pennsicdance: Balls, Advanced/Beginner, etc, etc...

[Patches023 at aol.com]

In a message dated 9/2/2004 7:29:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
annikki at comcast.net writes:
<There used to be complaints of "There's too many advanced classes, it's too 
elitist!" going around, which led to our focus on beginner's classes.  Now 
we're at fewer ones, and we still have beginners showing up, even when the class 
descriptions specifically say "Advanced" or "Experienced."  I suspect that if 
this is listed as a class, we'd still have the problem of less apt dancers 
showing up and getting frustrated at the level and rate of things being taught.>
<snip> to an excellent proposal
<So here's the idea.  Most of the people with a big interest in doing harder 
dances are 
probably going to be able to pick them up at a speed more like that of the 
walk-throughs 
done during evening dance or refreshers at dance practice.  More than 
anything, we need 
time to practice these dances so they are more likely to remain in our 
brains.  That doesn't 
take a lot of time overall -- certainly there's time in those evening empty 
slots mentioned 
above.  Could we not have an advanced dancing _practice_ time set up for the 
tent?  This is similar to what several of us were hoping to do Wednesday after 
the scheduled classes, to practice neat stuff for Elayna's party.  However, 
the Flamenco dance popped in.  We went to Del's camp to practice, but, as 
mentioned before, campsites aren't ideal.>

I love this idea for more dancing, I miss hanging out with the people I used 
to dance with.  However, I am not thrilled with making it more elitist by 
having secret meetings or excluding people (some beginners have quite a knack and 
will have a blast at these practices).  I think anything that is in a public 
space (the dance tent) needs to be open to everyone.  We can make it plain in 
the booklet and at each practice that these dances will be reviewed quickly if 
necessary but many will be danced without a review.  

Just my $0.02.

YIS
Patches
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