Ballroom Dance

J M (Mike) Nelson
Email:jmnelson@cloudnet.com
Phone: 612-810-0157

The Pre-Dance Lesson: Intentionally Efficacious

The article, The Pre-Dance Lesson: Functional or Futile?, argued that the pre-dance lesson was an exercise in futility; there is little hope that much, if any, of the content will be retained. This need not be the case, and a little attention to what we know can enable one to design a pre-dance lesson that will achieve a purpose beyond transient entertainment.

Psychology. Psychologists have known for over half a century that we can retain only about seven items of new information. Therefore, any dance lesson with more than seven new items of information, such as step combinations, juxtapositions, or directional movements will not be retained in its entirety. Furthermore, with extensive cognitive overload typical of most pre-dance lessons, and no strategy of prioritizing, essentially all new data will be lost. Thus, any lesson designed with more than seven new elements is designed to fail.

Audience. In general, the audience for the pre-dance lesson can be divided into three categories, beginning dancers, intermediate dancers, and advanced dancers; furthermore, many intermediate dancers could benefit from review of the basics.

Lesson Design. The aforementioned demographic and psychological data can lead to the design of a pre-dance lesson that can serve every subset of the audience and enable each dancer to retain their intended components. For the beginner, select no more than six items important to the beginning dancer, and, with the help of the intermediate and advanced dancers, provide sufficient repetition for about fifteen minutes so that the beginners can retain enough to continue to reinforce the content on their own for the remainder of the lesson. With the help of the advanced dancers, provide the intermediate dancer with no more than six new items of information, and provide sufficient repetition for about fifteen minutes so that the intermediate dancers can continue to reinforce the content on their own for the remainder of the lesson. Prepare one advanced variation, with no more than six new items of information, and spend about fifteen minutes with the advanced dancers. That leaves a few minutes per section for a final review.

Subgroups. Rather than initially dividing the class into subgroups, incorporate self-assessment in the instructional design. At the end of each section, simply suggest that some might be best served by skipping the remainder of the lesson and practicing. The teacher might even remind them that if they allow themselves to be exposed to too much new information, they will likely not remember any of the new information. Thus, the student can choose to be transiently entertained or effectively taught. At least this gives the participant a choice not afforded in the traditional pre-dance lesson.

Followup. Even with a bit of practice, retention is tenuous if not reinforced. Thus the dance planners should provide at least two songs at the beginning of the dance that are consistent with the lesson, repeat the style every fifteen minutes for the first hour, and repeat at least once each half hour for the remainder of the evening. A brief review of the content at the midpoint of the dance would be helpful, and it might encourage others who had been avoiding the lessons to reconsider.

Efficacy. With a limited quantity of information for each subgroup, and with opportunity to practice intently for a portion of the lesson, and with reinforcement opportunity recurring throughout the evening, students at all levels will have a high probability of being able to retain all that was intended.