Hello all
I don't like having one of my first posts as quite a whingy post but this has really bugged me.
I recently attended a Tribal Fusion workshop that was classed as ‘Advanced’ and stipulated in the description that experience of ATS and Suhaila Salimpour technique was required as well as several years of tribal fusion. I was quite excited and nervous about attending as I felt it would be a real challenge and I really wanted to know what to aim for and work on in the dance even if i could not do it all. Based on my own experience I would have described myself more as a intermediate/high intermediate. Anyway I went and many of the students could not be described as in any way near to hitting the criteria (including having difficulty just doing the level 1 warmup!) and this was clear to the instructor who had planned to do all these advanced drills that she described at the beginning of the class but in the end had to completely modify her workshop and drill a couple of far more basic areas intensively. At the end she stated it ended up being more like a high beginner/intermediate workshop with a couple of advanced ‘concepts’ and I think she was quite frustrated too.
I just feel a bit cheated that one of the rare opportunities you get to be taught by a top professional the advanced skills that would be beyond many of us mere bellydance mortals, that you paytop whack for, and have prepared for, the workshop has to be modified to cater for those that really should never have attended. Its not the instructors fault- they have no control over who decides to enrol for these open workshops, they can just state explicitly the skill level required. Also if the bellydance teacher is from another country I don’t think it reflects well on their perception of the quality of the dancers in this country if the level of attendees is so low. We do have excellent fusion dancers but they were not there!
What is anyone else’s opinion on this issue when people attend workshops waaaay above their skill level and it has a detrimental impact on the whole workshop?
I don't like having one of my first posts as quite a whingy post but this has really bugged me.
I recently attended a Tribal Fusion workshop that was classed as ‘Advanced’ and stipulated in the description that experience of ATS and Suhaila Salimpour technique was required as well as several years of tribal fusion. I was quite excited and nervous about attending as I felt it would be a real challenge and I really wanted to know what to aim for and work on in the dance even if i could not do it all. Based on my own experience I would have described myself more as a intermediate/high intermediate. Anyway I went and many of the students could not be described as in any way near to hitting the criteria (including having difficulty just doing the level 1 warmup!) and this was clear to the instructor who had planned to do all these advanced drills that she described at the beginning of the class but in the end had to completely modify her workshop and drill a couple of far more basic areas intensively. At the end she stated it ended up being more like a high beginner/intermediate workshop with a couple of advanced ‘concepts’ and I think she was quite frustrated too.
I just feel a bit cheated that one of the rare opportunities you get to be taught by a top professional the advanced skills that would be beyond many of us mere bellydance mortals, that you paytop whack for, and have prepared for, the workshop has to be modified to cater for those that really should never have attended. Its not the instructors fault- they have no control over who decides to enrol for these open workshops, they can just state explicitly the skill level required. Also if the bellydance teacher is from another country I don’t think it reflects well on their perception of the quality of the dancers in this country if the level of attendees is so low. We do have excellent fusion dancers but they were not there!
What is anyone else’s opinion on this issue when people attend workshops waaaay above their skill level and it has a detrimental impact on the whole workshop?