Floortime

I've been dating dancers since 2011. And, accompanying that, practicing with romantic or at least non-platonic partners for the same length of time. It's only natural that we become interested in people who share our hobbies, passion projects, and way of life. It's also very natural to want to practice and get better with these same people. It just makes sense, right? You want to improve, you support their improvement, maybe you even live together.... And it doesn't have to be unhealthy. It can be constructive!  Twelve-ish years (more than eight of them, now, doing west coast swing) have included a fair share of ups and downs, healthy and unhealthy interactions with partners.  It's also included plenty of purely platonic practice partners, and range of different levels of success and productivity there, too.  Maybe due to this experience, and a lot of thought (and therapy, and discussion with uninvolved friends, and working with my own teachers and coaches) I've...

 I've settled on a pretty clear values system for teaching group classes here in Colorado.  I don't think that an intermediate class with a fairly wide skill discrepancy is the place for higher concept material. "Easy wins" is the name of the game, sharing elements that are easy for attendees to implement on the social floor right after class, if they so choose. I love the deeper more cerebral stuff, but that's for private lessons or maybe a small group intensive with a specific focus that lasts 2-3 hours rather than just 1.  On a similar note, it's easy to get caught up in sharing the details that we ourselves like to think about as dancers, while instructing; and that simply isn't the most helpful thing for casual social attendees. So -- very minimal and direct cues, simple explanations of the material. I've talked more about that  here  and  here  as well as in  this video . They don't need 8 different things to think about at a time; though by...