Is hardship really part of the process of learning salsa?

[Francisco Fiko]

The following exchange in another thread (Advancing as a dancer ? ) has prompted me to open this one to discuss it. That thread was started by a forum member who asked how to deal with the problem of not being able to memorize complex patterns.

... It IS a problem. (problem of not being able to memorize complex patterns), It is NOT "part of the process".

I often tell my students: "Effort is part of the process, hardship is not. If you have a problem, as long as you are my student it is not just your problem, it is also MY problem."

If students feel that overcoming hardship gives more value to their accomplishments, good for them. But why go through the hardship if there is a better way? As a teacher I refuse to stand idly by and let students "try to enjoy the ride" if I can help them. And I will perfectly understand if a student goes to another teacher who has the means to teach them better than me.

It IS part of the process. I don't know a single person who didn't find learning complex patterns difficult in the beginning. The options are: you can adapt to it, change methods, change teachers, or quit.

Many students who take classes in salsa will fall by the wayside. This goes back to whole debate about how many students end up dropping out of classes entirely after the 1st class, 1st session, 1st year, etc.

The attrition rate is extremely high.

Everyone can dance. Not everyone can dance well. Where is this perfect world where everyone can get through it if they just find the right teacher? That's nonsense. I am a teacher too and much of a student's success hinges on their own motivation.

And by saving myself a lot grief, I meant quitting. Maybe I would have been happier had I quit, who knows, but I chose this path and am satisfied with the results.

Yes, in reality it's the part of the process

Yes, there are teacher that teach technique, concepts etc ... but at the end, it's the number of the patterns that wins. Nobody wants perfecting technique, nobody wants drills, everybody wants just patterns and fun ... perfecting equals ballroom ... salseros don't want ballroom ...

And for most teachers, student's problems are not their problems. It's actually their business opportunity to teach even more patterns ... but it's what the people want, so teachers are not to be blamed ...

Please feel free to join the discussion

 

[Francisco Fiko]

It IS part of the process. I don't know a single person who didn't find learning complex patterns difficult in the beginning. The options are: you can adapt to it, change methods, change teachers, or quit…

Just because in your experience everybody has difficulty with complex patterns at the beginning it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily because it must be so, although I can see why it could be possible. I think part of the problem is that students are being shown complex patterns at the beginning, instead of being shown how to construct patterns based on elements.

And you are right, the options are:

Adapt to it. This means putting up with an unsatisfactory process = hardship.

Change methods. Quite difficult, especially for students at the level where they still must be taught how to learn, let alone how to dance.

Change teachers. Tricky and scary for beginner students, since some teachers develop a personality cult and demand loyalty instead of earning it.

Quit. Sadly, the only option for a good proportion of students who forget that the dance teacher actually works for them and that they have the right to expect and demand better service.

…Many students who take classes in salsa will fall by the wayside… …The attrition rate is extremely high.

Agreed, this is especially true in large urban centres, where the pool of potential beginner students may seem inexhaustible. But just because it happens doesn’t mean it should happen.

…Everyone can dance. Not everyone can dance well. Where is this perfect world where everyone can get through it if they just find the right teacher? That's nonsense. I am a teacher too and much of a student's success hinges on their own motivation…

We already live in a world where everyone can dance reasonably well IF they find the right teacher. Please notice that I did not write “if they JUST find the right teacher”. Because finding the right teacher is not the only factor leading to success. You mention the student’s motivation and you are right.
But every student is motivated when they begin taking lessons. Why do so many of them quit? What, or who killed their motivation?

An example: Let us say you select football players, eager, motivated individuals, to form a team to compete. But you put at the helm of the team the best cheerleading coach you can find. How many are likely to stay in the team? How many are likely to adapt successfully to the coaching system? They may, after some hardship, eventually succeed. But not as easily as they would have with a real football coach.

 

[Francisco Fiko]

Yes, in reality it's the part of the process… …Nobody wants perfecting technique, nobody wants drills, everybody wants just patterns and fun ... perfecting equals ballroom ...

