.. If It Ain't Got That Jazz

In the past years there has been a trend in the lindy hop scene - we dance a lot more to New Orleans Jazz. Many scenes have local bands that play great New Orleans Jazz, like Bolden Buddies from Montpellier, Rhythm Junkies from Vilnius or the amazing Gentlemen & Gangsters from Göteborg. Even though it is somewhat obvious we don't think about the fact that this is not the music lindy hop was created to and what that implies.

The bands that played at the Savoy Ballroom were Luis Russel, Count Basie, Chick Webb, etc. They played Big Band Swing with one of the characteristics being the syncopation which made people start to incorporate the triple step into the dance.

Different music results in different dancing. When Swing music turned Boogie the dance changed, when Boogie turned Rock'n Roll, the dance changed again. Dances match their music.

The lindy hop we dance today very often is a non-syncopated lindy hop. Lots of charlestoning and kicking as result from tempo and rhythm from New Orleans Jazz. While I do love New Orleans Jazz and most definitely dancing to it, I think it's important to keep in mind, as dancer and especially as DJ, what music made the dance what it was.

Everyone with a computer, an internet connection and a free spotify account can DJ. This is definitely a win for the scene. It's important not to let ignorance overrun the work people had to do automatically when collecting and researching music on vinyl or CD. I think it becomes even more important to be aware as DJ what kind of music you play and what kind of dancing it nurtures.

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!

A Good Teacher Is An Improving Dancer

Many teachers are teachers because they are great dancers. Few teachers are teachers because they are great at teaching. If you are reading this blog, you probably count more into the second or at least want to become part of the second group. But great teaching alone doesn't cut it. Throughout all articles on this blog I advocate to do what you say. This applies to demonstrating at the same time as explaining, this applies to failing, and something we rarely talk about, the most basic aspect of teaching - continuing to progress. Here are three tips that helped me:

1. Train!

As simple as that - you teach your students to improve themselves and tell them to train. Get yourself access to a floor with a mirror on the wall and train!

2. Train with focus!

Just because my time for training is not all day, unlike before, I feel like I don't have time to waste, and thus train with goal. Train for a show, repeat class or workshop material or do the Total Swing Experience series. Training with a goal has drastically improved the quality and results of my training and I promise you will feel it too!

3. Train regularly!

A bit more than a year ago, I trained about monthly (hardly ever) - now I train a couple of times during the week. Together with training towards a goal, this makes training powerful!

As nice side effect to improving you will be more believable and motivating for your students.

Stop Disappointment And Create Successful Classes!

The german word for disappointment is "Enttäuschung", which literally translated means dis-deception. Disappointments arise when people's expectations are not met.  It doesn't matter if they deceived themselves or were deceived by someone else - what matters is that we can influence their expectations. If we are good at it, it can even be possible to set their expectations.  Talking about them is a first step. 

Let's look at two practical application's of this concept:
An easy expectation to create is about the class' content. Since I always set goals for myself anyway, I try to communicate those to my students. It's important to communicate goals that make sense to your students, else it will be difficult for them to adapt to the new expectations.  When you feel like your class wasn't perceived as you had imagined and planned it beforehand, ask yourself if you perhaps created the wrong expectations or none at all.  Did you communicate them effectively?  Could it be that you created unrealistic expectations for yourself?  Evaluate these questions, adapt the newly found results, and try again!

Your ability to influence student expectations varies based on whether the original expectations are deeply engrained or not.

One dance school I worked for often held regular "group" classes with only 1 to 3 participants. The expectations of the new students were everything but matched.  Many of you reading this may be thinking "woah! awesome for the students!", but consider the fact that many students like the "anonymity" of a group class. They can learn by listening and watching, and the limited amount of personal feedback they receive does not overwhelm them.  However, if they are exposed to too much feedback all of a sudden, a big gap between their expectations and reality arises. If the students can't adapt their original expectations accordingly -- and it's unfair for you to expect them to --  the experience will be very frustrating. For us as teachers, this means that we must either try to re-orient their expectations or, if this won't work, teach as if it were a class with 20 students.

