10/2/20 Skype Session

The role and effect teachers/ballet masters have on us as dancers (and people)

According to dictionary.com, a teacher is someone “who teaches or instructs, especially as a profession”. I believe a teacher isn’t just someone who is responsible to teach the students about the subject they’re in-charge of and having them ace it, they’re also responsible to educate the students in a way that they enjoy the subject. And, I think that’s the difference between a good teacher and a better teacher. In terms of dance, the position of authority changes from a teacher to a ballet master and a choreographer, and the teacher-student relationship also changes to a colleague relationship. Despite the change in relationship, their position remains the same in terms of giving us artistic suggestions.

The role of a choreographer and a ballet master is vastly different, however, the reason why I categorised them together for this is that both of these roles provide artistic advices and “upgrade” a dancer in a way that is beyond the general technical corrections.

One of the main difference I believe is that a teacher shapes the type of dancer one is, and it forms the foundation of the dancer whereas a ballet master or choreographer is one who later changes a fresh graduate into mature dancer through coaching and giving artistic advices that’s beyond technical corrections. To set the context, dance classes are usually structured with the aid of dance syllabuses from organisations such as the Royal Academy of Dance (United Kingdom) and the Commonwealth Society of Teachers of Dancing (Australia), and what dance teachers would do is to teach their students the syllabus. However, it's commonly seen that dance teachers just reproduce what is written in these books to their students along with the basic structure of the movements, and have them decipher the mastery of it by themselves. It's commonly believed that a good dancer or someone who has been a professional dancer would also be a good teacher because they've experienced it all, however, I believe that's not all cases, and I will discuss this topic further at a later date.

So, in dance, especially in classical ballet, there are a lot of boxes to tick such as turn out range, body structure, height of extensions and many more, however, students who take up ballet classes ranges from those who have enrolled out of interest or since young because they were enrolled by their parents to those who are pursuing it professionally. Firstly, I believe the way a teacher teaches affects the students take on dance. If a teacher just throws movement vocabularies at their students without a detailed explanation, the interest of these students would soon die because they would be constantly facing setbacks due to the fact that they weren’t given the directions to how to do it right. It’s basically the same logic of attending a baking class and the teacher just provides a cake recipe without giving any guidance or tips to how to successfully bake the cake. It's a known fact that dancers, or artists in general, have the desire of pursuing “perfection” and sadly, the idea of perfection differs depending on each individual as the arts is subjective. So, when a teacher puts their idea of perfection onto a student without any detailed explanation, the student can’t fully understand what is wanted and this would thus create a form of fear and would also decrease one’s self-confidence. And, self-confidence is vital not only in our daily lives but also within the industry as one with a weak mind would not be able last long in this field.

Furthermore, with the many physical and mental criteria of being a dancer, I believe that dance teachers especially, those who are teaching students who enrolled based on interest should have a different focus in their classes. Of course, it's important to have the students achieve good results however, with everyone having different body types and structures alongside with the mentality of doing dance as a hobby, the main focus of these lessons I believe should go beyond the technical side of it and go towards enjoyment. There were a few dance teachers attending this Skype session, and I remember someone mentioned that as a teacher it doesn't matter if one has their legs up to their ear or just a few centimetres off the ground, the important bit is to encourage the students to persevere and not give up just because the current situation looks bad. This point reminded me of a class I took over the summer, where everyone in the class were at different levels but they were all pushing to do their best despite knowing the fact that they might not pursue ballet at a pre-professional or professional level. And, from this I could see that the teacher did a good job in educating them the right mentality as well as to use the body within its own capability to achieve the movements at the best possibilities. This idea of doing things within our best capability using the right ways but at the same time pushing to be better every time we do it is a skill that is also applicable to our daily lives.

In my opinion, not everyone needs to have the desire of wanting to be a professional dancer however, what one can take away from a dance class is much more than the dance techniques and I think this takeaway really depends on the type of teacher that a student has. There are a lot of stages and phrases during the pursue of dance even as a professional, and each phrase requires a new set of knowledge and understanding towards dance. For example, when preparing for a competition or a performance, one needs to have more resilience and determination than when attending a weekly dance class. And, this can only be instilled by the dance teacher during rehearsals. These skills that are developed during dance classes, does not only apply to dance but also other aspects of life. In dance, one is taught how to present themselves, how to respect others such as not entering the studio while an exercise is going on and only enter when the exercise finishes or when the music stops, as well as the resilience and determination to deal with the fact that the state of our body differs each day, unlike a music instrument or a computer, there are so many factors that would affect our body and thus affecting our daily classes and rehearsals. 

A dance teacher would teach students about the rights and wrongs of dance, while a good teacher would educate students about the "whys" and "hows" of dance.