On dancing a bit and thinking too much

I’ve taken up dance lessons – partly because I enjoy dancing, partly because I know I’m not very good at it and lessons will help, and partly because it’s something sociable that gets me out of the flat and doing some exercise. I’ve been to six or seven lessons now and am beginning to be able to string a few moves together, but I’m always counting in my head and trying to remember stuff. There are a few sentences that repeat and I am sure I have a look of absurd concentration on my face – I don’t think it goes as far as sticking my tongue out and frowning, but it might…

“don’t look at your feet“
“relax your shoulders“
“try to move on the balls of your feet, not your heels“
etc.etc.etc.

It’s good for my french, in a limited way – I expect I’ll soon start believing that counting in french goes un, deux, trois et quatre, cinq, six, sept et huit, and every now and then I am completely baffled by what the instructors say. Sometimes I catch just one word in a sentence, and try to work it out from there. Other times that doesn’t help… Pamplemousse? That means grapefruit. How should I dance like a grapefruit?! Yellow? Sour? Turns out I had to pretend I had a grapefruit in each armpit. I worked it out in the end, but it wasn’t easy.

On top of the lessons, I have been to two or three social dance evenings now. It’s really interesting, for me as a teacher, to observe myself and my classmates dancing in a less constrained setting. I find myself being a bit of a robot – the things I know from class I am OK on (so if I dance with people from the same level I’m not bad), but the few times I’ve danced with the instructor, or the inimitable Vinnie, I’ve been embarrassingly bad. Others are much more natural; they take what they’ve learned in class and are able to build on it and take cues from the more experienced dancers. Some of these people I find out have done other dance classes before, so have a framework to work with; others just seem to have natural talent.

The parallels with learning maths, or programming, are surprisingly clear – those who take what we teach them and immediately try to apply it in different contexts, and who see beyond what’s shown, are the students we all love to teach. People like me, the robots, take work; we’re not so easy to teach but we do get there in the end. It’s quite instructive to do the learning in a context that’s so different, and it’s equally instructive to see the teaching. I think the instinctive element in maths & programming actually has quite a lot in common with dance.

I’ll finish with an embedded video; one of these is the inimitable Vinnie, and another is my instructor… and yes, they really are that cool.