Practice Partnerships

Janson

Janson

Active Member
Does anybody have much experience with these?
I've only ever danced with one person, my competition partner, since starting dancing a couple of years ago - we practiced enough and usually had competitions coming up to prepare routines for and try and be ready. So practice was polishing the routines constantly, which was fine to an extend.
However, she is leaving and so I will be partnerless for a few months - after which I will try and repartner someone competitively (a whole other bunch of complexities I'm sure!). In the meantime though, I'd like to carry on dancing and try and improve as much as possible. I suppose not having competitions to prepare for means we can 'deconstruct' our technique that bit more in the practice time - although I'm just trying to find the best way to go about this. Ideally both group classes and privates would be possible on top of practice, although I naturally I'm not entirely sure where to start. How do you best find these partnerships work out?
 
Practice partnership is just that. You get together and dance. It's good to have a plan on what you want to work on. You will have a list that you're focused on and she will have a list on her own. Pick some figures or exercises and go through them.

I am dancing Pro/am right now so I don't have a regular partner that I can work with. I have several practice partners. Some of them have a regular competitive partner that they take lessons with. I dance with them once a week when the other person is unavailable. So far, it's working out okay. Depending on the skill of the other person, I either have them dance to my routine or I let them use me to try out things they learn in their own lessons.
 
I will highly suggest to use this opportunity to work on yourself.

There are a whole bunch of things you could work on/refine on your own, actually, better if you work on your own.

Obviously, I don't know your level, but you can't go wrong with working on the fundamentals. Or you can always ask your coaches on what to work on, or ask for drills.

As for why I would suggest so...
1. It is always important to work on yourself. I mean, unless your practice partner becomes your comp partner, or otherwise, much time could go into wasted (let me be clear, you can still get something out of it). On the other hand, no one could take away what you practiced on yourself. You have a better cost efficient ratio by practicing yourself.
2. By practicing yourself, you are taking away other "variables" - so you can focus on the core issues. It is kinda like solving problems, you first construct a simplified model by taking most of the variables away (the spherical cow joke) so you can focus on the core issue, one at a time.

Cautions:
It takes tremendous will power to work on yourself (ok, I guess it varies from person to person. But if you haven't practiced on your own over a long period of time, it might take some practices). I will suggest to bring in a plan with you, that will help you to smooth out things.
 
millitiz said:
I will highly suggest to use this opportunity to work on yourself.

There are a whole bunch of things you could work on/refine on your own, actually, better if you work on your own.

Obviously, I don't know your level, but you can't go wrong with working on the fundamentals. Or you can always ask your coaches on what to work on, or ask for drills.

As for why I would suggest so...
1. It is always important to work on yourself. I mean, unless your practice partner becomes your comp partner, or otherwise, much time could go into wasted (let me be clear, you can still get something out of it). On the other hand, no one could take away what you practiced on yourself. You have a better cost efficient ratio by practicing yourself.
2. By practicing yourself, you are taking away other "variables" - so you can focus on the core issues. It is kinda like solving problems, you first construct a simplified model by taking most of the variables away (the spherical cow joke) so you can focus on the core issue, one at a time.

Cautions:
It takes tremendous will power to work on yourself (ok, I guess it varies from person to person. But if you haven't practiced on your own over a long period of time, it might take some practices). I will suggest to bring in a plan with you, that will help you to smooth out things.
Click to expand...

wOW!!!!!!!This is so nicely said and so helpful! Thanks for sharing !!!!!!!!!
 
I am always a fan of solo practice, however having a practice partner is very helpful when it's time to work on partnership skills. There are simply some things you cannot practice without a partner.

Given that, if your practice partnership level of skill between the partners is too wide, then it can become tricky on the side of the partner who has the greater skills. You have to focus on finding a way to make the practice beneficial for yourself in some way or it could simply become a session where you are providing instruction to a less skilled partner.
 
(slight hijack) I find it is more rewarding to practice latin by myself than standard
 
Gorme said:
It's good to have a plan on what you want to work on.
Click to expand...
This. Whether you're practicing on your own or with a practice partner, this time without competition prep is open for you to define what you want out of it. Competitions provide a useful goal to give structure to practice and learning, but they're not the only possible goal (as you know), just a very easily definable one.
Janson said:
I suppose not having competitions to prepare for means we can 'deconstruct' our technique that bit more in the practice time - although I'm just trying to find the best way to go about this.
Click to expand...
So you've already got the beginning of your goal -- I'd say that there are a few steps from here. One is to work with a private teacher to figure out the specifics of what needs technical work. When finding your practice partner (as for any partner), you should make sure that your goals for your overall time together match well enough; in this case, that's both that you're seeing this as a general technique deconstruction time and that you feel the need to work on some specific things. With this goal, it seems to me that taking private lessons together is important; it's not clear to me how your practices together can be useful for both of you without that. (Not necessarily the case for all goals.)

This is kind of a "do as I say, not as I did" situation. The only time I've had a regular non-competitive practice partner was pretty early in my dance journey, and it was mostly about reinforcing things from the group classes that we shared. That was useful, but looking back, I think it would have been even more so if we had figured out more goal-oriented structure for our practices.
 
I've never had a "just practice" partner, but I find in invaluable to discuss technique and theory with other dancers. Seems like a practice partner would be a good way to establish this kind of conversation.

That said, I know what you're talking about when you say you've been doing "practice and polishing" for competition. I love summer breaks, because it gives us the opportunity to get out of this rut, and overhaul our dancing. If you have the time/money (mostly the money!) this would be the perfect time to set up regular (weekly or bi-weekly) lessons with a pro, by yourself, and specify that you want to "overhaul" or "reconstruct" or however you phrase it. (Opposite-role pro, I mean - follower if you're a leader, leader if you're a follower).
 
I wish more people would do this. At first, if they are used to pro/am it is not nearly as good as dancing with a pro, but in time I believe people can learn a lot more as they practice together and even share expenses. It is normal to sometimes go through several partners as you find a good match, so that can be frustrating too. But when you reach a point where you are dancing more often with someone that shares your desire to learn, I think you improve faster.
 
Really interesting responses here, I'm glad that it's seen as a good idea. It was only on DF that I really heard about this being a thing - but I suppose it does mean you can work on getting a perfect fan and variations and nothing else rather than getting choreography in your head. Of course, the cost sharing is a big thing. Maybe some things need looking at individually, but in general I feel that 2xCouple Lessons are better than 1 solo.
 
I think for a higher level pro/am dancer it makes loads of sense...and I wish I could find a practice partner...to date, i have had one near miss...but I would love to find one...
 
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