Originally Posted by bendymixer:
“It is not their dance experience in question just teaching experience, as AJ and Chloe were dancing in the amateur ranks and their young age would imagine their experience will be limited - it is vastly different competing to teaching and in the quick turn around atmosphere of strictly (different dance every week) then teaching experience is essential.”
Originally Posted by thengp12:
“How different is teaching a celeb for Strictly compared to a lay dancer? I am asking in terms of technique. Surely the technical level of lets say a 36-40 scoring dance is vastly lower than a dance for competition. I am sure if Chloe and AJ partnered a celeb (probably not happening) then sure they have learnt enough to pass knowlege on.”
I am inclined to agree with Bendymixer. I have no doubt about the dancing competence of these new pros. But having great personal technique and championship credentials aren't necessarily relevant to the ability to teach.
Its all very well knowing how to do something beautifully yourself. Its a whole different thing to get someone else doing it, especially someone who has none of the core skills to start with. You have to find a language with which to communicate, look for hooks to lock into to help them understand what you are asking them to do and help them understand what they are asking their body to do and to make it happen.
Often these teaching skills involve the ability to empathise and very often they are skils that develop with experience. Not of dancing necessarily or even teaching, but the experience of human beings, how people learn, how they think, what motivates them, what deflates them and recognising that what works for one person won't work for another.
I have been teaching Argentine Tango for 3 years now. I am not a particularly good dancer myself. I came to dance late in life and wouldn't win any prizes as a competitor or performer. But from my non dancing life I have developed skills that have allowed me to be quite successful as a teacher.
For example I talk to my students to find hooks or transferable skills to help them. Sometimes it helps to build from something they know into the new skill they are learning. So if they have done martial arts they tend to have a sense of their own body in space (not everyone does) and this can be used to help to get their body to move in an Argentine Tango way. If they play a musical instrument they tend to get rythmn and timing so you can build from that. I even use the knowledge some of, especially, my male students have of physics and engineering to help them understand the dance through their own points of reference.
I am not saying someone of 20 can't teach. Some no doubt will be able to. But as they have had less life exprience will, by and large, have fewer tools in their bag to enable them to instal what they know into the mind and body of someone who may be initially ill adapted for the task.