Learning Guide
Welcome newcomers and more experienced Swing dancers. This
learning guide is designed to give you—whatever your dance level—a blueprint
toward achieving fluency in this dance. We use the term “fluency” because it's
important to recognize social dance as a language, a language of the body
involving the communication of two people using the medium of music and
movement.
Why Fluency Matters. Just as taking a few classes in French
won't necessarily make you a fluent French speaker, so too, a few classes in
Swing won't necessarily make you a comfortable, confident Swing dancer. Study,
practice, and experience are all required. While we'd love to give you a magic
number of hours that it will take for you to reach fluency (that would make a
great pitch for our advertising!), the reality is every dancer is a little
different in both how they learn and the path they take in learning. There are,
however, a few things every dancer can do to put their (ahem) best foot
forward.
Practice Does Make Perfect. Actually, you've learned one
important tip already--approach Swing like you would learning
a new language. For example, taking a one-hour class per week in Spanish or
reading a chapter per week in a Spanish text may eventually make you fluent,
but this will take a lot of time. However, if you start listening to Spanish
programming or try making conversation in Spanish with a native speaker, you
may expedite the process. With Swing dancing, attending practice sessions and
going out social dancing pays huge dividends. Every hour you spend practicing
and social dancing is worth nearly as much as taking class. So if you take two
hours of classes per week and attend practice for two hours per week, you've
just about doubled your study time and shortened your learning curve!
The First Fifteen. After a night of
classes, all you want to do is get into the practice room and dance. Before you
let go and have fun, spend fifteen minutes reviewing one or two things you
learned this evening. Practice them with a classmate for 15 minutes, and then
dance the night away. You'll find that not only will that 15 make you better
but it will likely make your evening more fun as it will jog your memory before
you begin dancing. Patience and Persistence Pay Off. You need to be patient
with yourself and with your learning as well as persistent in your approach.
Everyone has their limits in terms of how much they can learn in a given period
of time. Investing a lot of time in your dancing with multiple classes will no
doubt make you better, but you need to balance quantity with quality and
instruction with practice. Taking eight hours of class a day is great, but if
you’re struggling to remember two hours of material, you may be taking too
much. It’s not that you didn’t learn anything in the other six hours, but it’s
likely that learning is tucked under the surface and may take time to resurface
right. Maybe you might want to trim your class load. If you trim your class
load and pump up your practice time, you might find that your learning curve
increases. This is where persistence comes in. The more you invest in the
material you’re learning, the better you’ll learn it, and the faster you’ll
learn additional material.
Completing a Level = Knowing the Material Well. We break up
each level into equal sections of material that are numbered but are not
sequentially ordered. Beyond the Basic level, there are usually four to six
sections in a level or particular style. It’s worth noting that taking every
section in a level doesn't necessarily equal mastery of a level. Keeping in
mind that fluency is our goal and that developing it is cumulative, it’s
important not only to complete a level of class but to know and be comfortable
dancing that level’s material. Every class (though not sequential) and every level
builds on the previous classes and levels. So if you do not feel confident and
comfortable with all the material in a particular level, you will be laying an
incomplete foundation for the next level. This incomplete foundation usually
yields bad habits that become very hard to break the farther up in levels you
go. Leaders, especially, need to know that followers always prefer someone who
leads well over someone who knows a lot of moves but leads them poorly. It’s
not how much you know, but how well you execute it that matters. Once again,
it’s about fluency. Knowing 700 words in French won’t do you any good if you
can’t string them together to form complete sentences that someone else can
understand. Your dance moves are no different.
Be Honest With Yourself. Do you really know the material? Do
you really belong in the level of classes you are taking? One of the hardest
parts of learning anything, including dancing, is being entirely honest with
yourself about what you are capable of doing and what you are currently doing.
Getting better means asking yourself tough questions
and being open to hearing tough answers. Asking your partner or teacher how
your connection or lead feels can be difficult, but the information you receive
could prove very valuable and help shorten your route to fluency. But you won't
know until you ask. The danger is making assumptions about your dancing.
"Of course, I'm good enough for that level." "Of course, I'm a
good lead or follow." "Of course, I can do that or am doing
that." Confidence is an important part of learning and dancing, but if you
don't challenge and question that confidence regularly, it could lead to
overconfidence. Overconfidence will definitely slow you down and distort your
learning curve.
Take Notes. We have no scientific proof for this, but based
on anecdotal evidence we can say, leaders can remember a maximum of 25% of what
they know at any one time. Before you have time to disagree, just hear us out.
Perhaps when you begin, you may remember a higher percentage, but after a few
months the list of moves, rhythms, styles that you know begin to mushroom. When
you social dance you find you only use a fraction of what you know. Now, you
could always practice what you don't normally use, but that might be a lot. So how
can you ensure that you won't lose everything you know? Take notes. Buy a
notebook for your Swing classes. After every class take a few
minutes to jot down notes. Be careful to include not only names but also
memorable descriptions of the steps taught. The notebook can become an aid for
you when you hit a wall in your dancing and feel like you are using the same
five moves over and over again. All you have to do is flip through the notebook
for a few ideas. If you have trouble starting your notebook, ask your teacher
for a little help.
Repeating Classes is Not Wrong, It’s Effective. Ultimately
you must feel comfortable with all the material at a level or you shouldn’t
move on. There's no rush because there's no hiding an under prepared dancer. You
either know your stuff or you don't. It's hard to fake good social dancing. So
why try? We can let you in on a little secret: The more you work on
fundamentals the faster you will learn the more advanced stuff.