I was reading a dance forum's thread and suddenly a sentence caught my eyes and I just could not stop reading and tracing the thread, because it spoke my heart, and it was talking about ceroc teaching. Someone mentioned that technique was never emphasized in Ceroc Night, but then neither salsa nor Argentine tango stresses on techniques.
Speakng of my own experience, it happens to me that ceroc dancing has the least techniques mentioned compares to all the other forms of dancing. It is a fact that most ceroc dancers do not know how to count the beats or do not have any ideas of beat values. I said most of them, not all. Surely there are good ceroc dancers but mostly there are just moving bodies, and only they will think they can dance.
Because of the style of the dancing, it won't surprise me if basic techniques like leading and following is not elaborated in class. In fact, all social dancing class do not talk about technique that much. I mean, even when foxtrot is taught in a social dance class, techniques become a taboo. But that does not bother me anymore.
Of course, good dancers may come to social nights. However I am quite sure they do not learn their best moves in the social nights, because good dancers know where to learn how to dance, and that's definitely not a social dance class, they come to social to shine and flaunt with their existing skills. In my experience, unless I am attending technique class, having teacher's training, or having competition training, I am not going to have technique that much either, even if I take private lessons.
You know what, when I have the teacher's training, I was advised that not to touch the subject unless it is necessary, and mostly I should leak a little bit of it every time when I teach, and never to try solely make it a class, because an hour's time is not enough, even an hour in each day is not enough, in fact, it can never be enough time to have such a broad idea get discussed until clear.
Now think about the majority of people who attend a social dance class, how many of them are serious enough to devote at least an hour every single day to practice a basic figure? Bear in mind that you need to have students in order to be a teacher, you need to make profit in order to run a studio- well, I'd say I do not need to have technique so eagerly if that can not bring me business. Come on, I know it is necessary for dancing well, but it cannot feed me! It is very likely that I lose existing customers by giving boring and lengthy technique classes.
However, not teaching it by choice is different from not knowing it at all. It scared me that a dance teacher (of any style) cannot count a half beat, got confused with weight distribution, and I got really frustrated trying to explain why is it important to get the right foot on the right beat, to a 'social dance teacher'! OMG!
To me, technique is compulsory. Some people can just dance on the beat with the correct foot by instinct, as a dancer, it's awesome. However, the difference between a good dancer and a good dance teacher is that, the teacher CAN articulate the very complicated technique verbally, to explain what's beyond words in words. And that is why we have the ISTD and all the professional examinations.
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