dance pissed me off today. the teacher decided that she just wanted us to do various bits of choreography, rather than actually learning said choreography. the only other dance i've done was with anne ridgeway, who knew she was working with raw beginners and took everything slowly; in gymnastics we spend the majority of our time learning how to do certain moves, and don't choreograph with them till much later.
this teacher, however, seems to have forgotten that when teaching people combinations of completely new things, it's useful to have them do sections of it rather than the whole thing. the first problem was that the choreography had three sections - so musically it was only 3/4 of a complete thought. her second problem was that the only section we regularly did on its own was the first section - we practiced the first section and then we did the whole thing. when she finally put in a fourth section today, she showed us what it was, and then had us do it in the combination. we never did it by itself. it's like using the sink or swim method without telling the person what "swim" means.
she put a turn in the combination where we'd had a balance on one foot before - the balance was sort of a coiling up for the next move. she couldn't do the turn gracefully - had to hop at hte end of it. if *she* can't do it, how does she expect us to? she apparently understood that she had to teach us how to do step-turn type things, and i would assume she knows that spins are harder to accomplish... and yet she doesn't tell us how? i was especially pissed because i couldn't do it right - my feet stuck to the floor, so i had to hop all the way around, and then i wasn't gathered for the next move, but rather i was just barely balanced. also where i was used to pulling into turns (you get momentum by pulling/leading with your arm and hip in the direction you're turning in) she wanted us to push into the turn. with our feet sticking to the floor.
so it was bad enough that she wasn't breaking down the combination, but then she gives us a new (unrelated) phrase, introducing it in a way that makes it seem as if it's a clarification of a previous phrase in the choreography. but no, it's something entirely new. she commented on how when she told us where the motion was coming from in part of the choreography (don't lead with your feet or hands or hips, lead with your shoulder being pulled downwards), suddenly people looked vastly more graceful. she didn't tell us where the motion in the new phrase was coming from, how to shift our weight, any of that. i picked it up eventually, but it even took the girl who was a good dancer one or two repetitions before she figured out what was going on. i think a significant number of people still had no clue by the end.
then she wanted us to do leaps. fast ones. step leap and so on, across on a diagonal, and then the other leg on the other diagonal. she didn't show us how to do leaps first, and heaven forbid she should slow the music down to a moderate pace so people who hadn't done leaps would have a fighting chance. again, a significant number still didn't know what they were supposed to be doing when class was over.
i guess i just like actually being taught how to do things like that. most of it's muscle memory, and if you don't know which muscles are supposed to be doing the movement, you're fucked. i figured everything out eventually, but i like actually *knowing* what i'm doing, rather than guessing well enough that i don't fall over.
hopefully this is a fluke and i'll go back to liking it next week. otherwise it's going to get harder and harder to get up in the morning.
in other news, i have to write my proposal (and i can't find the in-class one that i got back with comments on it), buy a new notebook (this one filled up halfway through cyborg anthropology), make the poster for the activities fair (i have paper and a marker that may or may not make marks), fill out a w-9, and read a 45 page article. and take a nap.
strangely, my posture was better after dance class. i think it was being reminded of gymnastics, although i don't particularly remember having good posture when i was still taking gymnastics classes.