Should you manage to create expectations and then exceed them, the class experience will be even better for your students. In addition to having learned the material that they would have learned either way, your students will also feel good!

Music In Class Vol. II

Music is essential to dancing. Music inspires the dancers; Swing is the music that made and makes the dance what it is. Music is the key to our dance and, as such, should receive attention in class. We already know that music in class should swing. But what other factors related to music in class should we watch out for?

Tempo

I've seen many moments where Lindy Hop was taught to 28 bpm. This is quite slow. Also when teaching beginners it is easy to fall into the trap of wanting to help them by playing very slow music so they can practice "stress-free".
One defining part of lindy hop is momentum exchanged on a line. If music turns too slow, momentum dies. So we have to have a certain amount of tempo - even for beginners - else we have no way to dance lindy hop. I've set my personal lower limit to 34 bpm which I feel is more or less the slowest where you can have easily momentum. That is generally speaking of course. In a slow lindy class, I will break that limit.

Walking bass

This aspect was touched in Volume I, but should be reiterated here. Hearing the rhythm can be troublesome for people that are not used to it. That is why I sometimes revert to music with a strong walking bass. One moment is when I teach beginners. Another moment is when I teach workshops in scenes where the music played tends to be non-swing. In both cases the walking bass helps the students to hear the rhythm without losing the swing.

Pre- and "Post"paration

Prepare your music in advance! It costs time to search for music in class and that is time that your class will lack in dancing. Try to plan at least basics; When do you want to play music in class? What you want to practice during that time? It will give you clear indicators of what kind of music you will need.
Also "post"-pare your music. I keep a list of music I've compiled for teaching that I continually update. Removing songs that didn't work as expected and adding new ones. It includes music in range from 30-56 bpm and has different styles - mainly traditional swing and New Orleans Jazz.

Having your music prepared and matching your music to your exercises and students will enrich your class and guarantee you and your students a better experience.

How To Dissect A Move

Dissecting a move is like dissecting a frog, you can do but afterwards it's dead. A move is the sum of all its components, leaving one component away changes the move. This poses a slight dilemma because in order to explain a move one often has to dissect it to highlight a certain property.

There are two main solutions to this dilemma. One solution is to increase the visibility of one component by exaggerating it. The other solution is to simplify the move by removing components either bit by bit or multiple ones right away. 

Exaggeration

One of the upsides of exaggeration is that the move stays complete and thus the visual for students always stays complete. This is good because we know that the image we have in our mind is a factor when it comes to executing the move later on.

A downside to exaggerating is that it is sometimes impossible to increase one component without affecting others thus also increasing the visibility of another component alongside. This might blur what you actually want to highlight. For example if you want to point out that your upper body twists, your arms might swing bigger. Since the arms are extremities that are way easier visible, students might be thinking that bigger arm movement will do the job.

It is good to point out when you are exaggerating components so that students can put your movement into context.

Simplification

Simplifying moves by removing components has as upside that their is less distraction around the factor you want to focus on. This makes this approach more effective than the first approach. As with many things, the implementation is the key to success. Try to simplify the move by leaving out the more obvious components. For example all mirrored movements can be simplified by doing the solo body movement first without partner, maybe even already during the warm-up. Or let's assume you are teaching a move that has a jump in it or an extra turn. Those two components are "obvious" components, because they are easily visible. Try teaching the simplified version without the jump or without the extra turn first. This way you gain twice, because you also have a variation this way that your students can use to differentiate and lead and follow better. 

The problem with this approach is that it creates a cognitive overload if you use it every time because there are two many components and you will not be able to teach this move. Another problem is when you implement it badly, in this case meaning taking away non-obvious components. The non-obvious is from the view point of students, not yourself. I've seen often that people remove rhythm first (e.g. when dancing slow), but very often rhythm is a key component and rhythm is most of the time a non-obvious component to students. If you give them a picture without rhythm you nurture this behavior. I strongly recommend to keep rhythm when simplifying moves. If you really need to take out rhythm, take out feet at the same time. This will keep them from practicing foot movement without rhythm. 

