Terence. The question was, was it good , or was it not. Was it perfection . A pupil will become a better dancer if they follow Luca's dancing and don't to any more than they did. I would hope that as a teacher you would follow the example given and keep to the one discipline for as long as it takes. Would that make them a better dancer. Yes or No.

"Terence. The question was, was it good , or was it not. Was it perfection . A pupil will become a better dancer if they follow Luca's dancing and don't to any more than they did. I would hope that as a teacher you would follow the example given and keep to the one discipline for as long as it takes."

We shouldn't move on to more complicated material too soon, but if we all stayed with basics until we'd mastered them, then nobody would ever dance anything else.

The reason top dancers still work on basics is that they themselves still haven't mastered them.

After a bit of experience, dancers learn to work on multiple things concurrently; we can have material that is challenging due to its complexity, yet also continue to find lifelong challenge in the transparency of the most basic figures.

Ultimately, nobody will fully appreciate how 'advanced' the challenges of the basic material during their first exposure to it. Nor during their second, or tenth. It's only by repeatedly coming back to them over the years that we start to finally grasp how much there is to them. But we couldn't come back to them with that fresh perspective if we hadn't also been working on more 'advanced' figures in the meantime.

Your post was a non sequitor....

I tried to make a point, which I believe I did, that a Demo. is not ALWAYS one way or another , and you went off on a tangent about learning processes .

It was in no way denigrating the performance ( which I have not seen ) only attempting to explain that under different circumstances, it may have been different.

There is an old saying " You cant teach your grandmother to suck eggs ".

And ......... didactisism is seldom the best approach .

Anonymous or anybody else. If you could dance as good as that would you in a competition do any more than Luca did in his Foxtrot demonstration. This is the one where he dances on a vinal tiled floor to a Japanese Disk. Wouldn't it be wiser if you were to do the parts you do well on side one and two and from there repeat. That's in any dance, not just the Foxtrot. The V. Waltz you have no choice. We don't get fed up repeating on that one do we.

As to VW... there has always been a lobby to increase the variety... even Scrivener said he could not understand why there were so few variations compared to the " 4 " .

So... satisfied ?--- maybe not

"If you could dance as good as that would you in a competition do any more than Luca did in his Foxtrot demonstration."

*IF* I could do it as well as he did, or really as well as someone whose dancing I prefer to his, then yes I'd probably dance something very simple.

And I'd do the same thing if I were dancing only for my own enjoyment.

But neither is the situation for a typical competitor at a typical competition.

"Wouldn't it be wiser if you were to do the parts you do well on side one and two and from there repeat."

Most mere mortals cannot dance the basic figures well enough to win a fiercely contested competition on something so transparent. That classic material just shows faults too readily - it's like strutting around in a string bikini or speedos if you don't quite have the body for it. As a result, beyond the "development divisions" most competitors can create a more pleasing performance by showing their ability to execute more complicated and exciting patterns at a fairly high level of mastery than they could by pointing out that they still can't do the basic ones as well as a world champ might.

By all means we should put time into these eternal challenges in the studio, but for a competition, we should choose what maximally present our balance of skills.

Anonymous. Isn't it a fact that most of us try to learn too much too soon. That's in any style. Socialy its fun. To the uneducated it might impress, But to a competant adjudicator they shudder, that's the adjudicator who shudders looking at a person who cannot even walk down the floor correctly trying advanced choreography..Would we become a better dancer if we did only a Bronze Medal Syllabus for say a year.
If you go to Luka's Foxtrot do you notice the lift that he gets on bar three and any simular step. And how that rise is executed How many of us are capable of seeing it, or even know it is there, let alone do it.
Yet it's in the book.

"To the uneducated it might impress, But to a competant adjudicator they shudder, that's the adjudicator who shudders looking at a person who cannot even walk down the floor correctly trying advanced choreography."

No.

Most people who dance 'advanced choreography' quite well in competition can not, in fact, execute a simpler transparent 'walking down the floor' type of action (say an extended reverse wave) at a quality that demonstrates mastery.

Actions such as that are just too transparent and too readily put the tiniest faults prominently on display.

This makes them extremely good things to work on in practice, but not something that should be depended on as the cornerstone of a competitive performance. You can use them of course, but you need some more interesting things as well. Unless you are one of those who can do the basics so well that you make the judge wish they could dance them like you...

"Would we become a better dancer if we did only a Bronze Medal Syllabus for say a year."

You would think so, but in fact no. Because we are human.

The best answer is to dance a variety of things - some basic, some more complicated, and to educate the dancer overall.

The true educational value of the "bronze material" will only become apparent as you come back to it time and time again over the years. Nobody can fully appreciate it the first time, because they don't yet have the requisite experience or skills to really understand or execute it yet. The first time through you only get a superficial understanding.

Looking at the more complicated variations will actually help your understanding of the basic figures when you come back to them - you'll start to see the basic figures as a very specific path through a forest of alternate possibilities not taken, because now you know that if you let it go a little bit more this way, it would become something else, and a little bit that way, yet another something else. The more you know of the possibilities, the more clearly you can dance the chosen one.

Again... many " blanket " statements, in as " nobody " etc.

Much depends on the person receiving the information and the one one supplying it.

Grasping concepts in ANY discipline is always an individual exercise.

If you were to say " generally " , that might be more palatable .

As to staying on basics for a yr... you obviously never new Charles Thiebault !

"Again... many " blanket " statements, in as " nobody " etc.

Much depends on the person receiving the information and the one one supplying it."

You should pay more attention to the actual statement that was made:

"Nobody can fully appreciate it the first time"

It's not that people can't appreciate it the first time, it's that nobody can FULLY appreciate it the first time - if they learn more in the future, they will be able to appreciate aspects that were previously beyond their ability to perceive or understand.

Someone who 'fully' appreciates it at the first time would have to be someone who is incapable of learning any more about it, because any future expansion of their insight based appreciation would mean their initial appreciation was less than full. Such a hypothetical person might as well quit, as they can never get any better.