Teaching styles

[dancin_feet]

I was helping a beginner guy at the studio party last week with waltz. He kept forgetting to change his feet, so I lightly tapped the top of his foot with mine to indicate the foot to step with. The general manager of the studio saw me and told me that it was a style of teaching that he hadn't seen before. This was surprising to me because I have been taught this way before, and find it a good way to go.

As someone who has trouble with the whole left / right thing (let alone reversing it for the person I am dancing with) this is the best way I know how to get the point across of what foot to step on with absolutely no confusion.

I have also had instructors tap my hand in a two hand hold to indicate the foot to step with. Anyone else got any interesting teaching styles to get the whole left / right thing across to students?

[Adwiz]

My Standard coach once went to get a round tray, like the kind that are used to carry drinks.

He was demonstrating the need during the Waltz Whisk to keep my right arm in exactly the same position even as we changed direction and I wasn't really getting it. So he went and got this tray and made me do the whisk holding this tray cupped gently in my right arm.

Then he demonstrated what I had been doing with my lady. Quickly looking around to make sure nobody was taking a nap, he did the whisk with the tray, moving his arm just slightly. The tray dropped flat down on the floor with a very loud "thwack!" An unpleasant thing that made everyone in the place frown. Point made.

[pygmalion]

My former coach was also big on visual aids -- just ordinary household items, like balls, and hula hoops, belts, chairs, balloons, you name it. And those visuals often got the point across better than many, many explanations.

[Larinda McRaven]

I draw a lot. Most things I talk about are classical mechanics and I guess I assume that if people can see the concept on paper then they can transform that into their dancing.