From: unrzd6@cd4680fs.rrze.uni-erlangen.de (Konstantinos Agouros)
Newsgroups: rec.folk-dancing,rec.arts.dance
Subject: Re: Rotating Partners During Teaching
Date: 25 Jan 1993 14:52:38 +0100
Organization: Regionales Rechenzentrum Erlangen
NNTP-Posting-Host: cd4680fs.rrze.uni-erlangen.de

hage@netcom.com (Carl Hage) writes:

>unrzd6@cd4680fs.rrze.uni-erlangen.de (Konstantinos Agouros) writes:
>: In the normal group we don't or only do it seldomly.

>Ahh Hah! (Does that translate to German?) Maybe that is why you don't believe
>in rotating.

>: Personally I must say that, the better the partner I get is, the better I am 
>: myself. Or with different equal good partners, the better I know my partner, 
>: the better I am. I think it depends on the goal you want to acheive with the
>: teaching for saying which method is the better. For social dancing it should
>: be rotating for tournament not.

>This depends on your definition of better. If you dance with the same partner
>or someone much better than you, your lead will probably be much worse
>than if you danced with many partners including those not as good as you.
>There is no way to find out if you are leading properly or optimally
>unless you try it with different people. You might also be doing something
>completely wrong, but your partner is good enough to compensate. By
>dancing with many partners you uncover hidden problems and learn the best
>way to successfully lead. Then when you go back to your regular partner
>both of you will be much better. If you are dancing with a partner who
>is off balance and doesn't know the step well, you can both dance
>the step successfully only if you know the step well. Have you noticed how
>a very good teacher can take a lady less experienced than you and your
>partner, but they can dance a step much better than you both?

I think you misunderstood what i meant here. I was talking about things like
how straigt I am standing and how exact my basic-movements are. I do dance 
with different partners due to formation-training, and most of the ladies say
that I do quite a good leading. But what I meant is, that if I don't have to 
compensate for errors, that the lady might do and she simply dances exactly what
I lead i can concentrate more on my own dancing.

>As Jamie mentioned earlier, it is very important how the rotation is handled
>by the teacher. It only works if the rotation is orderly, e.g. in a circle
>with the partner with extra's moving, at frequent intervals, and everyone
>or almost everyone rotates. A good teacher will require or strongly
>encourage everyone to rotate, will reform the circle or lines prior to
>rotation, and will rotate through a half dozen partners for each pattern
>taught, allowing two or three tries per partner.

That's how our formation-trainiing works at the moment. And our trainer is quite
strict that everybody changes.

>For all you other elitist die-hards who never rotate, give it a try under
>the proper conditions described above. I'm sure you will then be convinced
>that you will learn much better.
 Like I mentioned earlier... the better you get the less you should rotate (
if you are training for competitions). Every lady has her own specialties, if
you have to think in a competition how you must lead here to make her do that
it will be too late for that movement, your body not your mind must know this.

Konstantin

-- 
Snail: Konstantinos Agouros, Erlanger Str. 11, 8521 Spardorf, Germany
Email: unrzd6@cd4680fs.rrze.uni-erlangen.de
Phone:+49 9131 59427 or +49 9131 501103 or +49 2175 3353
IRC:  Elwood_G
From: susan@hpfcbig.SDE.HP.COM (Susan Frontczak)
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1993 16:39:34 GMT
Subject: Re: Denver,Seattle Info needed
Organization: HP SESD, Fort Collins, CO