Weirdness with private instruction?

[Brea]

I did mention the Cassandra School to the guy...mainly because she's been around for a long time and there is safety in numbers. She's a nice lady too. He said that they had gotten their teacher from that school...I completely forgot to ask her if she'd heard of this guy nosing around.

 

[BellyDance Girl]

It's very simple - trust your gut feeling. I feel if this guy was really 'legit' then you would have spoken with his wife. My job in sales and therapy from a past bad relationship taught me the hard way to trust my gut - which happens to be right about 99% of the time, but I used to only listen to it 50% of the time.

Your gut feeling is smarter and stronger than anyone else's opinion, but of course it is healthy to share.

Hey, we are all bellydancers here - we should know our 'guts' or 'core' better than anyone else!

Respect the gut!!!!!!

 

[Tikvah]

Hi all,

A while back I posted that I had been contacted through craigslist to do private instruction for someone's wife. For some reason I had trepidation about accepting (this would be in their home). So I advised the person to go ask one of the local pro dancing schools...he wrote back and informed me they were charging 'significantly higher' rates than I was. This concerned me as I am new to the area and I didn't want to get into trouble pricing my services lower (and also not get as much money as other teachers). Anyway, I thought about it a lot and finally said if I could meet this person's wife prior to instruction at a cafe or something I would be willing to do it. It took the person about a week to write back and offer some cafe in the area as a meeting place. So I wrote back and tacked another $20 on the fee I had originally offered because I knew the area they lived in was quite far. So the person writes back and says that they are happy with the instructor found by the school and will stick with them even though their rates are higher. I was worried about this person from the start for some reason, and now I feel disappointed that I let a possibly lucrative teaching gig pass me by, as the person was apparently legit...but at first I did not believe they were. Any thoughts, condolences, etc? I just don't know what to think about this, or whether I should have even entertained teaching in a stranger's house. This is something new that I have not yet encountered and would appreciate any advice about what to do in such a situation.

-Brea Morgiane

I think I remember you saying that you are in MN. If so, get connected with the Guild of Oriental Dance. They are basically the BD "union" around here, plus have great haflas for folks to get performance experience