prioritize lessons

[ballroomdancertoo]

for an absolute beginner, I know that steps and terminologies are the first order of the day. After that what do you teach next and when? Is it timing?,or position? or ?

[fascination]

I am not a teacher, but my very next priority would be posture...for a variety of reasons

[DancinProf]

I'm not a teacher either (well, not a dance teacher) but I might even put posture/frame before steps & terminologies.

Once a beginner knew some steps I'd want to make sure he/she could figure out what to dance to which music--probably because this is the question I get asked most frequently by beginners.

[Josh]

for an absolute beginner, I know that steps and terminologies are the first order of the day. After that what do you teach next and when? Is it timing?,or position? or ?

That's the art of good teaching--it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. It differs per student, per day, per dance. What to teach, how much of it, and when, are what people pay teachers the big bucks for. I don't mean to say that a good teacher won't have a "plan of attack," but that plan will differ depending on the dancer(s).

[Warren J. Dew]

for an absolute beginner, I know that steps and terminologies are the first order of the day. After that what do you teach next and when? Is it timing?,or position? or ?

I put both lead and folow connection and foot action before steps and terminology.

[Chris Stratton]

Character of movement.

There's actually not that much distance between the idea of how people (usually) move when not dancing and what really skilled dancers do in basic movements, but a lot of intermediate students end up encouraged to cultivate a way of moving that relates to neither. Some of that is them (dancing, another body, it must be hard) and some is the trend towards presenting dancing with exacting emphasis on some short term ideas that are going to have to be replaced before much more progress can be made.

That's not to say that you can follow a perfectly straight path from point a to point b, but its possible to make incremental progress towards long range skills on a much straighter path than is often offered.