Why I teach.

[ladyviola5]

There have been a lot of kinda disturbing conversations on tribe in the last few days where a lot of the younger dancers need to be smacked mentoring and guidance.  One, in the ATS tribe, posted a sarcastic list of things she wanted to tell students before they got started.  The thread veered off course into a discussion on whether you should teach

Comments

[hitchcock73]

I have a few students who are obviously not natural musicians and will probably never be performers. It just eludes them entirely. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it for either of us, but you really never know what people take away from things. Maybe something I say about how to practice will stick with them & they'll use it for something in school or a sport they're better at than music. And it certainly makes ME have to be creative to try to think like they do. Often it's the people to whom whatever skill we're teaching DOESN'T come naturally that makes us better teachers & better technicians ourselves.

[ladyviola5]

That's another excellent point. I've become so much of a better teacher, dancer and performer through teaching. You pay attention to details that you may not have otherwise, and you have to think about what you do from a lot of different perspectives to finally hit upon that explanation that they're going to GET.

[hitchcock73]

My latest puzzle is how to get someone who can't play with a metronome to... well, play with a metronome! The idea that someone couldn't just baffles me, but there's got to be a solution somewhere. I'm searching my brain.

[kiaroskuro]

That's like MY perpetual puzzle of getting people to walk on the beat. How do you get people to hear the "1"? Right foot on "1", left foot on "2", right foot on "3", left foot on "4". How hard could that be? I'm not even working in uncommon or odd time signatures. I worry about when I start teaching my Tribal Turkish fusion workshops and have everyone trying to dance to a Romany 9/8.

[hitchcock73]

Tribal Turkish Fusion workshops, you say? *perks up*

[phenakistoscope]

Omigod. Artie totally jokingly told me to teach a tribal Turkish fusion workshop. Actually she said "Goth Tribal Turkish." But I actually think it could be an interesting combination, though I'm not sure how you'd do it. It'd be hard to stay true to both forms...posture and attitude are so different.