What qualifies you to teach...?

[Ahimsa]

It's not dumb at all adiemus. Its a hard fact. You either go to a class that is available to you or you don't go at all. That is the reality of belly dancing for many people. It shouldn't be a postcode lottery as to the quality of teaching. People should be able to trust that the classes they are attending are of a certain standard. How we can even to begin to regulate this I haven't a clue...!:think:

 

[LunaXJJ]

I don't know if there are any requirements, but I'd think you'd need a good amount of skill and experience. Also, you'd need to know how to teach, you can belly dance great, but you need to make sure to teach posture, and explain the moves in a way that's easily comprehended. Also, knowing some warm-ups, and stretches would be a plus.

 

[adiemus]

I recognise that while I, as a dancer, want to learn dance to a certain standard, this doesn't mean 'the market' does!

Having come from ballet and classical piano, which must be two of the most formalised teaching structures there are outside of regular 'education', I must admit I was a bit surprised that there is no standardised syllabus or exams or teacher certification. But as I've progressed over the past couple of years, I realise why! After all, Western dancers are adopting a dance form that is not regulated or formalised in its home country.

Kashmir has often said the first belly dance teachers in Cairo had absolutely NO teaching training, and simply danced - and expected people to 'pick up' what was being demonstrated, because this is how they learned. Why on earth would dancers in Cairo need to have regulation or structure or dance teaching expertise when most of them have been dancing since before they could walk!

So I think Western dancers are perhaps trying to impose a structure onto something that has never had it to ensure 'authenticity' when it's never needed this when learned within its normal cultural context. Similarly with Pacific Island dancing - no-one has a 'certificate in Pacific Island Dance' - but teachers of Kapa Haka are often esteemed kaumatua ('wise elders' in Maori) and have the right to teach because of this. We've circumvented this natural way of teaching and learning as an artifact of removing the dance from its context.

What this means is that there is no context of natural correction and immersion in what is appropriate/relevant/quality, lack of consistency and this horrid fact that people who are trying to make a living out of selling dance training can do it without any restrictions at all in terms of how 'well' they teach (safety and risk aside).

The 'answer'?
Not sure: having seen some of the incredibly heated discussions on this forum sometimes over the most trivial things, I somehow doubt that belly dance will become as codified as ballet, for example. BUT, if we, as consumers (and producers) of teaching, can spread the word about what makes a 'good' teacher or 'good class', this may go some way toward raising standards at least of safety, especially if we hold ourselves to high standards before deciding 'it's time to make some money out of this hobby of mine so I think I'll start a dance class'.
Course in NZ, I don't think any of the teachers are exactly rolling in it from teaching, so maybe that will be enough to put some of the more dubious ones off!

 

[Shanazel]

So I think Western dancers are perhaps trying to impose a structure onto something that has never had it to ensure 'authenticity' when it's never needed this when learned within its normal cultural context.

There is something about the west and western academia in particular that believes any person without a string of letters after her name and accompanying credentials from some accredited school is incabable of teaching anything. You should have heard the uproar in local academia when experts in their fields were brought in to teach classes in their specialties. I got my share of snubs from the professors at the local community college because I had the unmitigated gall to teach writing without an MA after my name. I suspect part of the problem was that my classes regularly filled up.

 

[Kharis]

After all, Western dancers are adopting a dance form that is not regulated or formalised in its home country.

Kashmir has often said the first belly dance teachers in Cairo had absolutely NO teaching training, and simply danced - and expected people to 'pick up' what was being demonstrated, because this is how they learned. Why on earth would dancers in Cairo need to have regulation or structure or dance teaching expertise when most of them have been dancing since before they could walk!

!

And yet here we are in the west endeavouring to regulate this dance to within an inch of it's life! Don't we suppose it's all about money here. An 'accreditation' seems to have more clout when it comes to what makes a teacher desirable, though not necessarily good. Teacher training schools are popping out like pimples for the simple expediency of making money. If not, then they would be a darn sight cheaper and more affordable than they currently are!