Keep in mind that you always have those two options and chose wisely between them. As a rule of thumb - utilize exaggeration when students are already doing what they are supposed to do, but not enough to make it work and utilize simplification when it is too difficult to separate only one component.

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!

Nothing Rhymes With Unt

I'm convinced that more dancing in class and less talking will result in faster and more in-depth progress, if we need to talk though we should be aware of the consequences. The regular way to talk, when teaching, is to describe the desired outcome. We can enhance this by using images and analogies. A way more powerful kind of talking is suggesting. With this method, people think of what you would have said by themselves, and that's why the content sticks better.

The Benefit

I make a distinction between describing something and this way trying to make the student form a mental image versus suggestion. In the first option there is nothing happening unless the student tries to form the mental image. Suggestion on the other hand works without explicitly saying something but rather implying it and hence getting students to draw the conclusions more as a reflex or logical conclusion than an active action. 

But why is suggesting more powerful? It is because students think the thought, or create the mental image by themselves. To them it is a logical conclusion or ending to what you've been saying and it happens passively. Because it's logical to them, they will be remembering, what ever it was, better and also find it more convincing. They thought of it - it must be correct.

Suggestion can happen by accident, which I believe is most often the case, or used intentionally. An example for utilizing the power of suggestion intentionally can be seen in creative uncertainty. There we say that if something "is" something, the possibility of it being something different becomes excluded. We restrict the object to one purpose. If we say something "could be" an exit to a move, we imply and hence suggest that whatever we just showed, could be used differently. This is what enables people later on to use content of classes more creatively.

In the example above we suggest more possibilities and it's the way I use suggestion most, but with suggestion we can also limit variety of possible answers.

... or

If you have guests at your place and you want them to leave without saying so you could say "Somebody wants another beer or ...". They are very likely to decline and soon people will leave. By keeping the end open, people finish the phrase themselves. You suggest a yes-no answer, so they will conclude the phrase in their minds with the word "not". Humans strive for accord and that is what makes thinking "not" and answering "yes" difficult, that is why they will likely decline the offer.

The suggestion of the word "or" comes in nicely when you talk about coin-options, like yes-no, left-right, top-bottom, leader-follower etc. "So we can do this move on the left side or ..." .

... but

Take the word "but". This word suggests that what is said before is not really the case. Sadly, the word "but" is often, hopefully unintentionally, used together with positive feedback. "What you are doing is good, but keep your rhythm a bit more". All that sticks is "Keep your rhythm more". The positive feedback got lost. Positive feedback is a essential part of motivation, loosing it because of a three-letter word is such a waste. Throw the word "but" out of your vocabulary unless you want to negate the formerly made statement. If you have the feeling you need it, try figuring out what it really is that you want to say, and say that instead. If it is really both you want to say, - make it two independent phrases.

As a side note, verbally formed suggestion works best on native speakers.

The power of suggestion is a two-edged sword. I find it OK to use, just apply gently and be aware of what you are suggesting. Sometimes a limited amount of choices can help, sometimes the exact same can inhibit progress.

Share how you think how this could be used constructively in class in the comments below!

Creative Uncertainty

The Words we use play a major role, like take the power of phrasing instructions positively. By using words, we create an image in people's minds. Talking about things not to do, we imagine those things. I've always wondered why so many people don't dance more creatively despite the vast majority of teachers teaching leading and following, which makes creativity and the leading and following of new movements possible.

The piece that makes the picture complete came in a book called "Mindfulness" by Dr. Ellen Langer. She has conducted a series of studies about the influence of words used when teaching about new objects. The results are that when new items were introduced conditionally e.g. "This could be a pencil", people would find a lot more possible alternative usages than people that the item got introduced to unconditionally, as a fact, e.g. "This is a pencil". Introducing new items unconditionally creates a bit of uncertainty because it suggests that it could be used differently. She calls this creative uncertainty, because it allows for creative usage of the items. Creative usage means usage of an item in a, for that person, new way.

