It’s disheartening to lose trust in your coaches. You want
to hold them up as knowers-of-all who will lead you successfully through the
world of dance. However, at the end of the day, they are people and I think I’ve
questioned all of them at one point: they’ve given me instruction that seems mechanically
incorrect, or they’ve been too vague (i.e. “you need to figure it out for
yourself [what I mean]), or they put you – the student – in charge of the
lesson. They all have the knowledge, but occasionally a flag goes up. I’ve
learned that sometimes a flag is actually a different interpretation or a quirk
of the person. For instance, I have one teacher who can be so cryptic at times
that her instruction causes me frustration. But then one day – after months of
not seeing her - she’ll give a simple correction, and everything she said
before strikes like a chain reaction: piece after piece suddenly come together
and I can see a larger picture. My faith is restored.
However, I feel like Ibrahim and I are struggling with our
Latin coach. We had a long conversation with her about a month ago regarding
trust. This was a conversation I wanted to write about because it was particularly
insightful, but I haven’t had the time. Essentially, she didn’t think we
trusted her, and we didn’t. We felt like she let us do whatever we wanted and
didn’t take the reigns in teaching us. She realized this was because of the teaching
style imposed on her when she worked in an American chain studio: “the customer
is always right” sort of deal. She was understanding now that this wasn’t what
every student wanted or needed. She’s been trying a new approach ever since and
it’s been helpful.
Our improvement in Latin, though, has been smaller and
moving more slowly than that of our Standard, even though we have Latin lessons
almost every week (we have Standard about twice a month). It’s hard to say why
this is…are we physically less apt for Latin dancing? Did our trust issue with
our coach put us behind? Is it our coach’s instruction? Is it because we won a
few Standard events in Chicago, and consequently we have more drive to improve?
Let me just vent for a second. I’m losing interest in Latin
dancing. I used to love it because I loved feeling every muscle in my body
move. I love the drums in samba…they feel like a second heartbeat coursing
through my body. However, my joy is not in Latin these days. It’s a struggle to
practice, but I make myself do it. Lately, I’ve felt like I’ve been doing it
for Ibrahim. He wants to improve and keep going. I might be going through a
phase, and maybe I’ll get excited about it again once I see some progress. But it’s
been a struggle. When I dance Latin, I feel like I give it a 10 (out of 10) and
on video it looks like a 2.5. I don’t like the way I look. We’ve been working
on three dances for the last year and a half, and I am not interested in
learning the other two. I feel like we have a better chance of making some
gains in Standard competitions, and I’d rather do that. I’d rather put my
energy into one style and excel at it than spread my resources thin and stay in
pre-champ for years. I admit that I'm also losing some faith in my Latin coach, and may become more frustrated with it if we continue taking lessons. I like her as a person and I'm willing to keep going for a few more months, but if I make an effort and don't see much improvement, I have a feeling I will want to cut it off.
But every time I bring up specialization, Ibrahim says, “Let’s
get through this year’s nationals and then assess.” So that’s our plan through
April.
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