If you don't know "step-touch" or "grapevine" or rhythm, this's calculus when you're 2+2ing

[seryn]

They really need to have basic dance classes. And those classes shouldn't presume anything.

Today's class said, "this is the ribcage slide, move using your obliques". I don't know which muscles are the obliques I happen to know they're somewhere on the sides and are exercised with catty-corner situps but fuck-me if I know exactly which things those are, nor how to use them by themselves to move fucking half my body without moving anything else. But I don't think most of the other people there knew what obliques were at all, not even in terms of "side tummy".

This was the introductory class. I guess the normal class is full of people who can do anatomical surgery? Certainly you must have been taking the advanced classes for several years before you'd be able to keep up with anything harder than this.

You know what they really need? Someone needs to stop and explain how the fuck you can hold your arms up for a bleeding hour and not be screaming from tortured muscles.

Actually I needed that when I took band in middle school.

After 6 months of going to the gym, and weekly tai chi classes, I can actually "hang my arms like they're weightless" but there was a lot of instruction on how that should feel, how to arrange it so the skeleton takes the load instead of requiring muscle action. Plus I have spent a lot of time in the weight room building shoulder muscle, building arm and back muscle, conditioning tendons and re-orienting my posture. But if it's going to take 6 months of pre-requisites before people can even stand correctly, they need to have a class for moronic idiots.

There really is nothing in the world for people who fall between "sudden-amputee who gets great physical therapy to learn how to move" and "is already dexterous, fit, and coordinated enough to dance competitively". You have to take yourself from couch potato to "doesn't need classes or a gym" on your own before you can keep up.

There must be something we can do collectively as a society to bridge that gap.

But so far, the best belly dancing lessons have been the free video on Netflix streaming. I keep thinking taking classes from a live teacher is going to help teach me what I'm doing, so the things that look similar but are called different things can be explained how one implements them. But no one teaches any of that shit, it's all "follow along as best you can." If that's all I'm doing, I'll stick with the video.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

In-person instructors are good for helping to avoid injury, but mileage varies a lot re: utility for helping people learn. This is logical, however: most of them became instructors because they were good at this stuff and/or it came fairly easily to them. Only a subset of those are any good at explaining things for people for whom these things are not obvious/straightforward, yes?

[seryn]

That's one of the strange things that I don't understand. People are really upset with me when I tell them I taught myself to knit from books (and the books used to be even worse.) Like I'm unqualified because I didn't get the official instruction.

However, you're exactly right that people who are good at something aren't necessarily good at teaching it. One way of being able to teach comes from struggling to understand for yourself. I think there are people who are just great teachers and anything they can do, they can find a way to explain. But everyone else who isn't natively a great teacher needed to have struggled at least a bit or they're obviously frustrated with the pathetic abilities of their students.

This particular dance instructor might not be good either. It's difficult for me to evaluate someone's technique while they are teaching, but tonight's class certainly indicated a distinct lack of choreographic experience.

[thistleingrey]

Agreed re: range of how people can be effective teachers. Sometimes, in an interactive setting whereby students can offer feedback or participate in conversation, it's possible to nudge a teacher into better performance, but fitness classes don't strike me as one of those settings unless there's a comment box or one feels comfortable saying something politely to the teacher's face after class.

Yeah, a teacher's lack of ability is rather harder for a student to fix, except by going elsewhere (though one runs out of classes to try eventually). :/

[corrvin]

So there should be like a basic theory class. "Here are the common names for different kinds of things, and what they do." And ideally it would be a sit-and-watch class for a while, before a get up and do thing.

[seryn]

Not really, I'm not there for a lecture on anatomy.

But when there is a complete lack of explanation that helps anyone... there wasn't a need to use "obliques" as the only muscle definition. And saying we were supposed to do something "using your obliques" is worthless because it doesn't explain how.

Later on we were doing something else (which looks just like something else but they have different names) and she said we should crunch our ribcage toward our hip, but have the hip be the part that moves up, then let it drop. That uses words we all know, explains how to move it, and shockingly, those were also obliques. If she'd done that in the beginning the problem would have been solved.

I wouldn't mind if there were theory and vocabulary classes, but mostly I think we shouldn't need them. Ballet used to be taught in French, but you really can't learn ballet for real if you start too late. If I need 2 semesters of anatomy and physiology before I can take an introductory class at the gym, then I still think they're teaching it badly.