Calling all Team Captains!

TaintedMantis

TaintedMantis

Member
Well, I've been appointed as Dancesport's team captain for the next academic year. It would have been great had it not been for 2 things:
1. My dance level compared to some of the advanced dancers is just not up to standard. I can do excessively well in beginners but I'm not allowed to join beginners anymore and am supposed to be in advanced next year (this year too, but we didn't do any competing).
2. Our practice sessions are not all that great. From the 2 previous team captains, I felt that they didn't really do much in terms of teaching things like technique that the teacher doesn't specifically teach.

So far, my way to counteract this is to take up more technique sessions myself so that I can incorporate them into teaching proper things in practice sessions when I start running them properly next year. One of the things I've noted is that a lot of the beginners who are interested in joining competitions don't even know how to lead and follow, and in the two years, I've only seen the last team captain doing an impromptu "workshop" that taught everybody how to lead and follow in the cha cha.

Additionally, the way we run practices is that you simply show up, practice what you've just learnt in class or some other dance, ask the President (who's done 12 years of Dancesport already) or the Team Captain whether it looks alright or not. I can see this not being a problem for the advanced dancers, but I don't see how that's going to help the beginners if they don't even know the basics properly. In terms of ratio, the beginner's ratio isn't too bad, but we're kind of already depleted in male advanced dancers next year so that might be a problem (unless some hot experienced German dancers decide to join the university, but we can only dream ;)).

So to sum up, I'm curious to know how other people run practice sessions and how to attract more male dancers into the society. And any ideas on how I can turn practice sessions into something worth going to?
 
How many advanced team members do you have? Maybe you could arrange beginner classes where team members took turns teaching some basics as well as organized practices where there will be plenty of advanced members around to help out.

We usually have practices where everyone comes to work on what they've been learning, so there are always a lot of more advanced people if any of the beginners have problems. We also run practice competition rounds, were we play all the dances one after another and everyone pretends its a competition (complete with walking on and off the floor) so that everyone gets used to how competitions work.

About male dancers, I have no idea...we just get lucky I suppose. When we really don't have enough male leads, sometimes a more advanced girl will compete or even take classes as a leader.
 
with the lack of advanced male dancers one of the best solutions probably is to have them pick 2 different partners for 2 different styles. That way every girl got a partner at least for one style.
 
Where are you located? There may be other teams and/or studios in your area to whom you can turn to help.

How big is the team? What people at what levels? What styles does the group dance? What resources (financial, time, practice space) are available to you?


--Mark
 
Where to find males to dance? I'd suggest your college of engineering. Really. That's where over 90% of the men on my last team came from. They need to meet girls, and are usually open to dancing.

In my experience, the most effective way to run practices is if there is a common goal to work towards. It can be useful to work on common concepts, where all levels can benefit (i.e., hip motion, or leading, or whatever). Different concepts can be incorporated through a variety of drills, reviews, or just getting people to focus on the concept while practicing.

Does your teacher not teach technique because of time constraints, or is there some other reason? If it is a time issue, it might be most effective to learn steps/patterns during the regular practice time, and then ask the teacher to focus just on technique. (And obviously there are a number of disadvantages to teaching technique separate from the steps themselves, and that's not really what I'm advocating, it just seems that if you have someone with more technique knowledge, that might be the best way to get the most out of their knowledge.)
 
For a start, we only have something like 3 really advanced girls and 1 guy this year, but the guy's going on a placement for the next year so we only have the girls left. Additionally, the chances of really getting them to help out on a more commited is rather slim either because they don't like helping out as much or simply have other commitments. My level's still considered as Intermediate, but I'm hoping to change that over the summer with things like taking extra lessons so that the beginners can benefit from better organized practices.

I like the idea of doing mock competitions within the group though, mainly because the beginners have absolutely no idea what it's like on the competing dance floor.

We've done the male dancer switching thing here, but I do dislike that idea because I've seen one male beginner struggling between dancing with three different girls for one competition (doing 4 dances), and he's so stubborn that he didn't even get the basics right, let alone know that he should present the girl on the floor first rather than rushing to find a spot to dance on.

I'm located in the University of York, UK. The main problem with York is that it's a small town, and there aren't as many convenient places to go to for learning to dance. Unlike bigger universities who have loads of resources, even trying to get space to practice becomes a nightmare due to the university's inefficient system, ranging from the Student Union, other societies wanting to use the spaces, and the university's innovations. What our society has always done is hire a teacher who's been working with us for a few years. She and her husband come in once a week to teach dances for three hours, each hour being one specific level (Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced). Because we're also providing the social dancing element to the students, the teacher tends to teach more steps and routines and focuses more on the girls' steps. There is some basic technique involved, such as the hand hold, but she doesn't go into deeper things such as the Latin motion or proper leading. A few of us do go for extra lessons with the same teacher outside the university though, and she focuses a little more on the technique and I've found some of it to be useful. But it's not to the extent to which I'd like it to be because I didn't really cover the fundamentals until I went home for Easter vacation and took extra lessons just to find out that I had to relearn my basic Rumba because my behind was sticking out too much, as well as having to learn the toes on floor tension. This is a show that my foundation isn't all that great.

