Are you sure that you are at the best dance school?
If I think back I can recall a number of times when people talked about how their school was the best or how they moved from one to the other for a higher standard.
In the past I have said that my focus has been mostly on the student and the teacher. I don’t really think that there is such thing as a bad teacher or student. Instead, I think that there are good and bad teacher-student combinations. Or perhaps more accurately, there are good and bad student-teacher relationships.
I still think that this is the majority of what makes for a good learning experience. However, you can’t ignore the influence of the school.
This was driven home to me a few days back when I was at a dance event held by another dance studio. I noticed that the routines of students going for their medals were more complicated than those that were done at my school. However, I also noticed that there seemed to be less connection between the two people dancing.
Upon reflection, this made sense.
My school does have competitions, it adheres to the standards of the respective national body and I know that they have a collection of publication from the Imperial Society of the Teachers of Dance. However, they do encourage socialisation amongst the students and there is a sense of dance as a social activity. The other school was run by a highly regarded dance sport dancer and had a number students who were also in dance sport.
So which school is best?
One of my friends who started at the same school as me migrated to the other one I have mentioned here. I am still happy with mine. He does dance sport and I prefer social dancing.
That is likely your answer there.
The best dance school is the one that suits you and what you want out of dance.
This is actually similar to the issue with choosing “the best” university. In most parts of the world, universities have a ranking system to let you know which is best. However, at least I have been told, the Germans do it a bit differently. Instead of trying to make a list of universities in order of standard, they provide a profile that covers things such as teacher student ratio, faculty profile, research outputs and so on. A student then chooses one that aligns with the qualification they want and what they want from that qualification.
You can do the same when it comes to choosing a dance school/studio. You likely have one now, but if you ever need to choose another one or if you think you are in the wrong place, then think about what you want from dance at that time and how each school would align with that.
I know students who have left dancing simply because they had chosen the wrong school and didn’t look for another that might be more suited to them. Enjoy dance as much as you can - choose a school that is best for you. think about the type of dance you're interested in and the type of enviornment you might like, then choose the dance school.
