Thoughts and news about swing dancing in Ottawa
Posted by byron on 06.04.10 1:03PM under General, Swing Dancing, Teaching Dance
We’re at an exciting place with swing dancing in Ottawa: the rise of the advanced dancers.
When we first started Swing Dynamite in 2006, the advanced dancer was a rare breed. Most dancers were beginners. If you could do a decent swingout you were pretty good!
The challenge in teaching dancers at that beginner/intermediate level is like the old metaphor of holding a bird in your hand: to grasp firmly enough to keep it from flying away, but gently enough that you don’t crush it. Similarly, what most dancers need is a balance between giving them the technique they need in order to move and connect better, and the freedom to play, create and simply have fun.
Things change with advanced dancers. At some point dancers need a new kind of guidance. You have to let the bird fly away. And very few teachers understand this. Even the top teachers in the world often tend to focus on getting everyone to dance the way they do, when what the advanced dancers really need is to discover their own style.
That’s where we’ve gotten with many of Ottawa’s dancers now: they’re good enough that I have to be cautious about coaching them, because they’re in that zone where it’s not all about “good vs. bad” anymore: now it’s about their evolving personal style. So I have to focus a lot on differentiating between “poor technique/expression/creative choices” and “not going far enough in their own direction.”
For example, let’s say I hated big kicks, but Joe loves them. I could be inclined to say that Joe’s kicks are too big, which is what I’d tell him as a beginner. But when he’s an advanced dancer, I have to realize that maybe “big kicks” are going to be his thing, and I need to just back the hell off and let him evolve a big kicking style that totally works for him.
Because there’s something even worse than getting Joe to do smaller kicks. The worst thing is if he goes half way. Because if he’s going to start the new “crazy big kicking style” craze in the swing scene, he can’t do it with medium-sized kicks.
His style can’t be a half-way point between my style and where he wants to go. He needs to just embrace his inner kickiness and run with it.
Maybe it will turn out that his big kicky style is uglier than a mashup of 70′s leisure suits with 80′s hair styles. But so be it. That voyage of self-discovery is the whole point of becoming a better dancer. And just as it’s a necessary ritual to have embarrassing photos in your high school year book, going through weird phases in your dancing is part of the journey.
As teachers, that’s why it’s a tough call: giving good advice, and not letting poor technique or bad habits masquerade as “personal style,” but also knowing when to shut up and let people find their own way.
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