Langer's results clearly show why people often have trouble using the material taught in classes creatively. We teach new moves as "This is a swingout", "This is the beginning of a swing out". Saying a swingout could be a swingout feels off to me. Exits and entries to moves on the other hand are quite variable. Saying "This could be an exit to XYZ" sounds actually quite ok. Check out where you introduce facts in class, by stating something is something and try to see if there isn't a way of introducing it conditionally.

The other result that I found interesting about her studies to this piece of puzzle is that when things get introduced as "this is one possibility" - items get used more creatively than unconditional introduction but less good than "real" conditional. Introducing something as "This is one possibility" can be seen from time to time by lindy hop teachers. If you are already at this step, go a step beyond and go try conditional teaching. If you are not at this step yet, feel free to skip it. It's a bit like the fax machine. If you went from telephone to e-mail right away you didn't miss a thing.

By changing your phrasing, and I'm sure you can come up with more conditional phrasing, you will be able to teach creative usage of your material at the same time as your material. How cool is that?

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Dance Etiquette And Other Nonsense

Do I have to do one dance or two? Can I refuse a dance? Am I supposed to say thank you, or is that the little sister of "This dance sucked balls"? It's those questions that one faces at a certain time once you've travelled a bit. While there have been many heated discussions about this topic, I'd like to offer a different perspective on these questions. One where it doesn't matter what side you chose.

It is completely normal for any social group to have a set of certain rules. They define the design of interactions and accepted behaviours. It might even be part of the groups identity. Social rules make interactions inside of the group easy and comfortable. Social dance rules arise from the fact that dancers form groups, sometimes country-wise, sometimes city-wise and often even smaller.

Taking A Look At Rules

Let's take the rule how many dances are polite. In the some countries, e.g. USA it is completely normal to dance one dance. In others, e.g. Switzerland it is completely normal to dance two. Now what I've seen happen all over the world that when two people from different countries with different rules meet on the social dancefloor, that one feels afterwards insulted. One might think it is rude of the other person to want two dances, while other one might think the partner didn't like the dance or that they themselves dance like crap and that's why the refused a second dance or said thank you and left. Is one of them right and the other one wrong?

Another example of a common rule that is heavily debated is refusing dances. Is it impolite to refuse a dance? Often the answer is simply yes. But what if your feet hurt? What if you want to dance this song with someone else, because it's your song? What if you need a break? What if you hate this song? What if you don't feel like dancing currently?

Sticking To The Rules

The lindy hop scene is a world wide scene with people travelling all over for workshops. People from different social groups mix all the time. Naturally everybody grows up with a different set of social dance rules. Is there a correct behaviour? There doesn't seem to be, unlike teaching methods, here things are just different. The problem we are facing hence is not that certain people are not complying to the rules and being rude, but rather comply to a different set of rules.

Based on the rules we are used to, we have the tendency to make assumptions about the reasons for someone's acting. The two above described situations usually result in either a bad feeling for oneself or in bad mouthing about others. Both results are going against a good atmosphere and good feelings.

We should remember how we make those assumptions - we make them based on our rules, rules that are supposed to help us get along better. The actual results can hardly get any further away from the original intentions.

Since we've learned in the meantime that pushing our rules onto others doesn't really work well, based on all those hurt feelings from rejections and bad mouthing, we should try to find another way to solve this. 

Breaking The Rules

Ask yourself how important those rules are to you. Ask yourself if they are important enough to feel bad about yourself or make others feel bad. 

Bending those rules or throwing them out of the window is not easy. It also requires a bigger inner calmness to notice those moments where we make assumptions that make us feel inferior or get a bad impression of others. But if you allow for bending those rules and allow for more possible reasons for a person acting in a certain way, it will be worth it, because you'll feel happier and others will too!

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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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How Goals Can Kill Your Fun

Something I see quite often at parties and classes is that beginners have a lot of fun and intermediates and advanced ones less. When talking to them, it matches the impression - beginners tell me how great everything is and how much fun they have while intermediates and andvances ones tell me what they are working on and what they are doing wrong and what they need to improve. Think about it for a second - How was it when you started, and how is it now? How come there is this shift? I think this is due to a shift from process to goals and faulty comparisons. 

