Expertise and dancing and such
Thu, Apr. 19th, 2007 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterYay! I had fun at swing for the first time in a while, even though there still weren't very many people there. I don't usually blog that much about dancing here, just because I figure it might bore people to death, but since my other hobbies (read: knitting) are taking over this LJ as well, what the heck?
Based on a few conversations with friends lately and seeing several articles online (The Expertise Effect in particular), I've been pondering expertise and talent and effort and the odd intersections among the three (Venn diagrams?).
I always used to think I was lazy and gave up on things that I didn't do well. That is, once something started being difficult for me, I would give up. This was fairly well reinforced by my parents, who have accused me several times of giving up too quickly. And I then wondered if maybe I only liked to do things that I was good at because I didn't like being bad at things.
It's been interesting getting out of school and learning at work and outside of work. School is something I've historically been pretty good at (grow up rote memorizing Chinese poetry, and amazingly, some of the techniques will stick with you), but I've always worried that I would fail completely in the "real world." It's family knowledge that I am the one without common sense, and my mother would often fuss about my sister and I, saying that we weren't prepared for "real life."
And then, I found out, I could learn stuff that maybe I wasn't so good at, and that I could enjoy it. And I found out, if I didn't enjoy it, it could just be because I didn't enjoy it and have nothing to do with how good I was at it. I'm still not sure if I'm actually good at things like web development or coding or social dancing or knitting, but I enjoy them. And I've found I'm apparently pretty good at project management, but I hate it.
I don't remember getting to a point of expertise for knitting; I learned how to knit and purl when I was really little, enough so that I still had the muscle memory of how to hold the needles and move the yarn when I took it back up. The past two years have largely been learning to read patterns, learning new knitting techniques, learning that I can, in fact, knit crazy complicated things as long as I'm patient enough to rip stuff out a few times, to make mistakes, and to try new things.
Dancing though. Dancing is hard! I mean, I love it, but it's hard! It's been fascinating learning how to swing dance on the social scene just because it is so different from learning a new subject in school. There's this entire new language involved, and unfortunately for me, it's not actually a spoken one. Everything as a follow is learning to read your lead, learning to figure out what exactly that raised hand or shifted weight means, and above all, letting the lead lead and not anticipating what's to come. And all the while, you're supposed to be providing the right amount of tension for your lead and somehow keeping track of the rhythm and the music behind everything.
It is very confusing, especially since I'm generally not a very physical person. I'm good with textbooks and literary analysis and words words words. Gestures? Not so much. That nebulous thing called improvising to the music? Ehhhhh. That is why I dance dances with steps and don't go clubbing!
Well, that and the relative paucity of skeevy guys and the relative abundance of guys who can actually dance. And are willing to.
I think I am getting better at it though, which is exciting. I still don't know what I'm doing half the time, but I'm at the point where I can read certain partners pretty well and I can dance with new people who are fairly good leads and not look completely dumb.
But really, one of the coolest things about social dancing is having to think on your feet (pun not really but maybe sort of intended), getting to know your new partner and how they work, what their style is, if they're a strong lead or relatively loose, how jazzy and improv or how sticking-with-the-basics they are. And sometimes you end up having crazy chemistry with people you don't expect to, and sometimes you end up dancing with the best lead there and feeling like an idiot because there's just no connection.
And in the end, I don't care that much if I'm good or not. I mean, I do care in that I want whoever I'm dancing with to have a good time as well, but I've danced with people who aren't so great with the moves or at signalling the lead, but they're having so much fun with it that who cares? And I've danced with people who do everything perfectly, but in the end, they're just doing the steps. Maybe really well, but there's not that crazy challenge, the sense that they're thinking, "Let's go out there and have fun, and who cares what we look like?" And I've danced with people who are so concerned with getting the steps right that they forget we're actually dancing, and dancing together at that, and that it's not actually a performance or a competition.
I'm not going to get everything right when I'm out there, and neither is my partner. And what I love most about the instructors is that they emphasize that the entire point of social dancing is having a dance-conversation with the other person, it's about adjusting and reconfiguring your expectations and going out there and trying stuff and having fun.
I love being out there with someone, familiar partner or not, and that moment when one of us does something crazy and the other figures it out in time and riffs off that, and it's happening just as the horns start blaring or the singer starts to really blast out the notes, and I'm laughing with joy and they're grinning back at me, and right then, there's nothing else in the world but me and my partner and the music and I could do this all night long.
And that's why I keep going out, even when there's the risk of skeevy guys or sitting out there feeling lonely and stupid or those awkward moments on the dance floor when I have no idea what my partner is doing, and not in a good "Oooo, nifty move" kind of way, because that one dance (and hopefully there's more than one) makes the entire night.
