Well, it’s a while since I dropped by this forum, and also Cardiff, but from attending The Toad a year ago, Andy’s teaching was well up to the general intermediate standard found in the London area, and I still use two-thirds of the material...
I do think the more variety you get among teachers, the more you learn - including the important principle that there’s more than one way of doing things - each may have advantage / disadvantage for you but you can choose and adapt it to your own repertoire and style. So if the number of teachers in Cardiff has declined, or those who teach are all from the same mould, that’s a pity.
On the timeless saga of leading and following, it takes two to dance a partner dance and sometimes they fit together immediately, sometimes it takes a while. But always it takes attention and consideration each for the other. I think this thread may have got away (although rather enjoyably for a bystander LOL) from a general question of whether teachers pay enough attention - or indeed students pay enough attention - to developing leading and following skills and technique, rather than expanding their repertoire of moves that may later turn out, by hard experience, to be more choreographed than led. That is where, I suspect, the ‘local factor’ comes in: dancers from the same area who’ve had the same teachers and classes are more likely to succeed in the same dance patterns even if the lead and follow has not been properly taught and learned. It’s also probably where out-of-towners may come to assume that ‘the locals can’t dance properly’ and the feeling may well be mutual! Another good reason to seek variety in your instruction.
I know I’m not the only lead who has had to piece together technique as much through trial and error as through instruction, and wished that more emphasis had been placed by teachers on that aspect. And also wished that more emphasis had been placed on following technique, too, as classes proceeded...
Teachers, however, may say that a class will get bored (especially the ladies) if they don’t get a sequence of new moves...
And lastly, I suspect that once a salsero/salsera has reached a high enough level of prowess to dance naturally without having to think, they may have forgotten those little points of difficulty they themselves had with technique when learning to lead / follow. And so they find it hard to pitch their instruction to the class.
Whaddayathink?
