I guess it depends on your goals. Are you trying to learn more dances, become a better dancer (e.g., doing something that will improve your abilities/comfort across the board, regardless of style), or some combination of both? Your comment about counting during waltzes prompted this.
Maybe I'm teaching you to suck eggs, but here are my thoughts anyway... I count during a dance when I have trouble matching the rhythm/phrasing of the music to the patterns in the dance (e.g., learning to hear the beat and the repeating cycles). The greater variety of waltzes I hear (and dance), the more comfortable I am matching the waltz step to different tempos, etc. But it doesn't help me much when I try Scandinavian dancing or something that has a very different pattern. My other big hang-up is footwork (getting my feet to move to the pattern I'm counting out in my head).
So, if I were choosing among equally fun dance classes, I would choose the one that exposes me to the greatest variety of rhythms (to help with learning to hear beats and cycles...almost like learning how to learn) and that also includes the greatest variety of types of footwork. (Eeep! Sounds like international folk dancing!). I'm not sure which of the ones you listed fits the bill, but that's my thought process.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-17 05:30 pm (UTC)Maybe I'm teaching you to suck eggs, but here are my thoughts anyway... I count during a dance when I have trouble matching the rhythm/phrasing of the music to the patterns in the dance (e.g., learning to hear the beat and the repeating cycles). The greater variety of waltzes I hear (and dance), the more comfortable I am matching the waltz step to different tempos, etc. But it doesn't help me much when I try Scandinavian dancing or something that has a very different pattern. My other big hang-up is footwork (getting my feet to move to the pattern I'm counting out in my head).
So, if I were choosing among equally fun dance classes, I would choose the one that exposes me to the greatest variety of rhythms (to help with learning to hear beats and cycles...almost like learning how to learn) and that also includes the greatest variety of types of footwork. (Eeep! Sounds like international folk dancing!). I'm not sure which of the ones you listed fits the bill, but that's my thought process.