The problem is that some teachers don’t know how to have fun teaching technique and they only know how to work at it using drills. So of course their students develop the same distaste for it. But it can be just as exciting as learning choreographed patterns, especially with teachers who knows what they are doing.
When a teacher talks about “perfecting” anything, students (even beginners) automatically turn off, because they all know that perfection is impossible.

I do not know what your experience in regards to ballroom dancing is but it is not about perfection. At the highest levels of competition it can seem to be, but there are many people who practice it just for fun.

…salseros don't want ballroom…

Funny you mention that salseros don’t want ballroom when the winners of most salsa competitions are invariably those with the obvious ballroom and OMG! ballet technique or background. But I digress…

…And for most teachers, student's problems are not their problems...

Sadly, more than a few of them think that way. I once knew a “teacher” that posted in social media: “I am responsible for what I say in class. You are responsible for understanding it”. Thankfully, his career in the field was as spectacular as it was short-lived. He may have been a great dancer, but most of his students changed teachers within weeks of starting.

…but it's what the people want, so teachers are not to be blamed ...

The problem seems to be that it is not what people want, but simply it is what is available. When given a choice, students will choose.

I never wrote that teachers are to be blamed. Blame is a very negative and useless concept. Assigning it never gives a positive result. But the teachers that decide to do so will take responsibility. Those who truly teach because it is in their hearts to help others do feel responsible for how well and how comfortably their students learn.

 

[sunsoul]

I do think that the complex turn lovers turned salsa into something much different from what you see 20 years ago. Nothing wrong if that is what people like but when it becomes the dominant way to dance then it causes problems.

It is still possible to have fun but salsa is a codified, commercial beast nowadays.

 

[Chris_Yannick]

Why do so many of them quit? What, or who killed their motivation?

The onus is on the student to take responsibility for finding motivation. Don't like the teacher? Go find another one.

My first salsa teacher, although in hindsight I know wasn't the best at teaching, did her job. The classes were also fun, which was a bonus.

As adults who can think critically, we can always decide to leave a class which we do not enjoy. No one is forcing the student to stay with a particular teacher. If someone wants to keep suffering, then that's their choice.

To borrow an old cliche, the teacher can only show them the way, the student must step through the door.

I also do not believe that most students enter a salsa class highly motivated. I think a good percentage of beginner students are coaxed into taking a class by their friend or significant other.

It's not rocket science. I don't think it's necessary to look for reasons "why" students drop out of salsa class like flies and conduct intensive studies about it. Okay, if that's your business, then do as you please.

So in the end, some students will find a way and thrive, but most won't. That's the nature of social partner dancing. There are so many external factors beyond our control which we can not manipulate.

 

[LarsM]

To answer the question posed in the thread title - I think almost everyone will experience hardship when learning salsa to a reasonable level (let's discount lower levels). As shown by http://salsaroadmap.blogspot.com/, the skill set necessary to become a good dancer is quite huge!

And I 100% agree with Chris - the motivations behind students entering a salsa class are many-faceted (most important imo: arena for meeting members of the opposite sex, peer pressure from partner/friends), few of which will relate to becoming a great dancer. imo very few will ever develop that motivation, no matter how great their teachers are. It simply requires too big a time investment for 99.9% of the students. Don't even think I'm exaggerating with the 99.9% figure either.

There's an additional meta-skill that's rarely mentioned which imo is highly critical as well, namely being studious and self-critical enough (in a good way) to practice with quality. To put it another way, discovering what it takes to become a great dancer is not trivial - being analytical is a highly desirable skill. I think this is present in absolutely every good leader in my area.

 

[sunchoboy]

Answering the title question - yes. It can be called different names (hardship, effort, ...) but you do have to invest if you want to become really good.
I think the price of becoming good is more or less the same for an average person (there are of course exceptions to that) and after all it comes down to whether the person is willing to pay the price.

imo very few will ever develop that motivation, no matter how great their teachers are.