Bearing in mind all the talk of keeping this dance traditional to it's culture, not one single famous ME dancer has an accreditation of any kind attached to them. Some, like Lucy and Fifi, claim to be self taught...and yet if a western dancer has the affrontary to claim the same, they are treated with a certain amount of derision by some.

Accreditation sometimes feels too much like vanity publishing for my comfort.

 

[Kharis]

There is something about the west and western academia in particular that believes any person without a string of letters after her name and accompanying credentials from some accredited school is incabable of teaching anything. You should have heard the uproar in local academia when experts in their fields were brought in to teach classes in their specialties. I got my share of snubs from the professors at the local community college because I had the unmitigated gall to teach writing without an MA after my name. I suspect part of the problem was that my classes regularly filled up.

How Dare you! Good for you!

 

[Amanda (was Aziyade)]

There is something about the west and western academia in particular that believes any person without a string of letters after her name and accompanying credentials from some accredited school is incabable of teaching anything. You should have heard the uproar in local academia when experts in their fields were brought in to teach classes in their specialties. I got my share of snubs from the professors at the local community college because I had the unmitigated gall to teach writing without an MA after my name. I suspect part of the problem was that my classes regularly filled up.

Well not that a degree guarantees a good teacher or anything, but we have in the US seen far too many times an "expert consultant" brought in, who knows absolutely NOTHING about what he/she is consulting on, but was able to market themselves really well.

I've been working alongside the "graphic design" profession for 15 years, and I've seen a LOT of people buy (or steal) a copy of Photoshop and start advertising themselves as "designers." I've had clients actually pay money to these idiots, who don't know squat about actual effective DESIGN principles, but can superimpose your head on your dog's body, so OBVIOUSLY they should get jobs in the field.

Shan -- how many self-proclaimed "book editors" or "manuscript doctors" have you run across? Little Miss Sally wrote obituaries for the newspaper, so she's suddenly qualified to get paid $500 to edit your manuscript?

Americans are just once-bitten, twice-shy. But no, the degree guarantees nothing. Just that you MIGHT know more about what you're talking about than the average guy, and if you don't, we can always blame the university who gave you the degree

It's not like having a driver's license means you actually know how to drive safely either. But you still gotta have one.


What qualifies you to teach, imho? A burning desire to do it, to educate. Even if you had to do it for free. Especially if you have to do it for free. Too many of us teach because we just want to dance with our friends. That's not teaching -- that's facilitating. Nothing wrong with that, but let's keep the motivations clear.

Good teachers are rare because teaching Raqs Sharqi means teaching movement in as many ways as there are ways to learn, teaching music, the relation between the two, how to LISTEN to the music, how to develop an emotional response from the physical movement -- AND all the performing skills, professional skills, and everything that deals with dancing to an audience, which is a whole different skill set altogether. All in all, teaching is WAY more complicated than just dancing.

The first Cairo teachers were just bodies you imitated. Just like the old masters who "taught" painting -- you just imitated them. Works for some people, but takes a LONG time to develop skills. And you have to spend a LONG time imitating and watching and practicing.

I'll never forget the first painting teacher I had who showed me, "No, hold your hand like this..." and a new world suddenly opened up to me, giving me a technique I'd been trying to achieve for years. I'm sure eventually I would have experimented with holding my hand that way, but how long before I discovered that on my own? Having a good teacher was a shortcut.

 

[adiemus]

Jumping in hastily to defend academia (I am one!) - there is no doubt that learning takes many different paths. Some of us seem to learn more by watching, others by doing, still others by reading about it and analysing...
A good teacher recognises this and adjusts how he or she passes on knowledge accordingly.

Academic study of anything provides an extension of everyday observation and experience. This has both good and not-so-good aspects to it.

The good is that more is known about the topic, often from different perspectives, and this adds to our collective knowledge as humans. So, we know from research that people do learn in different ways. As Aziyade says:

Good teachers are rare because teaching Raqs Sharqi means teaching movement in as many ways as there are ways to learn, teaching music, the relation between the two, how to LISTEN to the music, how to develop an emotional response from the physical movement -- AND all the performing skills, professional skills, and everything that deals with dancing to an audience, which is a whole different skill set altogether. All in all, teaching is WAY more complicated than just dancing.

