DJ-ing Teachers - A Special Opportunity

We DJs can play the dancefloor but can't chose who comes to events we play at. So we have to cater to the needs of those who are there. If that means it's a crowd that can only dance to very slow music, we'll have to play mainly in that tempo range. Funnily enough if a DJ gets asked why (s)he is playing slow music the answer is often "beginner music". What is beginner music and how does that affect teaching?

Dancing to 28 to 32 bpm is difficult because you have to superficially keep up momentum. Thinking of simplifying as slowing it down to those tempos is adding new difficulties and if you dance for too long on super slow music when you start, it adds habits that will be tricky to get rid of later.

 

It is patronizing to assume that beginners can't dance to medium tempos right away and worse - demotivating when they see the cool kids dancing to faster (actually regular) tempos at parties.

Of course we have to simplify stuff, and slowing stuff down to a certain degree makes sense, but stop in reason. Beginner classes with triple steps can be done to 34 bpm as slowest. Rhythm can be taught in easier ways as Groove Walks to beginners at tempos around 38-40 bpm.

Don't create weird new stuff for beginners. Teach them what you dance. Don't dumb down, but simplify!

If you are a teaching DJ you have a special opportunity, you can decide what the people on the dancefloor can dance to, - because you teach them. So when you play slow music - play it because you want to dance to it!

Believe Me, I'm Lying

When you teach bloody beginners they don't know you and there is no reason for them to trust you. That's why you might need to take additional methods to convince them. Eventually, you want to build trust with them though. Trust makes relationships a lot easier and for both students and teachers. As student there is a lot less inner resistance and and as teacher you will face more open students. It also makes for a leaning environment. This article tackles a situation I've seen happening and that is not only infringing trust but also tripping hazard to the learning process.

Flat Earth

Lots of teachers give their students rules, like "Your arm never goes beyond your body". I call those "beginner-rules" because you use them in the beginning to assist with some problem and eventually you have to throw the rule overboard, e.g. when you are teaching a movement when the elbow has to go past your body. It will be extremely difficult, especially if you have corrected them multiple times on "... and keep your elbows in front of your body". The reason is that this rule had implications. Your students trained to keep their elbows in front of them, and now they have to break their mindset and establish a new one. As a side note, Flat Earth teaching can easily result from strong bottom up structure.

Do you remember how long it took to go from flat earth to round? Some people died on the way. I'm glad that won't happen if you tell someone not every move starts with a rock step. 

Learning is connecting new knowledge to knowledge that the person already has.  Now if that old knowledge is absolute ("you always do x, y and r") you have to break that at some point. Usually this goes along with losing habits that you've trained hard to get in the first place. I've seen people dancing for 10 years and still facing problems that have to do with getting rid of habits they trained when they started, but were only rules for beginners.

When you teach a beginner-rule, you assume that your students can't handle the real way. They can - true story! The solution is simplification of the content of your classes instead of flat-earth-teaching. Simplified versions extend well. You can derive new truths while keep the existing beliefs and additionally go with the natural process of learning. For an example of simplification check out the math analogy in section Putting Technique Where It Belongs.

Another moment where you can make or break trust is when you mess up. It's not a sign of incompetence if you mess up, but a sign of humanity. So instead of hiding your mistake, acknowledge it and move on. It will increase credibility, because your students will see matching between what you say and what you do. Since we strive for harmony (...or), this will feel give your students a good feeling. Besides having other nice side-effects.

Not having to break any beliefs and seeing congruence in what you do and say makes you a lot more trust-worthy. Why should your students believe you, if you told them a rule in the beginning, that you break later? Why should they assume that what you are telling now is the real deal? Why should they trust you, if they see one thing and you say another? Be honest with your students right away, tell them what Lindy actually looks like to you, and not some phony version. It's worth it!

There Is Different And There Is Shit

Recently I was in the train and a fellow lindy hopper joined me and we started talking about ways of teaching and the implications each method has. What I noticed was that the implementation is often overseen, no matter what method is used. The topic is important to me, because I think there are many misconceptions especially about teaching beginners, and there are many things that, once taught, are hard to reverse.

Disclaimer: While this article is sparked by a discussion about teaching beginners, its application reaches to teaching in general. 

There are many people that add "that's just different" in discussions. But no, not everything is just different! It's impossible. If it were, there would be no need for levels in classes, since they are all doing the same and there is not better and worse. But some are better and some are worse and so we differentiate. When it comes to teaching methods we have to think at least two dimensional (just "different" would be one dimensional). There is different and then there is the quality of the implementation.

Bottom Up

I used to teach by dissecting everything down to a T and then building up from there. This is the way I learned it. Crash courses would start by having students rock step over and over again, of course with addition of how much weight is actually shifted back and forth. Then we would add triples, triple for a while, then add those together, etc. Teaching a basic side by side Charleston would take forever, usually by the end people had forgotten how to walk and were completely up in their heads, while the movement still wouldn't be any good.
What happened inside of the students? We had taken something that they new very well (walking) and had broken it down into so many parts, that they couldn't handle it anymore. We created problems for them, that they didn't have before.