This. The student can only develop that motivation for themselves. Even the best teacher cannot do it for them.

The onus is on the student to take responsibility for finding motivation.

Absolutely agree.
On the other side some lack of technology can stop even the most motivated person. As far as I can see, it's not generally the case in salsa dancing.

 

[Aurel]

Hardship/effort/whatever you wanna call it is very normal for learning. You can make it fun, but underneath it still is hard and difficult. If somebody finds the learning process easy then it means that they are probably progressing too slow and are not learning as much as they could. The essence of learning is challenge - something new that you don't know yet. This by definition means that you need to overcome it, invest some time, learn, practice, improve... which is all hard.

Of course, you need to find the right difficulty for the student. To challenge them but also to make them feel they are getting something rewarding out of it. But this becomes problematic when you have a large group of people, all with different speed of learning, motivations and capabilities.

 

[1derpalm]

I will say that it can be a hardship if ypu are only taught ate ps, and not how to properly lead and follow. If your teacher teaches J-hook means spot turn etc, then people go by visual cues vs feeling. And little things like how to elegantly go from 2 handed open to closed position (and teaching closed position as well for that matter) should be taught early on.

 

[vit]

This topic actually consist of several factors that are only loosely connected with each other

First, there are no shortcuts in dance progress (those are usually dead ends). Time is needed for the body to reprogram many functions, meaning numeruos hours spent not only dancing, but other activities that can help

Not all teachers are equal. Some have a lot of experience in both dancing and teaching, some very little. Some only in performance area, some only in social dancing. Not many fulfilling all these criteria

Visual cues vs feeling (and vs explanation), as mentioned by 1derpalm are another problem. You hear one thing, make your own interpretation of it (that is usually quite different than it should be). Then it's demoed by the teacher which again isn't aware his demo is far from his explanation in various details. Or he is correcting errors on his students that he is doing as well. Then you try it with a good dancer and it feels totally different than you learned on the class. And whom to believe? How do you know who is better, teacher or that person? Usually you think it's the teacher, because you are his fan, but many times it's actually not true ...

Big group classes not really useful, not enough interaction with teacher or other people that could correct you. Everybody on the class is 2 or 3 levels below declared level of the class, just like you ... while you would need partners that are actually 2 or 3 levels above the level of the class to compensate for you

And it's only about classes, for the people that actually want to learn. Which are minority, as mentioned.

Then you finally hit the social dancing floor and are faced with half baked dancers, products of even worse teachers than yours ... it's where the real hardship begin. Ok, you can avoid that part, if you are dancing only with your life partner, just in that case, it's not really a social dancing ... and maybe your partner would like to dance with better dancers than you, or if not better then at least more handsome, so you end up alone ... etc ...

In short, it's not easy. But yes, bad teachers can make it much worse ... both your dance progress and whole venue ...

 

[Chris_Yannick]

and maybe your partner would like to dance with better dancers than you, or if not better then at least more handsome, so you end up alone

 

[1derpalm]

I guess in short hardship isn't NECESSARY but depending on quality of teachers and dancers in your city, sadly, inevitable in many cases. But teachers should really teach certain things right off the bat.
How to understand the underlying percussive instruments like Clave, Conga snd cowbell for instance. It doesn't help of your teacher is latino/a and can't explain it because "it's in their blood cuz their from which ever south American country (that's like me saying because I'm a white Canadian I'm a natural at bolshevik dancing). And frame (mine still sucks) and weight transfer. And smooth hand transitions. But since people don't want that off the bay and only want patterns (or to just be in a class with ladies) , that's sll they're gonna get.
I'm particularly passionate about this topic as I faced multiple challenges learning to be a passable lead and had to take beginner classes in another city to learn these "advanced (for my town... beginner everywhere else)" concepts and tips.

 

[Offbeat]

Not to sidetrack the ‘hardship’ part of the thread, to follow up on excellent posts by @Chris_Yannick and @LarsM, and summation by @Aurel; we can’t look at Salsa in isolation.