We only know this because someone, somewhere spent the time analysing/studying it all. Common sense just isn't that common!

The not-so-good aspects are that academics can over-analyse, sometimes it's easier to study about than do the doing, and as everyone has pointed out, a piece of paper means very little in terms of practical skill.

BUT there is a difference between being an academic and being a teacher (just go and sit in one or two University lectures and you'll pick up what I mean!).

I just think it's interesting that the original model for learning fine arts was 'master' and 'apprentice' or 'expert' and 'acolyte'. But in bellydance we are talking about a cultural practice where everyone 'knows' how to bellydance (the social version anyway), so the basics are there already (knowing the music, feeling it, knowing the rhythms, being able to understand the language, knowing what style is appropriate and what is not) and it seems to be outsiders who demand teaching in a much more formalised way - removing it from the context in which dance was usually learned. Just by doing this we're demanding different skills of our teachers from those used in the Middle East. Or maybe I'm romanticising the way that people from the ME learn - correct me if I'm wrong.

So to me, we're elevating bellydance to something a bit like a fine art where we are aiming more for a 'master' and 'apprentice' but within a group learning situation more similar to our Western style of learning, which demands much more from a teacher than how people in the Middle East learned (except the very elite performers when they were refining their performance).

 

[LunaXJJ]

I live in the US (just so no one thinks I'm racist or something), considering how stupid the bulk of Americans are, they shouldn't be that snooty about stuff like that. "Oh we have standards for education, but most of us are complete morons." I see it everyday, on TV, in magazines, the internet, and in person right in front of my face. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of intelligent folks here, but most of them lack the most important knowledge of all, common sense.

 

[Kashmir]

Bearing in mind all the talk of keeping this dance traditional to it's culture, not one single famous ME dancer has an accreditation of any kind attached to them. Some, like Lucy and Fifi, claim to be self taught...and yet if a western dancer has the affrontary to claim the same, they are treated with a certain amount of derision by some.

The difference is both of these women grew up in the culture. (Both are actually bint il-beled). They were dancing from an early age. They breath the dance without thought. They knew the music since they could toddle. We go to them to watch and learn how to interpret the music in an Egyptian way.

I would not suggest either of these women would be suitable for untrained grown western women with no experience of the music, culture or dancing. To teach that to an adult - and teach it safely - requires special training for an outsider - which most of us are.

 

[Kharis]

The difference is both of these women grew up in the culture. (Both are actually bint il-beled). They were dancing from an early age. They breath the dance without thought. They knew the music since they could toddle. We go to them to watch and learn how to interpret the music in an Egyptian way.

I would not suggest either of these women would be suitable for untrained grown western women with no experience of the music, culture or dancing. To teach that to an adult - and teach it safely - requires special training for an outsider - which most of us are.

What special training?

 

[lizaj]

I would say it's study we require.

 

[Shanazel]

Shan -- how many self-proclaimed "book editors" or "manuscript doctors" have you run across? Little Miss Sally wrote obituaries for the newspaper, so she's suddenly qualified to get paid $500 to edit your manuscript?

I take your point and agree with it, Aziyade- but at the same time I remember that some of those folks with real honest to goodness degrees in literature and creative writing had to graduate at the bottom of the class.

And Bronnie, I am not knocking academics per se (god knows I am as over-educated as anyone), but I always think of what the attorney I work for says when anyone brings up educational topics: "People have the idea that going to law school means you are smart. It doesn't. You can get through law school and be as dumb as a box of rocks. What it proves is you have the ability to adjust to the system."

 

[adiemus]

The difference is both of these women grew up in the culture. (Both are actually bint il-beled). They were dancing from an early age. They breath the dance without thought. They knew the music since they could toddle. We go to them to watch and learn how to interpret the music in an Egyptian way.

I would not suggest either of these women would be suitable for untrained grown western women with no experience of the music, culture or dancing. To teach that to an adult - and teach it safely - requires special training for an outsider - which most of us are.

That's exactly the point I was making - these women were immersed in the dance, and the people who (generally) they learned from were equally immersed.

