Life of a Dancing Engineer

A couple of weeks ago, I read this paper, which talks about Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, as it relates to learning and teaching dance.

Since reading that paper, I’ve been thinking a lot about Gardner’s theory, as it relates to my own study of dance. The first thing I realized, was that my primary mode of learning ballroom dance is Bodily/Kinesthetic. In fact, I already knew this; I just didn’t have a name for it, until now.

Erik pointed out several months ago that he realized that I learned best when we just danced, without stopping so much to go into the details of what we were doing and analyze things. At first, I wasn’t so sure, but once we changed the format of our lessons to be primarily dancing, without much talk, I found that it was really much easier for me to learn, and that I was making much more progress with my analytical brain out of the loop. Before long, I was doing all sorts of new things correctly, without being conscious of them at all.

Back when I first mentioned that I was thinking about taking Standard group classes, Erik had protested; he had predicted that I might pick up bad habits from the other Amateur dancers. He said that he thought I could gain more by taking one private lesson, than I could by taking many group classes. I said I wasn’t sure, because I wanted to learn what it was like to dance with other amateurs, and I said that I was curious about whether or not the format of the group class would help me to learn more quickly, because it might complement the different type of learning that happens in our private lessons. I needed to see for myself.

Well, I recently learned that with respect to the way that I learn, Erik was very very right.

Within the framework of Gardner’s multiple intelligences, the structure of group classes usually focuses on several types of learning:

verbal/linguistic – the instructor usually spends a great deal of time talking about the steps, giving an in-depth explanation, and about gotchas and important things to remember.

visual/spatial – the illustration of the steps visually by the instructor, whereby they step through them, while the class watches. They might also include spatial queues such as references to orientation relative to line of dance, or relative to partner. Sometimes rotation/progression is also discussed/illustrated.

mathematical/logical – typically, instructors will give counts, like “1, 2 and 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.” Or, queues like “quick-quick-quick-quick,” or “slow-quick-quick,” while they dance through the steps.

bodily/kinesthetic – typically students in a group class will pair up and dance with a other students as dance partners (and generally, rotate at certain intervals). Some group classes also rotate the instructor through the students, which is a practice which I greatly prefer. Often, though, the instructor simply observes the students dancing with each other, and speaks about or illustrates any issues they see, rather than demonstrating them with each student by partnering with them for a minute.

musical – typically, musical intelligence is the last intelligence to be integrated (and I have yet to see it ever be truly focused on as a core teaching method in a group class) – generally, once the instructor is confident that the students have a grasp of the material, they’ll finally say “lets try it with music.”

Observing myself, and the way I learn, it has become increasingly apparent that, far and away, bodily/kinesthetic is my most effective intelligence for learning dance, and furthermore, it has become apparent that I am not getting as much out of Standard group classes as I had hoped that I might. That is not to say I can’t learn anything from them — but I think that taking Bronze/Silver Standard group classes aids my formal ability to teach other people far more than it does my own dancing.

I also realized something else, relative to my study of Standard. Not only does the instruction via the other four intelligences targeted by group classes not really give me a lot of bang for the buck, relative to private lessons; but, the input that I receive via the bodily/kinesthetic mode of learning (dancing with other amateurs), feels like it is actually setting me back (as Erik predicted it might). Because I’m so attuned to learning via feeling my partner’s body and the way he leads in Standard, I am also very susceptible to picking up bad habits by dancing with somebody who’s giving an incorrect lead.

For now, I think that Erik was right; that for me, Bronze/Silver group classes in Standard are generally not worth the time/money investment, when compared with private lessons. I don’t think this will always be the case, because I imagine that when the time comes, I’ll want to take classes to help me be a better teacher… but my first priority is to improve my own dancing, before I worry about teaching other people how to dance! 🙂

As an interesting aside, I don’t think this applies as much to the Smooth group classes I’ve been taking, for a few reasons:

• Firstly, because my private lessons have been focused on Standard, and some Smooth is better than no Smooth! (And, I’ve found that being proficient in Smooth, actually helps my Standard, in subtle ways).
• Secondly, because I think that Smooth, as a dance style, focuses more on visual/spatial intelligence than Standard does (when you’re apart from your partner, you’ve got to have an idea of where your body is, and where you’re headed!), so private lessons with their awesome bodily/kinesthetic input (a professional dance partner) lose a little bit of their advantage when compared to group lessons for Smooth.
• And thirdly, because Larinda’s Smooth group classes are at the Silver and Gold levels, and if I’m to be honest, the caliber of the dancers attending those classes is a lot higher than the dancers who were present in the Bronze/Silver Standard class.

Side-note: I would go so far as to make the argument that Standard, as a style, is best suited to primary Bodily/Kinesthetic learners, while Smooth, as a style, requires much more ability in Visual/Spatial learning. And, I think that’s one of the reasons why I took to Standard much more naturally than I did to Smooth.

Another interesting side-note is that Larinda’s smooth classes are very atypical, in that she plays music during the majority of the class. I wonder if the increased presence of music in her teaching style is an aid to me when taking her classes?