Based on a few conversations with friends lately and seeing several articles online (The Expertise Effect in particular), I've been pondering expertise and talent and effort and the odd intersections among the three (Venn diagrams?).
I always used to think I was lazy and gave up on things that I didn't do well. That is, once something started being difficult for me, I would give up. This was fairly well reinforced by my parents, who have accused me several times of giving up too quickly. And I then wondered if maybe I only liked to do things that I was good at because I didn't like being bad at things.
It's been interesting getting out of school and learning at work and outside of work. School is something I've historically been pretty good at (grow up rote memorizing Chinese poetry, and amazingly, some of the techniques will stick with you), but I've always worried that I would fail completely in the "real world." It's family knowledge that I am the one without common sense, and my mother would often fuss about my sister and I, saying that we weren't prepared for "real life."
And then, I found out, I could learn stuff that maybe I wasn't so good at, and that I could enjoy it. And I found out, if I didn't enjoy it, it could just be because I didn't enjoy it and have nothing to do with how good I was at it. I'm still not sure if I'm actually good at things like web development or coding or social dancing or knitting, but I enjoy them. And I've found I'm apparently pretty good at project management, but I hate it.
I don't remember getting to a point of expertise for knitting; I learned how to knit and purl when I was really little, enough so that I still had the muscle memory of how to hold the needles and move the yarn when I took it back up. The past two years have largely been learning to read patterns, learning new knitting techniques, learning that I can, in fact, knit crazy complicated things as long as I'm patient enough to rip stuff out a few times, to make mistakes, and to try new things.
Dancing though. Dancing is hard! I mean, I love it, but it's hard! It's been fascinating learning how to swing dance on the social scene just because it is so different from learning a new subject in school. There's this entire new language involved, and unfortunately for me, it's not actually a spoken one. Everything as a follow is learning to read your lead, learning to figure out what exactly that raised hand or shifted weight means, and above all, letting the lead lead and not anticipating what's to come. And all the while, you're supposed to be providing the right amount of tension for your lead and somehow keeping track of the rhythm and the music behind everything.
It is very confusing, especially since I'm generally not a very physical person. I'm good with textbooks and literary analysis and words words words. Gestures? Not so much. That nebulous thing called improvising to the music? Ehhhhh. That is why I dance dances with steps and don't go clubbing!
Well, that and the relative paucity of skeevy guys and the relative abundance of guys who can actually dance. And are willing to.
I think I am getting better at it though, which is exciting. I still don't know what I'm doing half the time, but I'm at the point where I can read certain partners pretty well and I can dance with new people who are fairly good leads and not look completely dumb.
But really, one of the coolest things about social dancing is having to think on your feet (pun not really but maybe sort of intended), getting to know your new partner and how they work, what their style is, if they're a strong lead or relatively loose, how jazzy and improv or how sticking-with-the-basics they are. And sometimes you end up having crazy chemistry with people you don't expect to, and sometimes you end up dancing with the best lead there and feeling like an idiot because there's just no connection.
And in the end, I don't care that much if I'm good or not. I mean, I do care in that I want whoever I'm dancing with to have a good time as well, but I've danced with people who aren't so great with the moves or at signalling the lead, but they're having so much fun with it that who cares? And I've danced with people who do everything perfectly, but in the end, they're just doing the steps. Maybe really well, but there's not that crazy challenge, the sense that they're thinking, "Let's go out there and have fun, and who cares what we look like?" And I've danced with people who are so concerned with getting the steps right that they forget we're actually dancing, and dancing together at that, and that it's not actually a performance or a competition.
I'm not going to get everything right when I'm out there, and neither is my partner. And what I love most about the instructors is that they emphasize that the entire point of social dancing is having a dance-conversation with the other person, it's about adjusting and reconfiguring your expectations and going out there and trying stuff and having fun.
I love being out there with someone, familiar partner or not, and that moment when one of us does something crazy and the other figures it out in time and riffs off that, and it's happening just as the horns start blaring or the singer starts to really blast out the notes, and I'm laughing with joy and they're grinning back at me, and right then, there's nothing else in the world but me and my partner and the music and I could do this all night long.
And that's why I keep going out, even when there's the risk of skeevy guys or sitting out there feeling lonely and stupid or those awkward moments on the dance floor when I have no idea what my partner is doing, and not in a good "Oooo, nifty move" kind of way, because that one dance (and hopefully there's more than one) makes the entire night.
Tags:
(no subject)
Thu, Apr. 19th, 2007 11:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Thu, Apr. 19th, 2007 11:51 pm (UTC)But yes, I love social dancing so much, and it's so different from almost anything I've picked up before, so when the pieces start falling together, it is indescribably cool.
(no subject)
Fri, Apr. 20th, 2007 12:45 am (UTC)But come back in the fall and it'll have started again!