Wk. 9 ~ A different stance

The long awaited class has come and gone - the double dance lesson with Danceexpress's Piret Anus. Having started ballet and dance at the early age of three (but not being considered much good until five years later when her body came to adhere to her wishes and her self confidence grew), Piret is today considered one of Northern Ireland's best dance instructors - and as such I had been very much looking forward to this lesson.

After an introduction to Piret's dance background some questions were asked and then the dancing began; today was to see us learning the basics of the Passo Doble. At this I was a little disappointed to be honest as I had hoped she would do two or three dances with us. However, we partnered up and thus the class began. The first and continuous challenge for me today was to dance as a lead - I find it really quite a task to dance lead, but it had to be done.
The hold and movement of the dance was explained first and sequentially over the ninety minutes or so that followed three phrases/dance sequences were taught - first to the leads and followers separately and then practiced in partnership. The manner of teaching Piret employed was similar in many aspects to other dance classes (discussed in prior weeks) I have experienced; the first and foremost technique used was mimicry (in the active rather than the passive sense) - she showed us the footwork and we imitated, this was reinforced by means of verbal ques such as 'cross forward'...etc and by the counting out of beats 1 to 8 (the Passo Doble is usually danced to music in 2). Whilst all these techniques are the same as other dance classes, things that differed, although small, were for example the reference to other dance styles and techniques in relation to the dance at hand, the lack of imagery used to portray the required moves. Other than this the actual methodology used was similar, although I find that ones personality always impacts on the manner of teaching whether method is similar or different.

The learning of the Passo was quite interesting, and I must say quite revealing of my own stance towards learning to dance - first and foremost I found that I did not really embrace the role to be a lead because it meant I would be missing out on the follower's steps (to compensate I tried to learn both); second I found that I had great difficulty with the lead's required motion as for the passo there is little or no hip movement - although some is permitted in the follower's part the same is not true for the lead; the other element I had difficulty with was that the method of teaching here did not take into consideration the phrasing of the music - as such the dance was initiated on any beat that seemed to fit, not necessarily being the first beat of the musical phrase, coming from a musicology background and having always been taught that the first beat of the dance coincides with the first beat of the musical phrase this attitude very much threw me, and often led me to either loose track of where I was or made me start on when I felt the dance should start which usually had the consequence of collision with my neighbour.

Overall I found the lesson a great experience and definitely gave me an insight into the significance of one's background training and one's character on the learning and teaching of dance - both aspects require methodology, but at the same time neither is free from personal adaptation.