I'm less convinced that there are safety issues in bellydance, especially by comparison with latin dancing, ballet or jazz. The majority of 'injuries' are aches and pains from people doing movements that they are simply not used to - these are not the same as 'injuries' although they're painful! I split hairs over this because the way we manage pain arising from doing things we're not used to is simply to do it in small amounts and regularly until the body is trained for it. When we have 'injury' it's much more important to identify the tissue pathology and manage that specifically.

In my experience, apart from floor work, and tossing veils and canes around, the risk of tissue pathology arising from bellydance is pretty low. The main injuries are likely to be shoulder impingement syndromes, hitting someone with an ill-disciplined cane (bad cane!), or - and this has happened to me! - slipping on an equally ill-disciplined veil that has escaped to the floor.

Floor work poses greater tissue damage risks simply because we're not very strong generally in the very muscles needed to get up and down off the floor. (quads, hammies, glutes, abs and so on) - and it's more than likely that injury occurs not because of muscle failure but because we have tendons and ligaments around the knee that may be prone to giving up the ghost under strain.

I know someone is going to argue with me about back pain and back injury, and I know my view is contrary to popular belief (even among my profession!), but given that even despite all the injury prevention education and training that has been carried out in industry and around the world over the past 50 or more years, the incidence of back pain has not reduced one jot. And carefully controlled studies have shown that it's not a matter of people (a) being poorly trained or (b) doing it wrong, it's simply that these 'safety methods' have not stopped back pain.

I'll bet many people don't know that stretching BEFORE you dance/exercise is also ineffective against either pain or injury (references available on request!), and stretching afterwards only helps reduce 'next day' stiffness and soreness. It doesn't make ANY difference to injury.

**Whew! Stepping off the soapbox now!**

So, IMHO (and based on my waaay too much study on musculoskeletal pain and injuries) the risk of tissue damage arising from bellydance is probably over-stated. Again, IMHO it's far more dangerous that baby bellydancers get to learn really bad myths about the dance form than any risk of injury.

 

[Bellydance Oz]

I know dancers who danced for over 7 years, and still cannot teach. And other's who did so, like me, in under a year and are competent teachers.

This is SO true. Some dancers will never be able to teach, whereas others can pass on their knowledge effectively in no time. Of course, you need to know the subject you're teaching, but that's only the beginning.

I know a couple of Australian teachers who have what I call "Margot Fonteyn syndrome". When I was working at the RAD back in the 70's, they tried to get Fonteyn to retire and take a job teaching. But she was a disaster as a teacher! The problem seemed to be that dancing was so natural to her, she couldn't break it down, or understand what difficulties mere mortals might have.

A good example of this is one of the aforesaid Australian teachers who was teaching an undulation followed by a vertical hip circle. One of the students asked her to break it down, and it was quite comical to see her break it down slowly - the undulation was incomplete and the hip circle became horizontal. Then she repeated it at full speed, correctly. Then she slowed it down and got it wrong again.

The sad thing is, I'm sure she's completely unaware she has this problem.

 

[Kharis]

This is SO true. Some dancers will never be able to teach, whereas others can pass on their knowledge effectively in no time. Of course, you need to know the subject you're teaching, but that's only the beginning.

I know a couple of Australian teachers who have what I call "Margot Fonteyn syndrome". When I was working at the RAD back in the 70's, they tried to get Fonteyn to retire and take a job teaching. But she was a disaster as a teacher! The problem seemed to be that dancing was so natural to her, she couldn't break it down, or understand what difficulties mere mortals might have.

A good example of this is one of the aforesaid Australian teachers who was teaching an undulation followed by a vertical hip circle. One of the students asked her to break it down, and it was quite comical to see her break it down slowly - the undulation was incomplete and the hip circle became horizontal. Then she repeated it at full speed, correctly. Then she slowed it down and got it wrong again.

The sad thing is, I'm sure she's completely unaware she has this problem.

Interestingly, Margot Fonteyn was not the best technical dancer. She really struggled with the more advanced stuff, like fouettes. But, she was an expressive dancer, with soul. That was the main part of her magic. She just a natural.