Process vs. goal orientation

What is so much fun in the beginning is the dancing. It's the process of dancing. When people dance longer, the wish for improvement becomes very strong. Remember, - you also advanced as beginner without to strong of thinking about the getting better part. Dancing becomes goal focussed. There are two problems with this:

1. The process isn't important anymore, despite it not being the goal but the process what we actually spend time on.
2. "Good" is not even close to clearly defined and usually the "good" shifts always higher and hence is never attainable

Is it bad to have goals? No, not at all! I think they can greatly enhance the process of everything, e.g. when preparing classes, but there are two things to watch out for:

Goals have to be reachable so that they stay motivating and even more important, goals should be used to define steps of a process!

Faulty Comparisons

The other observation I have made are faulty comparisons. People compare themselves with others. "Karlheinz learns faster than I", "The W Project rocks so much harder than we do". What happens here is that when you compare yourself with others you are likely to oversee that Karlheinz goes out dancing three times a week and dances all night long, while you might go only to your weekly classes. We tend to oversee the process. This can be quite demotivating and very inhibiting to your own learning process and maybe even the whole dancing. The W Project rocks indeed very hard, but they also train a lot!  Also something I find quite note worthy about the W Project is the comment from Anais Sékine that most of all they had a blast during all their trainings. That is process orientation right there.

While the work has in the end to be done by each individual themselves, there is at least one thing we can do as teachers to encourage desired thoughts in our students. Both faulty comparison and goal orientation are part of the description of what Dr. Ellen Langer calls mindlessness. So what we can do is support mindfullness. Mindfullness can be encouraged by not using absolute facts, but conditional facts. Instead of what you are telling the students is the truth, it is the truth for a certain context. 

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6 Ways To Demotivate Your Students

is the title of one of my favorite articles from my studies. No teacher demotivates their students on purpose. That's why this article focuses on the non-trivial ways to demotivate your students, those that happen by accident, and how you can prevent from falling into these traps!
By the way, preventing demotivating your students is not equal to motivating your students.

1. Taking Away Control ...

    ... is great - if you want to kill your students motivation. Imagine a situation like this: You have a student and you really want the student to get it so you will just stand right next to the student and correct every mistake every time. You might just want the best, but you've taken away all the control and what you need to do is to back off.
   Another moment where this happens way faster than one might think is when over-explaining, giving too detailed instructions. 
   
   
   One easy thing to implement is the three-try-rule. If we do something new in class, let your students always do it at least three times before you correct them. Giving them multiple chances, they can correct themselves, which in addition to avoiding demotivation also results in a way better learning effect, because they solved the problem themselves.
   To avoid the second problem: know your goals!

2. Untold Goals ...

    ... will suffocate motivation. You might perfectly well know your goals and they might even seem obvious to you. But not knowing why you learn something, without focus and without application, for example check out Something Is Wrong, where technique isn't a helper anymore, will leave them unsatisfied and with less motivation.

3. "They aren't ready ...

    ... for that amount of technique yet. It's all about the fun!" Yes, let's go for fun only, because it feels so great to be treated like an idiot! Unfortunately this attitude can often be seen when teaching "low" levels. People are often afraid to "over-challenge" their students and yes, that's of course demotivating, but under-challenging them is equally if not more dangerous. To you it will feel like they learn something, and to them it will feel like you just turned their juicy steak into some liquid baby food.
   
   
   To give you one example - when teaching technique, which is usually a challenging factor in class, adapt it to exactly what is needed. This way you can have a challenge your beginners with technique. They are never too unexperienced to have the necessary technique. Check out Putting Technique Where It Belongs. This does not only relate to beginners.

4. Lack Of Trust ...

    ... or simply doubting their own expertise will kill motivation! It doesn't matter if the insinuation of lack of expertise is presented as verbal feedback, a gesture, your behaviour or how you manage certain situations. This could be even positive feedback as "Hey, now finally even you have managed it". Finally and even are what demonstrate your lack of trust. 
   
