Blog post #8

If my plans work out, I intend to teach the different styles of Ballroom Dance as a form of Physical Education to middle and high school students. The best tool I have found in my years of professional teaching outside of the public school system has been YouTube. It has some very significant down falls, as "self taught" dancers clearly lack a variety of skills and technique that a video can not teach. The body and mind somehow miscommunicate and the errors are numerous. Those issues can be simple issues of timing. Perhaps the dancer isn't fully aware that their body and the beats do not match. It's a common error. More often than not, the "lead" isn't delivered or ignored completely. This is due to the simple fact that some things MUST be felt in order to be understood. If a couple are learning from the video, the woman will automatically do what she has seen, instead of following the lead that isn't displayed in the video.
Reading about dancing will not communicate nearly enough information as getting up and dancing with someone who has been trained on how to teach dance. The technical manuals read without flair and as dry as a desert wind. It recounts the use of the toes, the balls of feet, the heels, knee rise, hip motion, pelvis rotation. These facts are important, sure, but they must accompany the visual and sensation of movement to be effective.
YouTube, being the leader in video uploads and views is my natural default. I often tell my female students who ask about what to do with their hands, "most of it is personal styling." I'll offer a few ideas and then, "try watching some YouTube videos and see what you like, what style best suites you."

I suppose in public schools I could have a few videos that display the basics of each dance and work with the results in class. Refining the methods and development of their practices, leads, timing... etc.
It is possible that at some point I will develop my own source to share and spread the abilities to dance with people. Sadly, after over 18 years of searching, YouTube is still the best source of information I have found to share with my students. There is a lot of development in the world of haptic feed back for devices. I doubt this will evolve into a complete body sensation that could convey the ideas of things like Cuban Motion or simply how to lead a Waltz. I'm sure it could be used to improve timing. I have used a metronome app that vibrated with the tic-tic-tic. Perhaps an app that combined the functions of Soundhound (a music recognition app) and my vibrating metronome could solve all concerns with timing. It would need to have an ability to recognize Beats Per Minute.