Also we had taken complete control over them and placed mistrust in them, by arrogantly showing them again what they had been doing properly for 20-40 years already. Two perfect ways to demotivate students.

Top Down versus Bottom Up

Opposed to this way of step by step instructing or also known as bottom up, is the so called top down approach. We start with the complete picture (doing the movement) and when problems arise we address those. The question is not which approach is better but rather what material suits which approach and how the approach is implemented. Top down works great with simple movements in the beginning and they can become increasingly difficult with increasing level of the dancers. Bottom up works perfectly to structure a class, a workshop or a class series.

 Technique As Solo Body Movement

What I've seen a lot as and also what I guess most people that have had bad experiences with top down is "Just do it" and "Move your body" with no explanation or support. That people will struggle in those classes and have "feet to be sorted" is obvious. The problem is the implementation though and not the approach. Something I've picked up recently is something I've seen Dax Hock do and what I call "Technique as Solo Body Movement". This approach trains dancers to first get the solo body movement to follow and lead the movement and then apply it by just connecting physically to the partner. This is genius. This way technique isn't a construct for mental masturbation anymore but rather something that helps the dancers. It decreases talk time, increases dance time, decreases mind-focused dancing, and increases the amount of details transferred.

That's why I roll with solo body movement not only in trains. Always remember - it's what you do and it's the way that you do it.


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Reverse Lindy: Find Beginners Material As Beginner

Everyone who teaches will eventually run into the curse of knowledge and be faced with a full class of beginners who are totally lost. When developing beginners material there are a few factors that have to be considered. The material is supposed to be fun, easy to learn, but at the same time very basic. These manifold goals naturally open up many different ways of teaching beginners.

This article talks about how I got to what I do nowadays when teaching beginners.

Reverse lindy hop is everything in lindy hop done in reverse. Ta-Da! :) A small example: If you start as leader in a swingout with your right foot back, hold the left hand of the follower instead of right, with your right, instead of your left, and you turn to your left instead of to your right, then you are doing what I call reverse lindy hop. Max & Annie are doing this here.

Starting Out

When I first learned lindy hop we didn't use any technique really, in the next school I learned a lot of technique. Technique was usually taught as a "boring" necessity you had to go through. When I taught my first beginners class, I did the same and taught lots of dull technique. Hence my beginner classes were hard and tedious. For a short period of time I tried to do "fun" classes with very limited focus on technique. This way I lost less students in comparison, but the classes were very unsatisfying to me, since I saw that my students would eventually have to re-learn everything. 

Something Is Wrong

At some point I realized two important things, that have completely shifted the way I teach lindy hop: First I realized - I had done so much technique that technique had become the goal itself. Second I noticed I couldn't do my beginners material out of the box with beginners, with the technique I wanted them to use. Out of the box meaning, without telling them how to react. This felt inherently wrong. So I decided that my lesson plan had to be completely changed.

Be A Beginner

I had been teaching reverse lindy hop for ages already, but I hadn't seen the true value in it. Until then reverse lindy had been more of a game. Reverse lindy hop had one funny property - it was surprisingly difficult. Even as a good dancer I couldn't just switch everything to the other side. This proved extremely useful. Reverse lindy hop enabled me to put myself into beginner's shoes. I recommend everyone to dance reverse lindy for a while. 

Reverse Lindy Results

Everything arm-leading related and in open position turned out difficult. What proved easiest were close position and body leading. 

From close position with body leading you can easily develop everything. Keeping rhythm (as opposed to speed) is something that proved to be easier in close position as well. 

Putting Technique Back Where It Belongs

Starting with basic movements in close position and adding technique when needed has one more advantage it becomes a neccessity- it starts like math in school. First you have the positive whole numbers, at some point you subtract a bigger number from a smaller number and then you need and hence introduce the negative numbers. 

For that necessity to arise, you will have to let them try first and also let them fail. If you anticipate their failure and introduce the new technique beforehand, it easily turns again into "just" technique.
What I experienced is that technique when only taught right in the moment when needed, no one finds technique boring and no one minds. My classes end up to be way more successful than the "pure" fun and no technique classes. Technique has become what it was originally designed for: not a goal itself, but a support for dancing better with your partner.

The Open Position

Now there was only one thing left. It takes forever to get into open position, which is actually quite a fun position to be in and good to know for social dancing. 

In the meantime I had found out, that I wasn't the only one working on this topic, but also quite a bunch of friends - including my favorite dance instructor, Dax Hock, who also provided the above math analogy - seem to have ended up with more or less the same conclusion. The trick I picked to solve the open position debacle ended up being from Birgit, a great teacher from Berlin who runs her own dance studio www.jeder-ist-tanzbar.de. It's a send out. Open position there you are! From there you can do the underarm pass, which is a nice and easy move, and from there come back to close position. 

Share your thoughts on how you teach your beginners below!