Compared to dances like WCS and Tango where both the followers and leaders are willing to put in with more ‘hardships’ (higher initial threshold to start or be competent in social dancing, investment in continuous learning, etc), Salsa (along with bachata and kizomba) has higher drop out factor imo. Is it that with salsa, bachata and kizomba, since people start dancing socially immediately also contributes to higher drop out factor during first six-twelve month period?

 

[MrR]

I would support your statement, that effort is, hardship isn't.

Becoming a good social dancer isn't a race, you can take your time and let information sink in, to invest in quality learning and teaching methods instead of simple quantity.
And of course regular practice is important - for example social dancing with an active mind and sometimes ingrained little training elements. Correct a little her, train a move there, have fun the rest of the evening.

In my experience, dancers who have seen hardship as a main method of learning didn't regularly become good dancers. They usually either become dropouts - no fun, no dance - or robots.
We may see those perfect beauties and their perfect movements on the dance floor, but honestly, as social dancers many of them suck. They are great in showing their choreographies, their rehearsed moves, their studied musicality. But when it comes to expressing themselves (not the mask they have put on), to dancing together with the partner, to improvising, to playing, they simply suck.
And often times they are willed to destroy their body for it. (Some ballet and show dancers show off their destroyed feet as trophies. )

The problem is, that in the (Latin) dance world, teaching methods are often quite backwards. Even if some of the teachers are actually good teachers and very invested, their methods simply aren't. They are about "making the student become something", not about "supporting the student to improve". And to become something you aren't, you of course have to set your actual self back - and that is hardship.
I know some good teachers with modern methods - in (European) Zouk they are common. Hardship has little place in their program (aside from some overestimating the physical abilities of the dancers during the warm up). The people who go to these workshops usually show a level of dancing and a rate of improvement far above the Salsa festival crowd and "I do an extra 2 hours of ballet per week to improve my dancing" people.
The trick is not to do drills, but to help the student understand the material.
It is not about how much material you can pack into an hour, it is how much of it the students actually get. And if the student has to go home and learn from the video for several hours, to get anything from the class, the teacher has done a bad job!
But those, who don't go to the party afterwards and actually use the material, don't improve neither. Learning takes effort, it's no perfume you spray on yourself.

 

[Francisco Fiko]

I do think that the complex turn lovers turned salsa into something much different from what you see 20 years ago. Nothing wrong if that is what people like but when it becomes the dominant way to dance then it causes problems.

It is still possible to have fun but salsa is a codified, commercial beast nowadays.

The major shift in salsa styles came about in the late 90's with the first World Salsa Congress in Puerto Rico. In quick succession LA style, ET On2, Afro-Caribbean styling and Latin Funk became the fashion. So you are quite right about the 20 year mark.
But even before that there have been teachers who work on the "Student MUST pay his dues" mentality, forgetting that their job is to make life easier for learners, not to work as agents of natural selection.

 

[Francisco Fiko]

Hardship/effort/whatever you wanna call it is very normal for learning. You can make it fun, but underneath it still is hard and difficult. If somebody finds the learning process easy then it means that they are probably progressing too slow and are not learning as much as they could. The essence of learning is challenge - something new that you don't know yet. This by definition means that you need to overcome it, invest some time, learn, practice, improve... which is all hard.

Of course, you need to find the right difficulty for the student. To challenge them but also to make them feel they are getting something rewarding out of it. But this becomes problematic when you have a large group of people, all with different speed of learning, motivations and capabilities.

Hardship and effort are not alternate ways of saying the same thing. They are two very different things. Effort is normal in the Learning process. Hardship is also normal but only with instructors that fail to set reasonable goals for their students, who improvise instead of plan their lessons and who fail to inform their students about what the Learning process actually entails.

You are right, the essence of learning is challenge. But challenge is, in my view, not something to overcom, but to understand. This is why we all need teachers, to help us understand. If a teacher can do that much for a reasonably motivated student, then the practicing and the improving are easy and fun.

