Two days before the SuperShag invitational, I had a coaching session with Pat Traymore. In retrospect, I feel like I was more nervous dancing in front of Pat during our coaching session than I had been the first time she judged my dancing (and the first time I ever competed — about 2 months earlier), in San Diego. I was nervous because I knew I had improved immensely since she had first seen me, and because I knew she had traveled a long way to come coach and judge at our studio… I really didn’t want to let her down, I wanted to be my best in front of her. I think the only way to let her down would have been to not try, but I felt, going into it, that I needed to perform.
The lesson was wonderful! She is an amazing coach. And despite my being human and making mistakes, I learned no less than 10 fundamental things from her, which have all really impacted my dancing in the weeks since our session. I feel like I’ve made a night and day transformation just since then! Even just two days later at the invitational, my dancing was already much improved.
Given how amazing her technical coaching ability was, I was thinking of elaborating on some of the technical feedback she gave me for this post. I could easily make a whole post out of the ways she suggested I should squeeze my thighs together during rock steps and turns (and a myriad of other positions!) in the latin dances, or on her advice on maintaining forward posture for better connection in latin dances, on compressing my hips in East Coast Swing, on not being afraid of my height during underarm turns, on her suggestions on improving my posture in Tango (e.g. sliding into the corte without losing my height), and on using my long legs to my advantage in all the smooth dances (especially by taking longer, more sweeping side steps in Waltz), or on her arm styling techniques… and gosh, the list continues on!
However! In the end, I feel that one of the most important things she taught/reminded me, and one of the best and easiest things to share, was that “mistakes are to be cherished not avoided, because we can’t learn without mistakes.” – This is so true, I believe it, and often profess it to others in other aspects of life, but it seems I can never be reminded of it (or remind myself of it) often enough!
I have noticed the trend that as I start to excel at something, I seem to go through phases where I know where I am and what I’m capable of at that point. When I reach such a place, I find that it often irks me to fall back below that level. But of course, as Erik always points out, falling down is natural. Nobody ever just goes up and up and up without any dips. We real humans go up, and down, and the overall trend over time is up, but we always fluctuate up and down, day to day; we have good days and better days and bad days and worse days!
Being extremely self-critical, I usually fall on one of two polar ends of the spectrum with things…
…Either I admit to having no skill in something, and then for that activity, my expectations of myself are almost unreasonably low, because (I suppose) I can blame it on complete lack of experience.
…Or, on the other side of things, I know I’ve gotten somewhere with something, and I expect no less of myself than what I’ve achieved up to that point.
Somehow this hasn’t really prevented me from excelling at a few different hobbies in my life upto this point; but, I recognize that it is turning into a really counterproductive pattern in my dancing.
I think that it is great that I am very self-aware and can often know exactly what I’m doing wrong (out of the things I have learned so far) at any given moment… but sometimes, I need to be able to ignore that sense, and just practice one thing, without worring about all the other things that are falling apart as I focus on that one attribute of my technique. The mistakes are inevitable, so I believe (and Pat and Erik wholeheartedly agree) that if I can ignore all but one at a time, and focus on fixing just one at a time, I will likely be even happier with my dancing and my progress in the long run.
The combination of technique, encouragement, and truth that Pat imparted during our session was pretty much priceless. It far surpassed my expectations, and I couldn’t help but give her an extra-deep, heartfelt embrace as we were saying good bye.
I look forward to our next session (whenever that will be), with great excitement!
Don’t forget to cherish your mistakes, for they are the bread crumbs to greatness. <3
September 20th, 2009 - 16:25
Yeah, awesome insights, Layla! I found for myself that I always used to think in extremes myself. It’s really important to keep a balanced sense of perspective, and no more so than when things are really unbalanced. It sounds like Pat was very good at keeping with this, and thus you have benefited. And it doesn’t just apply to dancing, either…