How do I get my students to practise my choreography at home?
You film the demo the way you show it in the studio, pick that video off your phone and pin it to a class as an assignment. Everyone in that class can dance it whenever they get the chance, with your demo next to them.
The video has two rules: one dancer in frame, and fifteen minutes at the most. Shoot it square on from the front, head to feet, and keep everybody else out of the shot, because a clip with a second person in it gets turned down.
Getting it ready takes a while. The raw video goes to our storage first, and then the phone itself cuts the dancer out of the background frame by frame. Keep the app open with the screen on while that runs, on wifi. Past five minutes it takes about as long as the video.
At home your student sets the pace. Five speeds from 0.5x to 1.5x, A and B markers to loop the eight counts that keep slipping, and ten seconds back with a tap on the stage floor. The run you never have time for twice in class can happen twenty times on a bedroom floor.
What your students see, and what you see
Your student sees your choreography on a stage with themselves live beside it, cut out of their own living room. You see who practised, and how often.
There is nothing beyond that, and that is deliberate. No app watching along and handing out a verdict, no points, no stars. The only score is the one a dancer gives themselves.
- For your student: the assignment, your demo, thirteen stages to pick from and a streak counting the days.
- For you: who practised and how often, plus every assignment you set before, with your note alongside.
- For the class: a chat where only teachers post, so it stays a noticeboard instead of a group thread.
- For nobody: the live camera feed of a student. That stays on that student's own phone.
How does a student join your class?
With a six character code that you hand out. Your student types it into the app, a request lands with you, and you approve it or leave it. Until then, they see nothing of the class.
The approval step is there on purpose. A code doing the rounds in a group chat puts nobody in your class, and you can check a profile first.
- We set your studio up, with the classes you want in it.
- You hand out the six character code, in class or in your group chat.
- Your student installs the app, makes an account and types the code in.
- You approve the request, and from that moment the homework is waiting.
Homework per class, and the last assignment stays put
Homework belongs to a class, so your Tuesday beginners open something different from your Thursday team. A new assignment does not push the old one out of the way: what you set before stays as history, with your note alongside it.
So the week after a holiday you can send everybody back to the section from three weeks ago. Use the class chat to say what you will be watching for, the arms in the second block.
Worth knowing before you film: the app does not flip your choreography round. Your student's camera image is mirrored, the way a studio mirror works, while the dancer in the video stays exactly as you shot it. So demo it the way you want it danced back at you.
What happens to a student's camera feed?
It is processed on that student's own phone and goes nowhere. No footage out of a bedroom reaches us, and you as the teacher never see it either. All that reaches you is whether somebody practised.
Every run records itself so a student can watch themselves back, and afterwards they keep the clip or bin it. Anything they do not keep is gone, the rest stays on their phone. That automatic recording can be switched off in the settings.
Sharing a clip or publishing a dance is the dancer's own call, never a condition for the homework. That is also the answer for the first parent who asks, and one of them will ask.
What does a dance studio app cost?
Djensur is free to install right now on the App Store and on Google Play, with no subscription, no in-app purchases and no ads. Classes, homework and the class chat come with it.
Your students need an account and a phone to match: an iPhone on iOS 15 or newer, or an Android phone from the 2022 mid range upwards. It runs most smoothly on a 2023 handset.
Getting your studio set up
Setting a studio up runs through us for now, not inside the app. Email contact@djensur.com with the name of your studio, the town and the classes you want, and we send the codes back.
If you would rather see it first, our page for dance studios has a short form for a demo. For an open day, run a cable from an iPhone to the TV and the stage fills the wall.