I taught a dance workshop some time back, at a popular dance academy in Asia.
I was teaching the choreography of a well-known celebrity MTV dance choreographer, who is currently the rave in the MTV dance arena - which as most of you would know, is not an area that I am active in as most of my accolades come by way of Television variety show choreography and directing. So why did the studio owner invite me to teach MTV dance?
I asked her out of curiosity:-
Her: Bill, when it comes to teaching and choreography you’re the man.
*I felt my head inflate for a mere moment there
Me: Thank you
Her: I mean it Bill, some of these instructors have driven away my customers! I need someone to bring in the stayers!
Me: ???
This is the story... (it's story time folks, get your pillows and candy floss)
I’d arrived early and my class wouldn’t start for another 20-minutes and thus I decided to sneak a peek at the other instructors.
In the first studio, I saw students with faces of fear, anxiety and torture as they - drenched in perspiration - tried hopelessly to keep pace with the teacher’s combination. The well-known Jazz dance instructor turned to the class — after slugging them with a flurry of complicated steps, at break-neck pace and reprimanded them for not catching on fast enough.
In another studio I saw the common performance of most syllabus ballet instructors — particularly those affiliated with the Royal Academy of Dance. This teacher was sitting on a stool dictating to a room full of stressed-out teenage ballerinas. The only time she got up from the stool was to prod, poke and push out the legs of a struggling student when she didn’t get a wide enough 1st position ballet turnout.
In the studio where my workshop was to soon occupy stood a funky, young Hip-Hop diva who was demonstrating the proper way to perform a choreographed combination. He performed it again…and again…and again. Not once taking his eyes from the mirror - from himself.
My point is... there may be younger, trendier-dressing, better-looking entertainers out there but like beauty it all fades with time. You’ve got to have more.
A dancer can spin, twirl, jump and put on a kick-ass show. But if they plan to make the transition to teaching they’ve got to have a lot more than idol-heartthrob power or smashing performance pizzazz.
An instructor has to motivate his/her customer/students.
All of these instructors were invited by the studio owner and these were world-class performers and yet they knew nothing about motivational-selling.
From the moment my class started warm-ups until it finished with a cool down I had one thing in mind: Motivating my students. This is an ethos I bring with me every time I enter a class. Why? Because, if I don’t remind myself to consistently motivate my students, they’d never come back. They’d come to take class from me. It’s my responsibility to give them the time of their lives. That’s exactly what’s normally missing in lesson-imparting situations. Motivation is key to good lectures and mentoring.
Motivating my students is far more important than imparting the steps. When they perform badly, encouragement is essential. Rather than to reprimand. When they’re not able to absorb the steps quickly enough, patience and reworking my teaching methods is imperative. I allow no room for judgment and scoldings.
And, I’m not advocating telling lies, i.e., no lying to students, because they are able to sense the nonsense and phony bologna.
And there isn't a manual to follow. Teaching dance is far more personal; incredibly more emotional and ever so much more affecting than any other form of teaching …unless you’re a practicing, professional psychologist. Actually, I personally believe that motivation through dance is very, very close to psychology…or parenting.
In typical academic settings, a text book, note-taking, exams, a lecturer translating the content of the text book, are the tools for imparting. Assignments, deadlines and exams are the motivators.
Teaching dance is so much more.
In a typical dance class people come to escape - They aim for freedom, excitement, release from a day of labor. They'd come revealing their most sacred of assets — their bodies.
Thrust into a situation where all is uncommon, uncontrolled, unexpected — unless they are seasoned, professional dancers — the dance participant is completely vulnerable. They are allowed to express their innermost emotions through the variations of music and moves and are manipulated by the teacher to perform. They swerve their hips, undulate their torsos, smile or scowl to the rhythm, and sweat freely in an explosion of total body and emotional upheaval.
People bare their souls when they dance - it is totally uninhibited.
A motivational dance teacher has the capacity to reach into the student’s inner being and draw them into a maniacal, musical mayhem of movement.
And, they allow it…all for the joy of dancing.
Teaching dance is a potent and powerful tool to be used in the right hands…
A dance teacher is not just a vehicle for imparting steps. A dance teacher can be an emotional, music and movement messiah for the soul.
Only gurus and Yoda-level candidates need apply.
