Technique in Beginner classes

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As a dance teacher, I like to talk about technique, and I always emphasize the importance of doing the basics. However, I can also understand that as a learner, you won't like to learn the same old steps over and over every lesson, as you may think that will be a waste of money and time learning the same old thing. I can also understand that being a beginner, you would like to see more variation so that you can have sufficient moves to shine and have fun in parties.

Now, to us the teachers, we can see that you definitely need to practice your basics in order to not only have fun yourselves, but also impress the crowd with 'quality' moves. Here comes the old question in lesson planning for beginner classes- how to balance the quantity (how many figures) and the quality (how good you do them).

 

Teachers of course won't like to see you fall and fail, since the good dancing of students is the most powerful marketing tool; and we feel losing face if you do bad. On the other hand, we would not like to bore you so you leave our classes- you know, this is business! For me, I find it particularly hard to maintain a balance in a big classes (>25 students), especially for nightclub dancing.

I usually make a very unmistakeable remark at the beginning of a Ballroom (Latin/Standard) dance class, tellng students that what I am teaching in a class: sufficient warm-up and cool down because it's for preventing them from hurting themselves, 1/3 of the time would be the basics like hip actions, body separations and a series of basic figures, and the rest will be the little routine for that dance. I always feel lucky that my students are okay with basics and they are okay to practice the same action for like 10 minutes until I call for the next.

There are a lot of techniques, and all of them need to be practiced until they can prompt muscle memory without thinking, 20 minutes in class every week is never enough from my point of view. However, if a teacher does not mandate it, I wonder how many of them will be serious enough to practice them at home. Surely, you can't teach only the basic in class, you need to give routine so they can apply the technique into action. Therefore, 50:50 seems a good ratio for basics:routine. I will tell my class to apply everything in the basic practice into their routine so they know what they have been practising are useful and in fact important, I will demonstrate for them first, and show them that all steps, all moves should have a trace of technique. This case they understand why I put a lot of time in the 'BASICS' and they will be more patient when it is the 'BASICS' time.  

 

But still, people who enroll the nightclub dancing seem have far less interest in the basic, even though they know how important it is.

But it is okay, when it is dark, no one knows how good or how bad you do.

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