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+ View Older Messages

Re: Cyd
Posted by Cyd
5/2/2009  1:51:00 AM
Telemark. Maybe i didn't explain very well. A Social Couple are very seldom reliable long term if we compare them to a competition couple.
Actually Mrs Lovett made the pies. Sweeney Todd supplied the material. I thought the film was brilliant especially the performances by Johny Depp and Helena Bonhem Carter.
Re: Cyd
Posted by Telemark
5/2/2009  5:48:00 AM
What rubbish! It was an AWFUL film.

You're wrong too about social dancers. Competitive couples are the most capricious students of any teacher/coach. They are always chasing rainbows, moving about, and blaming everyone but themselves for the fact that they never get beyond the first round.

Social Dancers represent 90%+ of the dancing community, and 90%+ of the income of the majority of dance teachers. They come back, year after year. Sometimes we wish that they wouldn't, but we take their money, and smile.
Re: Cyd
Posted by anymouse
5/2/2009  8:33:00 AM
In Cyd's defense, most of the dance teachers who have enough competitive couples to fill their schedule rarely if ever teach social dancers.

Consider that there is not only the reliability of the students in booking, but also the material that they want to learn and the degree to which they respond to teaching. There's no rule that someone cannot be this kind of student without focusing on competition, but practically there are few who have never had a competition focus in their dancing who are that kind of student.
Re: Cyd
Posted by Telemark
5/3/2009  3:47:00 AM
It is obvious that you have an irrational bias against social dancers. The basis of your hostility seems to be that they are unintersted in competitive dance. So what?

What level of Amateur Medal do you consider 'high grade' BTW?

As far as my teaching methods are concerned, I happen to have started a class combining Foxtrot & Samba just last week. The pupils are 'Improvers' who have been dancing for 18 weeks, but not, so far, in these styles.

We covered the Samba bounce action in the first class, and I had them dancing Whisks to L & R (with quite convincing Latin Cross positions on Step 2), and making the bounce action without any obvious effort. We also started the Foxtrot with a Feather into Reverse Turn, and spent several minutes considering the effect of the side-leading and the CBMP OP position of the man on the last step of the Feather, and its importance in the swing into Step 1 of the Reverse Turn. Of course we looked at the division of the turn, and the need to avoid over-rotation on the second turning step, so that the couple can move directly down LOD, without having pulled the lady off balance on her heel turn (and we found time to have the ladies dancing a reasonable heel turn too).

Isn't this what all teachers do?
Re: Cyd
Posted by anymouse
5/3/2009  6:45:00 AM
There's absolutely nothing wrong with social dancers.

However, they usually represent a substantially different approach to dancing. Of course it's a spectrum of possibilities, some very carefree, others fairly focused on gaining mastery. But it is ultimately a different community of people.

Two examples of where you start to get some real cross-over are former competitors who did it for a while but decided it was not their end goal in dancing, and increasingly some of the non-competing students of younger teachers (who themselves compete in the amateur division). The later group are interesting, because they inherit some of their teachers' attitudes rather than the usual studio/social ones.
Re: Cyd
Posted by Cyd
5/4/2009  3:59:00 PM
The studios here have created a division between Competition and serious dancers and Social Dancers
This is how a Social Teaching class is run. 8pm to 10pm. 1/2 an hour of teaching, than 1/2hour of dancing. Followed by another 1/2 hour of teaching and 1/2 hour of dancing. The ladies would take a seat in strict rotation. The guys at the end of each tune will take a lady again in rotation. Some studios have what they call staff. In this case the paying guys and girls will sit and are picked up , again in order by the staff who in most cases recieve training on what is being taught that evening. The division. No Competition Dancer is going to turn up to one of these Social Dances and not dance with their own partner. So there we are, divided by the way Studios are run.This system has been in operation since long before i was born.
Re: Cyd
Posted by anymouse
5/4/2009  6:17:00 PM
"This is how a Social Teaching class is run"

What you meant to say was "this is one of the many ways that a social class can be run".

There are of course many others ways in use as well!
Re: Cyd
Posted by terence2
5/2/2009  11:47:00 PM
Consider this.... in the UK, until recent yrs ( social dance tops the list now ) medal test type of classes were all there were.. and yet, the majority of students never entered comps( "in house" , for a bit of fun, maybe).
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