I've just come back from California. I've had a fantastic time and I'm planning my next trip back!
I did West Coast Swing teacher training with:
Skippy Blair (Founder of GSDTA & Director of the World Swing Dance Council)
Mary-Ann Nunez (GSDTA)
Jessica Cox (GSDTA)
Sarah Grusmark (GSDTA)
Sonny Watson & Deanna Mollman
Skippy Blair is brilliant and I feel privilaged to have the opportunity to have private tuition with her as I believe she doesn't very often give private tuition anymore.
I'm doing full Golden State Dance Teachers Association (GSDTA) teacher training and I am now going to start teaching using Skippy Blair's Universal Unit System(R).
I also talked at length with Skippy Blair about the teaching of Modern Jive and how it could be improved and a number of areas were identified.
I'm looking at documenting Modern Jive Moves/Patterns using the Universal Unit System(R) and then start teaching Modern Jive using the Universal Unit System(R).
This has never been done before and I would like to talk to any modern jive teachers about it...in particular MJ teachers from Australia/New Zealand as it's taught differently there than it is in the UK.
Well...it would give the dance better structure, there are certain rules that apply to all partner dances (some of which modern jive does not adhere to), the use of unit cards can allow students to learn faster.
I also believe Ceroc applied to have Modern Jive recognised for competitions from the World Swing Dance Council, but you can't judge a dance that has no structure! and you can't ratify the teaching of a dance that has no structure!!
Out of curiosity, what rules are those?
Also - are there any example unit cards that can be viewed online? I'm curious to know what information they are able to convey.
I'd argue the point that MJ has no structure - and I don't see why you can't judge a structureless dance, but at the end of the day, I do agree that a properly formalised dance is going to be a lot easier to judge.
Is that it? 'Cos that certainly doesn't look worthy of all the hype.Originally Posted by straycat
Although, actually, I'm more curious to hear more about these rules that "apply to all partner dances" but "which modern jive does not adhere to".
OK.... which is great so far as it goes, but that's the easy bit. How does one represent things like the shape of the move, the way it's led, body positioning, arm position, weight transfer, any required tension & compression / conterbalance etc, non-standard stuff like the arm transfer in ... um ... (I forget the MJ name - in Lindy it's called the Texas Tommy, and it looks like this) and so on and so forth?
OK - so maybe that's asking for way too much detail, so the question really is: can it convey any of that?
You can go into as much detail as you want. The main things that you need to record are the weight transfers (represented as dots), you can also have / for no weight transfer and circle for hops.
You also want to want to record direction and foot positions (1st, 2nd, closed 3rd, open 3rd, 4th, 5th, crossed, etc).
you can also then add as much additional information as you want, e.g. the type of turn, direction of the turn, hand positions etc. For example if you want to represent a hand change, then you use that in the name of the move e.g. hand change starter step or left side pass w/hand change.
Has it been used with other dances then?
Because, and call me a skeptical skeptic on this one, I'm a bit suspicious about a "Universal Unit System" designed by one specialist...
In fact, haven't we had this discussion before? I dimly recall something like this a couple of years ago.
Ah, found it. It's in this thread:
http://www.cerocscotland.com/forum/s...ead.php?t=6703
And the exact quote was:
I never did get an answer to my "how's this rating system work then?" question...
Obviously not familiar with the "WCS is such a fundamental lead follow dance that once you've learned it, you are instantly a world class expert on ballroom, latin, etc..." theory.
[If that sounds snarky, I can only assume you haven't witnessed as many 'intermediate' level WCS dancers lecturing competition ballroom dancers about timing and lead/follow as I have].
Question for David Franklin & anyone else with the knowledge:
Is there a high level programming language for movement, perhaps used in the Video games industry, that could be adapted as the basis for one specifying choreography?
I understand where you are coming from with this DF (and can probably even identify those whom you target) but I don't believe that a person's attitude and behaviour on and off a dancefloor is necessarily reflective of the style of dance they choose. A self-aggrandising know-it-all is simply that. However I do think there's an interesting underlying issue around the universal nature and transferability of timing & lead/follow skills between different dance styles. I know that ballroom/latin dancing is often dismissed as lacking musicality by those untutored in those styles, a claim summarily dismissed by those with experience in ballroom/latin.
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