A simple pact of silence

One of my contra friends (I think Maia?) recently posted swearing a pact that they would do one very simple thing to do their part to increase the joy and understanding on their dance floors: Stop talking during walk-throughs.

I am a person who talks _incessantly_. I am also a pretty good teacher, and competent (sometimes extremely so!) at teaching most of the dance forms I find myself doing. However, I think that this suggestion is a damn good one, and I'm officially throwing in my lot. I, Katarina Whimsy, in pursuit of a Better Dance Floor and More Accessibility For Beginners do solemnly swear that I will shut my damn mouth when the caller or MC or teacher is talking through the dance the first time. Even if I think I can teach it better. Even if I think they're missing something important. Even if someone really charming is my partner and we're fourth couple and I'd rather be flirtingtalking to them than paying attention because I know I can pick it up once the music starts.

Should you catch me not, feel free to give me a pinch. And absolutely, I will continue to teach beginners as I dance with them, in the spaces between rounds of the dance, and fast gestures and frantic words called while we move. But while the Person In Charge is talking, I am going to _shut up_ and let them talk. They've got a plan going on here, let's let them actually do it.

So signed, so true.

Candidate Class: Overview

I have been doing Scottish Country Dance for almost 7 years now --my anniversary is the Monday after Thanksgiving. This means I've been doing it for over a quarter of my life, which is a whole different pile of awesome.

Part of dancing SCD has involved my gradual improvement, and invitation into more challenging or technically driven forms of the dance. There are advanced classes, there is the demonstration team, and there is reaching the point where one is encouraged to stop being a mere participant and become a teacher of the dance. I've reached that point, and for the last two months, have begun my Candidate Class.

An overview, for the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society is a creature comprised of red tape and buracracy: To become a fully certified teacher in the RSCDS, one must complete 5 units (comprising two levels). Level one is unit one, a written exam, unit two, proof of performance and technical accuracy, and unit three, proof of teaching skill. Level two doesn't start until a year after your level one certificate, and is comprised of unit four, a portfolio of lesson plans, and unit five, a more technically involved proof of teaching skill. It is all very official and impressive.

The upside of having all this is that the RSCDS can verify that its teachers really do know their stuff, and are committed to the goals of the Society. This is, first and foremost, a cultural preservation --Scottish Country Dance has roots as far back as the early 18th century, and being able to carry on this dance tradition is one of the core ideals of the Society.

The downside is that I'm giving up five hours of my life, every other Saturday, until early May in order to get my level one certificate. My unit one exam was two weeks ago (more about that in a separate post), which means for the next six months, I will live and breathe the twelve official dances I need to know for unit two, and the precise wording and pedagogy required for unit three.

I'm wonderfully happy with the situation.

Cross-step at Splash!

Every year, MIT is host to an event called Splash, in which various college students and other low-lifes from around the community are encouraged to come and teach a class on anything they want. These classes are attended by 2500 middle and high school students, who spend the weekend gorging themselves on higher mathematics, the ins and outs of boffer weapons, arguments about nazi imagry in the Star Wars movies, how to make a cake that isn't a lie, and -of special interest- several different kinds of dancing.

When I learned of this nonsense, I knew immediately that I should be a part of it. So I promptly signed up to teach some classes in Cross-step waltz, and then forgot all about it until today. Since Splash is this weekend, I've chosen to spend today frantically coordinating all the various bits and bobs I need. Never let it be said that I am organized about my instruction.

As it is, I've settled things down some (with well over 24 hours to go!) and now have a pretty good sense of what I'll be trying to teach, and how I'll be trying to teach it. Best of all, I've spent the day ferreting around the internet, googling every possible combination of words to get myself some cross-step music that won't be, well, boring to me or my students.

Hopefully, I'm ready for this. I'll try and remember to post back with a report, or at least a list of the songs I used and how well they worked. And if this goes at all reasonably, well...I have dreams for dancing in this city, and being able to teach people some little things fits in well with those dreams. But that's a post for another time...

Teaching Experienced Dancers

It can be difficult for regular dance groups to differentiate their instruction, especially if the class covers a wide range of skill and experience levels. Hopefully, your class will be large enough that you can split it between levels, but then you run into the issue of how to define the split. When, as I discussed recently, does a newbie start to be considered not?

In the group I do Scottish Country Dancing with, the split is between "beginners" and "intermediate/advanced". The dance night typically runs with an hour of lessons, followed by an hour or so of mixed social dance, where everyone is encouraged to dance with everyone else.

You graduate yourself when you feel confident --no one will specifically tell you "okay, you're I&A now". This tends to work well for the class, but still leads to an occasionally problematic gap in skill from one end of the I&A group to the other. The general solution is for teachers of the I&A class to focus on seriously breaking down techniques and practising particular figures until they are perfect --the more experienced dancers can generally use a friendly reminder on timing, and the less experienced dancers get to really know what the figure is supposed to look like.

Unfortunately, some teachers are more skilled at this than others, which leads occasionally to problems as they assume a higher overall skill level than is actually present in the class. So long as the teacher is open and paying attention, this isn't too bad, but when a teacher becomes caustic towards students who are less practised at certain figures or incidentals, or can't understand a question asked because they assume everyone in the class should already know that thing "because it is an experienced dance class" you have a problematic situation.

Even experienced dancers can be missing certain things. Moreover, SCD has been danced in its current form for nearly a hundred years. Yes, the "proper" way to, say, perform a rights hands round is with the hands joined only with the person on your diagonal, as opposed to all as one group of four hands, but sometimes it's easier to join all hands together, or awkward to split the hands into their diagonals due to the previous figure. So, even a dancer who is experienced in technique may not always know the exact technique for this particular dance.

About the best thing you can do to teach such groups, is to know the dance well, and watch closely as they practise. That will help you accurately answer questions on technique or movement, politely, when students ask. Sniping at students because they "should" know this achieves nothing useful¹.

And remember too, sometimes students ask questions because, while they may be experienced at a certain figure, they may be dancing cross-gender for whatever reason (it's especially common in SCD for females to dance the male role, due to the natural gender imbalance of the class), and not familiar with the particular differences they need to know from dancing the opposite of their more familiar role.

1: Especially not in a social dance context, where the focus is generally more on having fun and being friendly to people. Perfection is all well and good, but if you're not preparing for a performance, perhaps it's not as necessary.