 

[Kharis]

"People have the idea that going to law school means you are smart. It doesn't. You can get through law school and be as dumb as a box of rocks. What it proves is you have the ability to adjust to the system."

This is so true. I have a friend who's a solicitor...she's been through law school and earns 50k a year. She's the worst driver I know, and not the smartest person on the planet, quite frankly. She once pulled over in the fast lane of the motorway, to take out an item she wanted from the boot. Nearly caused a pile up. Honestly! And no! I wouldn't want her defending me in court!

 

[Kharis]

I'll bet many people don't know that stretching BEFORE you dance/exercise is also ineffective against either pain or injury (references available on request!), and stretching afterwards only helps reduce 'next day' stiffness and soreness. It doesn't make ANY difference to injury.

]

It can also do more harm that good to stretch heavily before a class....even after a warm up. I once went to a workshop by an Egyptian teacher who spend nearly half an hour stretching the students. And I mean stretching. She was asking us all to do really intense stuff, and you could see folks struggling and gasping. It's been proven that stretching does bugger all to avoid injury.

 

[Amanda (was Aziyade)]

I think one of the main "injuries" a bad teacher can inflict is more on the reputation and nature of the dance.

Good teachers say:
- Belly dance is not just a movement vocabulary
- There is more than one way to achieve any movement
- Respect the cultural tradition the dance comes from
- Understand the music and be guided by it

Not-so-good teachers never talk about the music, or tell you that since you're American/British/Spanish/whatever that you can do whatever you want and call it belly dance. They don't discourage students from combining stripping/burlesque and belly dance. They don't know anything about the cultural tradition so they spread myths about slave girls and goddesses. They allow their students to perform in bras and panties, they don't get enough training themselves, they don't admit when they don't know something .... and the dance reputation suffers as a result.

I may never hurt a student, but if I hurt the image of the Dance itself, isn't that almost just as bad?

 

[Amanda (was Aziyade)]

I would say it's study we require.

Exactly.

We're ALL self-taught, in a way. Some of us have had the benefit of taking daily private lessons with Dina or Raqia or Nesrin Topkapi or whoever. Some of us have to make do with whatever training opportunities present themselves in our region.

I don't think we HAVE to fly to Egypt every month to be good instructors.
I DO believe that regular check-ins with private instructors will keep us in top dance condition and prevent us from developing bad habits or sloppy technique.

I DO believe that you have to at least be pretty good at demonstrating movement in order to teach it. That's my personal belief, but this is a visual art form, and your students are going to be LOOKING at you and trying to imitate what they SEE, so if your technique sucks, they're going to imitate that. As a teacher you owe it to your students to be the best VISUAL model for them. Especially at the beginning.

Later stage students require a different role model -- someone to guide them on performing skills, musical understanding and awareness. That's a different skill set, and not all good Visual Role Models are great at teaching performance skills. That's okay if you know your limits and can send your students to another teacher with that skill set.

Kharis, we've had discussions on Bhuz about this and I know you don't like the idea of putting a "number of years" requirement on teachers, and I sort of agree. I think -- in VERY VERY VERY general terms -- if you have one or two classes a week and you're a casual but serious student, it will probably take you ABOUT 5 years to fully internalize and understand the dance, and be able to effectively demonstrate and teach it to beginners. By 5 years, you've probably developed decent performance skills and have a pretty good general overview of the cultures, the music, the styles, the technique, etc.

So a really ballpark figure of 5 years of continued and regular classes is sort of my guideline for thinking about starting to teach. Obviously that would be shorter or longer depending on the individual, and how many classes she has, what kind of access to other teachers she has, how much time she spends studying, etc.

What weirds me out is teachers who aren't passionate about TEACHING in general. There are dozens of books available on teaching methodologies. There are hundreds of instructional videos, and hundreds of performance videos to study. There are video training courses, for teachers and students.

There are SOOOOOO many resources out there to help you become a better teacher or dancer -- and so many "teachers" don't ever bother to check them out. I'm not saying you need to get a degree in teaching, but would it kill some of these people to read an article? Watch a video? Some of the "teachers" I've met seem to enjoy their own ignorance. WTH?????