Exploring Causes of Poor Dance Quality

Exploring Causes of Poor Dance Quality

After reading several posts on other sites about the increase in poor quality dance seen in American public performances such as haflas, I took some time to examine the initial contributing factors. While it is obvious that poor teaching is a primary factor, we have to also look at underlying issues that we often forget.

I’ve spent 40+ years involved in dance in America and now having lived in another country since 2015, I would say it’s not just an “American” problem… I’ve been to haflas here in the UK and have seen the same issues with dance quality.

I don’t think students are to blame (though a lack of motivation or determination to practice more and train more wisely is directly on the student); there are several critical factors being ignored or misunderstood. One is that the audience itself may not understand the difference between a hafla and a performance, the other is that dancers seem confused about the difference between haflas and performances and tend to market them in the same way.

The initial contributing factor is that there doesn’t seem to be a recital approach to student dancing (where they can hone their skills), so the trend seems to be to skip recitals for haflas and host haflas as public performances instead of what they are: parties where dancers can gather, share friendship and dance together or individually and hone their skills still further before participating in a promoted public performance.

Remember that a recital is student –specific, and recitals are used not only to demonstrate what a student has learned, but to help a student achieve not just confidence in performing before others, but also develop an understanding of the music being used, start to understand how to relate to an audience, come to appreciate the necessity of practice, and, in the case of group dances, understand the importance and skills of teamwork. In a recital, students can perform, experience all the emotional reactions to performing, wear costumes and, at the end, get good feedback from their teacher who, while watching the recital, is making notes about strengths and weaknesses of her students. A recital has all the flair, color, excitement and pressure of a hafla- perhaps even more so- but is a training ground for the students.  In most cases, there are even emcees to introduce the dancers or dances, refreshments and performers by the instructors in each type f dance offered so the audience can see the culmination of training.

A hafla is something different altogether. Remembering that a hafla is a party, there is actually less pressure because there is reduced expectation of perfection. This should not mean that less practice is required; it simply means that at a party, mistakes are more acceptable. In a hafla, I would expect to see students, their families and friends and some of the public, and I would know I was going to see a mixed group of levels of training and a more relaxed atmosphere.

But the trend seems to be to host a hafla and promote and market it like a performance, complete with emcees and guest dancers. True, some of them make the event potluck, and the staging is carefully designed, the sound and lighting technically presented- but the truth is, with inaccurate marketing, the perception of the audience is that they are coming to see a performance– and the word performance implies advanced or professional level dancers.  (Remember that professionalism is in the mindset and technical work presented and not about being paid).

A performance should only feature advanced or professional level performers, who have mastered the technical skills of dance, understand stagecraft and presentation and have practiced the dances enough that they don’t depend on watching their fellow dancers in a group, or freeze during a solo. In addition, they will have rehearsed in costumes enough to look comfortable in them. In a performance, too, the show is designed with flow in mind, with mixed group and solo numbers of varying tempos, sizes and music style. The highlight is often a guest dancer or group who epitomize the best in a style or genre of dance. The audience comes for, and receives, a performance respectful of the ticket cost, including production design, program, lighting, sound and performance.

The second contributing factor is that students often don’t have a standard to measure themselves by. They have not seen enough professional shows to understand the differences in the level of dancers. They are often untrained in understanding why there are differences between student dancers and professional dancers and what those differences are.  They can watch an excellent dancer and yet be unable to assess what makes that dancer different from themselves. In most cases, from questions I’ve asked, it seems as though the students perceive the better dancer as having “more moves” or doing the moves better than the student. This leads the student to just add to her repertoire of casually learned moves rather than understand that movement must be refined, practiced and mastered- it is a matter of quality, not quantity. I have seen teachers in a class toss out movement after movement and never once correct a single students misunderstanding of, or execution of, a single movement.. how does a student learn if they are never corrected?

The third contributing factor is that the student is not performance ready. Being performance ready means being well-rehearsed; it means knowing a dance before you take it onto stage. It means having a teacher with the courage and respect for the dance- and for those who work hard and practice- to remove a student from a number if the student has neglected to practice or refuses to take the practice seriously. Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with students who just want to dance for fun and fitness, or have a chance to socialize. Those students can dance at a recital and get feedback from their teacher; they can dance at a hafla and feel the passion and joy of dancing. But they do not belong in a public performance where a public audience has expectations of the performance. (Note: There are two types of audiences: the dance audience, comprised of teachers and students, most often found at haflas and recitals, and the public audience, which is comprised of non-dancers and dancers alike and is most often found at performances and sometimes, haflas.)

Being performance ready also means knowing which moves you are able to execute well and make look defined and clear,  the moves that look best on your body, the moves best left out of your repertoire. The performance ready dancer knows sometimes, less is more; she is also able to collect herself and step onto step with confidence.

And finally, the performance ready dancer understands stagecraft- not just movements, or combinations, but presentation: how you present yourself and your dance to the audience; how you connect to them, bring them along on your journey. The performance ready dancer understands how to go into the music and allow it to express itself through her body.

So when it comes to poor dancing, I feel it is a combination of missing knowledge, missing training and perhaps, a weakness  that it really is about the determination to send time learning something correctly and spending the time to learn technique, how to correctly apply technique, understanding the different forms and styles and what defines them and what the parameters and essence of each is, how the form or style you study uses movement and music, the quality of your teacher and how much you REALLY understand that dance is an art but it is also a craft that must be mastered…. all of this sounds like work.

And yes, it is work – work some of us love and perceive as fun… but for others, it looks too much like self-discipline and work and so they go for the easy route: learn a few moves (not always well), don’t worry about technique because what is that anyway?, claim that you dance with passion and that is more important than understanding what you are doing/the form you are learning, don’t worry about the music (who needs to understand beat and melody and counterpoint anyway???) and just find a few ideas you like and throw them together and call it either XYZ bellydance or, if you are starting to understand why it is not appropriate to call it bellydance, call it “fusion”- even though fusion has standards and guidelines that would exclude much of the “fusion” I’ve seen over the past few years…

In conclusion, for me, it’s about the difference between self-indulgence versus self-discipline and truly loving the DANCE, not just the fact that alternative dance can provide new opportunities for more people to get on a stage.