   
   What I like doing with something new is that I demonstrate only visually and let the students copy it. They can try it out first. I confide in them that they can do it. Once they have tried it, you can give them the help they need to put it completely together - it might not even need your help.

5. Being Part Of It...

   ... is for motivated people, but who would want those in ones class? There is a fundamental need to be socially involved and accepted, to feel trust and care. If this need is infringed upon, students will feel rejected or neglected which also results in demotivation.
   A classic situation where this is bound to happen is when someone has a question. By answering too short or demonstrate in another way that you don't care, will trigger the feeling of neglect.
   E.g. during the warm up do an improvised big apple. This is a small contribution towards the "belonging together" part.

6. "I Don't Give A Shit"...

   ... about my own material. This attitude will react in "We Don't Give A Shit About Your Material", which are just other words for demotivation. You come into class and you feel like today's class is only one of those classes you "have to teach", but you couldn't care less about it. You are too good for the material and why should you hide your feelings towards the students? 
   It's infectious! Not showing your students you care about your material leaves them wondering, why they should care and if you don't see anything interesting in it, how could they?  
   There is two things you can do about it: First - change your view from the one who has done it for years to the view of student, who doesn't know the material yet, for example Be A Beginner. All of a sudden the material becomes new and interesting again. 
   Second - Only teach material you find interesting. No "I must teach this in lindy hop" classes anymore for me. If I can't find the interesting part to it, you're not going to learn it in my classes. This way I'm sure I don't fall into this trap.
   
   
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Mixing It Up

Learning simplified is done in three steps. The first step in learning is perceiving information. Todays blog post is about how you can code your information and how it effects perception. The dual-coding theory states that information provided in two different codalities sticks better, since two different kinds of "memories" are involved. The two codalities are auditive (phonological loop) and visual (visual sketch pad). If we serve only one codality, e.g. auditive (talking), and the students resource to perceive this information is blocked by something else, e.g. talking to their partner, the information is likely to get lost. On the other hand, if you are serving two codalities, students might still be able to perceive the information in the free codality. 

Hands On 

One obvious one might be dancing and talking at the same time. It's definitively auditive and visual. Something to add here though is that you can serve differently here. You can say what you dance as in what your body does, you can count (might be actually distracting more than helping - unless the focus is counts) or trying to auditively add the feeling, by adding sounds like woo-wap, shi-baam, etc.

This can be used not exclusively for learning, but also for changing partners. If you accompany "Leaders change partners counter-clockwise" with the matching arm movement, you provide visual and auditive coding of the information. You will notice that changing partners will happen more fluently. 

Triple-Coding theory? 

Many people in different kinds of jobs, e.g. social engineers, salesmen and last but not least dance instructors, have experienced that there is a third variable that doesn't show up in the dual-coding theory. That is the kinesthetic part. It seems that some peoples best developed sense is feeling. Of course this raises the question why this is not part of the dual-coding theory. My personal guess is that first of all it's more work to test out three kinds of codalities, and find a proper environment to test all three variables. Probably more important though is that most test environments are not geared towards learning of physical capabilities. Nevertheless, my personal experience is also that feeling the movement helps a lot of my students.You can use this knowledge to add an additional perception layer to your information, simply by making your students feel, what you want them to learn. Might it be a connection or might it be simply the kind of bouncing you want your students to do.

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!

Time Management: Or Why It's Called A DANCE class

Studies have found that the most effective classes in a school environment all have one thing in common - as much time as possible on the matter. This also applies to teaching lindy hop. To learn lindy hop the best way for the vast majority is dancing itself, combined with feedback and error corrections. It is unfortunately quite easy to lose lots of time on other things. This article covers the basics of time management for classes, so you can maximize dancing time and hence learning time.

First there are a few things that fit best the category organisation. It might not be visible, but this group does take a lot of time.