This term, we have 2 practice sessions per week, each lasting for 2 hours, but people can come and go whenever they want. We've had room booking problems last term though, so the teacher couldn't come then and the president had to teach 2 hours of dance on the day of the week where the teacher was supposed to come. She's got 12 years of experience, but it's only when you push her that she'll do some teaching.

The men here probably have too much ego in their heads because they don't seem to enjoy the idea of doing something called "Ballroom" dancing. :( (We're called Dancesport, so of course, we have to describe that we teach both Ballroom and Latin American dancing.)

I don't know, I'll probably blame the lack of men on the fact that we don't have enough publicity and our sense of organisation is simply scary. All I'm able to do now is to take steps and change the way in which practice is run so that we're ready to go and enrich the experience next year instead of wasting time on just practicing steps without knowledge of what people are doing.

In terms of team size, this year we have an average of 10-13 people on the team, depending on whether they're able to make it, who are more serious on the competing side rather than simply social dancing. 7 are beginners, 2 are intermediate and 4 are very advanced. Next year, I expect the number of beginners to increase, but despite the fact that we will have experienced beginners from this academic year for the next one, I don't see them being on intermediate level yet.

My plan is to learn as much technique/steps as possible and to run things such as workshops during the practice sessions where people can learn the concepts like leading/follow and tension. I'm probably a little overambitious because the students here don't really have much enthusiasm in general.

I hope I've answered your questions here enough to get a big picture of my situation. Somehow, it feels demotivating when you see a society that you're so passionate about in a bad state.
 
Are there a couple of other people who feel the same way you do? Maybe you could work together. It's nice to have some support so you don't get discouraged trying to turn an organization around all by yourself.
 
Have you tried asking on the UK university dance site forum? There are lots of people in the same boat there (universitydancesport.com) . It sounds like you could do with a new competitive coach.
Failing that, you have to make your practise times count. I'm also from the UK ex-university. What we did was have social dancing/practise time after classes for everyone, and the other practise times dedicated to team. If you have advanced dancers, then let them help the less experienced for the 1st hour, and then stop bugging them. I was always willing to help beginners up to a point, but needed to practise myself. Even if you get an advanced dancer to run a beginners competitive practice/technique session, we also tried this and it was very successful.
Good luck
 
It sounds like you should be focusing on the beginners--if the advanced members aren't willing to help, you shouldn't go out of your way to help them at the loss of the beginners!

I was elected president of a club that was having some major problems and had no advanced dancers, and I'm intermediate at best. But we hired a new coach for our advanced classes and got lucky about having a volunteer coach show up to run a formation team. We make all the team beginners come to advanced class in addition to the beginners' social dance class (advanced class is a bit over their heads but they come anyways, and I think the immediate immersion in good technique helps). Also I've been trying to run extra practices for beginners since even as an intermediate dancer there's a lot I can do to help them with the basics, but that's something I have to focus a lot more on next year.

So in terms of the beginners, I'd recommend finding a really good coach and running extra practices to go over the material, even if it's just repeating what the coach said.
 
Also you could get the more dedicated beginners involved in running the club. For example we have a web master, secretary, fundraising manager, etc. who all joined this year and a treasurer who joined last year.
 
It's rather difficult to hire a new coach here, the reasons being we do have a rather good relationship with the current one and that it's hard to find another coach who will be willing to accept a lower payment because we're only students who don't have a lot of cash.

I've spoken to some people about practices and they did say that it was that one-off time when they learnt things such as leading during that one practice session that they found it fulfilling instead of simply just turning up and doing spins.

At least we've now elected a more dedicated committee! (Except for the president in terms of teaching stuff perhaps.)
 
Maybe structure your practise sessions?
One place used to have all the team dances run 2 at a time, 2w, wc, 2q, 2j, so ballroom and latin swapped, and if you did both you got fitter! During "non-dance" time, you'd work on things which need it. Have a period where beginners can freely ask for help from more experienced members, and have a period where advanced dancers won't be pestered. Of course, lots of socials always helps. A lot of unis have grooming sessions to help the girls, and dress rehearsals/mini comps to get people used to competing.
Try and get a couple "official" practise times where team are required to be there, unless they have very good excuses.

With the coaching issues, perhaps get in more experienced guest coaches to do work shops maybe once a month or so. If the cost is spread that shouldn't be prohibitive.
 
If you hire another teacher for some workshops, you could open the class to community members and charge more for them. Our new instructor also charges us less than she usually does, since she doesn't have to pay for renting the floor, we hire her for at least 4 hours at a time (she comes early for private lessons), and we hire her for a show each semester (which is covered by a university fund for student events).

We had good relations with our old coach too, but in the end we realized he wasn't really teaching us anything in terms of technique, so that's why we got a new one. So if your coach isn't really helping you with what you need, you might want to look around anyways.
 
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