Our friends, Jolien and Curtis, are getting married!
Last night their parents organized a group lesson for their friends and relatives to prepare for the wedding. They’ll be getting married in November and Alex Pangman and her Alleycatz will be playing, so learning to dance in order to be able to enjoy the band was the main goal.
Here’s a practice video that focuses on 6-count moves. It’s not exactly what we taught yesterday, but it fits into the same model.
Teaching Reflections
I used to teach a lot of these kinds of lessons, but now that I’m mostly retired it doesn’t come up very often. We had to make the decision of whether to teach 6-counts or 8-counts. Overall, I prefer to teach 8-counts first because they’re so much more musical. However, it’s easier to get dancing quickly when you teach 6-counts. Based on the group that we had, we decided to go with 6.
One of the biggest challenges with 6-counts is that people get out of sync. When we put on the music to let people practice, some beginners inevitably get lost and have to start again. There’s always a temptation to count in the entire group, but the people who have continued to dance are on a completely different count than the music, so the group isn’t in sync. You definitely end up having to sacrifice both the music and unity in a 6-count situation.
It was a really fun group of people and they did a great job. Can’t wait for the wedding!