You are also right about the problem of managing goals and objectives for large groups of people. That is why the flexibility of judgement and communications skills of good teachers who can manage them still awe me even after a few décades in the businness.

 

[Offbeat]

The major shift in salsa styles came about in the late 90's with the first World Salsa Congress in Puerto Rico. In quick succession LA style, ET On2, Afro-Caribbean styling and Latin Funk became the fashion. So you are quite right about the 20 year mark.

A few videos I seen of pallidium era dancers also have equivalent of the acrobats and pattern monkeys on the dance floor. Let us not pretend it is a new thing. Every generation will have dancers across a spectrum and probably a similar debate.

 

[Chris_Yannick]

Hardship is also normal but only with instructors that fail to set reasonable goals for their students, who improvise instead of plan their lessons and who fail to inform their students about what the Learning process actually entails.

I would say even the most dedicated students who receive great instruction still experience hardship. Why? Most of what we learn is not in class but on the dance floor. Hardship can mean experiencing rejection, social awkwardness, problems adapting to other dancers, etc. A teacher can not protect a student from having bad experiences social dancing.

My hardship did not come from the classroom. It came from experiences social dancing, going to festivals, travelling and dancing in new places, performing, solo training, and maneuvering through the social dance landscape.

Overall I can say that my experience has been overwhelmingly positive and that is why I still continue to dance.

I expect those who have been dancing far longer than I and who've made it their life's work to have gone through a tremendous amount of hardship to get where they are. I would even include the business aspects of starting your own salsa school into the category of experiencing "hardship". Those bumps along the way can be mitigated with great experiences, but like any endeavor, there were times of deep reflection and periods of darkness. I don't think it's a bad thing. Hardship can be a good thing if you end up beating the odds.

If anyone says that their salsa journey was easy and they are an accomplished dancer, I would immediately question their sincerity. I probably would not take classes from them either because I would think they are full of ****.

As teachers, it's not our job to protect our students from having bad experiences, but to give them the tools they need to give them the best chance possible to succeed.

 

[MrR]

My hardship did not come from the classroom. It came from experiences social dancing, going to festivals, travelling and dancing in new places, performing, solo training, and maneuvering through the social dance landscape.

But wouldn't it be better, to create an environment, where these challenges aren't hardships, but more a situation that may need effort to improve yourself, but which doesn't feel like hardship.

A situation where beginners (not just the hot chicks) are embraced with open arms. Where the more advanced feel the need to help the new ones to be included (not just recruited for a cause!), to help them find their way. Where they don't have to try out social rules by try and error, but are told openly about what is the common, what the simply uncommon and what are no gos.
A scene, where you have plenty of choices where to go and don't need to drive for an hour, to have a half way decent dance. Well, large scenes have this situation.
When festivals are a holiday of experience, not a requirement to be someone at all.
And show dancing is an expression of yourself, not an execution of something else.

Of course it may need a lot of effort to become better. Effort, that doesn't drain you. Effort, that doesn't make people quit.
But that is the difference between hardship and effort.



I myself became superior to many dancers around me, because I overcame hardships. Yes. But it were these hardships, that kept the others down, that allowed the toxic ones to blossom, that created a bad overall environment.
If you would give me today the choice, to learn a detail by a year of experimenting with random partners or by having a 1 hour lesson with a decent teacher, I would choose the teacher.
And I chose to go to a place, where many others know of these details. People who would often never be able to overcome this hardship, who simply got them from a teacher or from them being prevalent everywhere around them. And the dancers in the place with little hardship are better. Even many who put little effort into becoming better dancers did become better, than many who put a lot of effort into it in a place full of hardships.
The place, the scene, that was giving me hardship lost on me. The place, the scene, that greeted me with embrace and guidance won me.

 

[vit]

But wouldn't it be better, to create an environment, where these challenges aren't hardships, but more a situation that may need effort to improve yourself, but which doesn't feel like hardship.

Words utopia, marxism etc ringign any bells ?