• Setting up the group, lines or circles?
• changing partners: who rotates and when?
• locally, you might have to check people in, e.g. stamping some booklet
• locally, you might be informing your students about current events

The first two points can be reduced to one by making up your mind what you want before you start class and then giving clear instructions.
The third point is a little bit trickier. What you want to avoid is that you are checking in people 15 minutes into the class. If you can get your students to come 10 minutes before class starts, you can check in your students then. Else, you might want to check the late coming students in after class, or find someone else that does it for you. It does stay disturbing though, even if someone else does it.
Pointing out local events is a great action and I love doing that when teaching local classes. Just make sure, it's not in class time, but afterwards.
The elements in the above list are examples. There are more organisational things. Think about what you do, and find a way to handle them more efficient. Always try to move organisational elements out of the classroom. If it is organisational regarding the way you conduct your class, decide beforehand and then apply in class. Deciding before class will have the nice side effect that it frees your mind for relevant dancing issues.

Then there is another group of stuff, that is hard to find a topic for. Let's called it mixed.

• talking time
• getting stuck on a specific problem that only one couple/person has

This list could also be extended, but they seem to be the biggest two points to me. Talking time is not dancing time. Chose well what you want to say, say it, and free the rest of the time for dancing.
If you notice that a problem concerns only one couple tell them that you're going to answer their question in person during the next song (and do so :)).
Almost last, when you plan your classes calculate time for actual dancing, not only getting through the material.
Last, starting on time is always a good idea. If you train yourself to start on time, your students will know that as well. This way, you don't lose 5 to 10 minutes every lesson.

Enjoy your next dance class! :)

Bars vs. Beats

When it comes to organizing swing music, one fairly common criteria is the so called BPM. I also use it to a certain degree when actually DJ-ing. BPM is a measurement for the speed of a song and stands for either beats per minute or bars per minute. The difference is simply in the number range. Beats are four times the bars, because there are four beats to a bar in swing music.

While Beats are more exact (when using whole numbers) I don't see much use for that extra precision. I've seen both in use. I personally use bars, mainly because it's less work to get and because I don't need it any more exact.

Getting the BPM

To get BPM, you'll have to either tap them out, count them out, or find a (to me) still unknown program that can handle swing music and determines it for you.

To tap out the music, you'll have to get a software or use online software and depending on wether you want to determine beats, you have to tap once every beat, or every fourth beat to get bars.(Some programs might actually do the beats to bars conversion itself. There are of course more software options to explore if you are interested.

I usually count out music, by counting bars for 15 seconds and then multiply the number by four. While there are more ways, this is the one I prefer.

Fun Fact: Just from talking to fellow DJs, it seems like there are national tendencies. ;) If you are a DJ, state your country in the comments and if you are using beats or bars!

Changing Partners: Or How to Benefit From Cognitive Overload

Changing partners has its reasons. But frequently I get asked about how to make people change partners, especially in beginner classes where new couples often want to stay together. This post is about the different approaches I've used or seen in beginner classes to facilitate partner changes.

1. The Discussion

Situation: You called for a partner change for the first time, and, despite your clear instructions on how to do so, there is chaos and some couples feel uncomfortable and start to debate with you. Now you'll have to spend precious class time explaining why they should change partners. If you are lucky, they'll agree and change. Or the situation could possibly end in a confrontation with your either forcefully calling "rotate!" or giving up and saying "ok, just stay".
Result: An often awkward situation, unhappy students, bad environment for teaching and learning
Better: Tell them to switch partners now and that you'll explain after class. This way you don't waste learning time.

2. The Explanation

Situation: Before you request a change of partners, you explain the pros and cons of changing partners.
Result: Either you get lucky and people change (but you still have wasted class time on it) or you end up at point one, "The Discussion."
Both have the downside that if someone doesn't want to change partners you're not going to get them to try it out without their being unhappy.

Experience shows, that everybody ends up changing partners anyway. So basically, you want them to try out changing partners without all the explanations and to figure out the benefits for themselves. To do so, I've developed two approaches.

3. The Houdini

Basically this is a magician's way of making people change partners. You shift the focus away from the act of changing partners. How? Well, like this, for example: (Students standing in a circle) "Ok, you still remember who was lead and follow? So, now there is a tricky part coming up and I need you to pay good attention.  Follows, you turn 90° to the left. Now walk over to that guy standing there. Everybody there?"  This way you've got people changing partners.  At this point they are still "at attention", so you'll need to "release" them. Now you simply say, "This is what we call changing partners."
Result: In the best case, the released tension goes to laughter, and you got everybody switching partners and being happy.

