Thread: great advice on teaching dance

Richard Powers has taught an estimated 15,000 people at Stanford University to perform ballroom dances over the the years. I ran across his page on teaching dance.

A few excerpts:

"Repeat important ideas throughout a class or course, maybe in a different way each time. Saying something once doesn't mean that everyone will truly hear it, or be ready to understand it. This is especially true in a dance class, where students are often internally processing kinesthetic information instead of listening to you. Then after the second or third time you say it, Aha!, the light bulb will go off. "

"Make sure each class or topic is brought to a satisfying closure. On the other hand, if a dance is taught over several days, it's sometimes more effective in the long run to end a class with a difficult challenge, promising to finish (or even fix) it the next day. This unresolved difficulty sticks in their mind, like your tongue which can't stop probing a cavity, and their mind may partially resolve the conundrum overnight. This often makes the next day's class more successful. "

"In an all-day workshop, brain-fade tends to set in at the two-hour mark, even in the morning. Make sure you have a plan to prevent attention from wandering at that time."

I hope you find the page as interesting as I did!

I read through some of it and am very happy you found it and shared the link. Some useful stuff in there. I am teaching my first weekly class tomorrow so this came at a good time for me. Will have to remember "Don't talk too much"

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing, TigerB.

VERY good stuff.

Wow, this is FANTASTIC stuff. Going to take a while to fully digest all this, there's enough here to fill a semester course!

I wish I had read this before I started teaching!

I was guilty of overplanning and then sticking to my script, even when people's eyes glazed over and they started drooling...

Thanks for posting. Looking forward to reading and digesting this article.

I haven't read all of the article yet, but so far I am loving it.Thank you so much for sharing!

Here is Richard Powers demonstrating the cross step waltz. It's quite beautiful.

*adding to favorites*

Thank you so much for sharing that with us,invaluable material!

Awesome! Thanks for sharing this. Will repost

Thanks for posting the link TigerB! Good stuff in here for sure!