anon,
The lady friend that is preparing for the showcase is also my dance partner.
She has a very sketchy background in dance. She is from E. Europe and danced folk and ballroom with a traveling company-had never done any competition, social dancing, or ever heard of a showcase until moving here 7 years ago. She had never had a private lesson. They were just assigned a partner and went to work. All of their lessons were very demanding group lessons. They did lots of solo drilling, class drilling, and the teacher was very much a dictator. All of the dance was choreographed with a group--she said she did a Jive routine once that lasted 7 minutes.
When we started dancing together I was a total beginner and she was more advanced than me. She attended private lessons, but they were about 65% for me--and I paid for them.
Now she is paying for her own private lessons and possibly doing this showcase. She says she did Int. Latin at a high level about 23 years ago, but has forgotten most of it. She could't remember a hockey stick. She is finding out that she is weak in lots of technique issues. She is not a beginner in some ways, but she is like starting over with these Latin dances and the very specific footwork and technique. She knows the syllabus, but it gets mixed up with time and different language. We competed recently in Int Latin and this helped her realize that she needed some work. We did American Rhythm for years and have switched to Int. Latin recently. I am way ahead of her in some ways since I have been taking lessons, competing, and working with my teacher partner for about 1 1/2 years.
We had lots of problems and wasted lesson time on choreograpy issues. She is very picky about what figures she will dance. Lots of lesson time was wasted on this using my dime.
I watched her last lesson and she is improving drastically. It's funny to watch and listen to the process. Her lesson costs about $65 per hour and she is on a tight budget and is very frugal.
Guess she wants the teacher to read her mind on acceptable choreography just for her. I think now she has given up on any type of choreography and is settling for him to just help with the basic technique on each latin dance. I am very happy that she is taking private lessons now. I take from the same teacher and at some point we may split a lesson. We plan on competing again in May. The interest in private lessons for her are to help prepare her to be a dance teacher.