I used this tactic for a while, but it still took up too much learning time for my taste.

4. The Cognitive Overload

When I read about cognitive load theory, I wondered what would happen if you created an overload on purpose. And funnily enough, once people are overloaded it usually brings them into a mindless state. Once people are in that mindless state, they won't question (simple) instructions as strongly anymore.  A cognitive overload can often be created simply by combining two requests (using the word "and" as a connective). So, a simple "Follows, go to the lead to your right and say hello," will likely do the job effectively and you'll have more time for actual dancing in class.

Things to keep in mind:

• Make them dance with the new partner right away after the change. This gives them a more personal connection and reduces the fear of the new person.
• If students really don't want to change partners, you can't make them. The good thing about the last two options is that they'll try changing partners first before deciding if they like or dislike it.

Changing Partners: Or Who Is Next?

Changing partners has been a point of discussion many times.  At some point I was convinced it was only people new to the scene who don't believe in changing partners in class, but it turns out I was wrong. There are some Lindy hop schools that explicitly say that you don't need to change partners if you don't want to.

Most of the time, though, you run into this phenomenon in beginners classes, where new couples wish to stay together. This post talks about why changing partners in class is good.

Here is a list of various facts:
Firstly, problems solve themselves.
      Have you ever noticed that the couples who don't change partners in a beginners class usually have the most problems and also the most questions? Sometimes simply changing partners a few times solves problems, answers questions, and helps people succeed.

Secondly, Lindy hop is a social dance and changing partners is one of the the best ways to learn how to social dance.  With each new partner, you get a variety of requests/responses and you learn how to adapt.

Leading and following is much like a conversation. So, unless everybody already knows how to speak understandably, without errors and mumbling, as well as to how to listen and respond, there is a good chance that they'll miss parts of the conversation (or even the entire thing!).

What happens when you change partners?
What happens is that you can test your conversation capabilities by having the same conversation start with a variety of people.  This will give varying results and the easiest and clearest feedback to refine your actions.

Another advantage to rotating partners is that it allows students to get to know the "other half" of the class. This contributes to a more relaxed atmosphere, which is good for learning.

Cognitive Load Theory: Or How Learning Works Vol. I

The learning process can be described (in a strongly simplified way) as
1) perceiving information
2) processing it
3) and then storing and connecting it to other knowledge.
These are three different steps.  Now, one theory in pedagogical psychology that deals with learning is the cognitive load theory. It states that the learning effect depends on the mental capabilities, the cognitive load, during the processing. 

The cognitive load has to be appropriate to the learner's information processing capabilities. In most cases smaller is better. Size matters..

How can we profit from this information?

The cognitive load depends on many factors, e.g. whether the information is presented mono-modal, meaning only visual or only auditive, or multi-modal. When the information is only available in one modality, it will - counter-intuitevely - take up more cognitive resources. Hence, presenting information in a multi-modal way (visual and auditive) will help reduce the cognitive load, leaving more space for the actual processing.

Intrinsic Load

Secondly, if the information being given demands the student to keep various aspects in mind at the same time to integrate this new information, it will create more of a cognitive load.  In order to reduce that load it helps to use structured and already integrated information.
This relates to when you are structuring your upcoming class to connect the inner bits seamlessly together. It's a lot of work, but so worth it!

Extrinsic Load

The cognitive load also depends on the amount of information available to perceive.  Even if it is well structured, too much information at the same time will result in a greater loss.  For example: talking about the positions of the hand, elbow and foot in one phrase and then letting your students practice will probably make them forget one, if not two, of the three positions.  Pick one important part that you think is essential, talk about that, and then let them practice that one key element. 
True, this can be very time consuming, but the result will speak for itself.  After each key element that you've talked about, give them three times to try it out. Then repeat this with a few key elements, and in the end, shortly summarize those elements and let them practice to music.