairs lined up backstage for the little ones so that we can get them lined up in the correct order backstage and have them hold hands and walk behind the curtain to their letter, it's easier that way for us and them.