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Welcome to Episode 34 of the Salsa Kings LIVE podcast
Before beginning the lesson, Andres tells about his new service of virtual dances at salsakings.com/virtualprivates, which gives an interactive one-on-one teacher to give you answers to the questions you might have. For those with limited time or in a remote location, it’s a great service.
The subject of this week’s podcast is Levels. In any study, there is always beginner, intermediate, and expert. Generally speaking, Andres says the classical dancers are more aware of these different levels than other dance communities. Teachers have a responsibility to feed students the knowledge at the levels they need, when they need it so they can progress properly. For students, they need to at a level trust their instructor and realize the information they’re giving is important, rather than to simply rush through the process. The importance of the study is mastery of even the smallest things, such as timing.
Andres defends getting bored in classes. The more bored you are with something, the more in the right direction you are going, the more you have mastered the technique. It can limit the growth of a student to move them too quickly. Feeding too much information can overload the student. Teachers and students need to understand patience in the dance process.
This is something that teachers need to be clear on. The importance of focus and the ability to thoughtlessly pull something off is more important that quickly learning new, exciting techniques. The foundation is important, because the stronger you are in those, the better you are at more complex things. The poorer your mastery of simpler things, the harder more complex things will become as time moves on. Students may feel like their teacher is trying to hold them back, but that could not be further from the truth. In fact, if a teacher is trying to move you too quickly, that can be cause for concern and discourage you from dance.
It can be very tempting for everyone to move too fast, but the important thing of dance is to make it natural, make the movements second nature. Some of these things can become boring, but that simply means that you are actually growing. By establishing the proper level of dance, you can become a better and more enduring dancer. By taking the time to master each level, you are actually ensuring your time in dance.
“…the instructor knows that there are specific levels to these things, where those specific rules and those specific pieces of information are for specific entry points along the learning process. So, once you’ve moved on, then you’ll be able to understand the flexibility to those certain things, whereas in the beginning it may not be so flexible because you will need that specific rule strict in order to understand the flexibility later on.”