How Being A Teacher Made Me A Better Dancer

It’s common sense that a teacher learns as much from her students as her students learn from her. It’s so true. Here go my main learnings as a teacher that made me a better dancer:

1. I understood much better all the movement mechanics (exactly what each muscle should do, how our weight should be, etc.). The fact that you need to explain exactly how a movement should be done, and in several different ways for every type of student to be able to learn, makes you become more knowledgeable on body mechanics, which in turn makes you a better dancer. Today I can more easily understand how I can do a new movement and how can I improve my own movement and dance.

2. When you are teaching beginners, you are practicing basic technique every day, slowly. This means that you are perfecting it, and basic technique is the basis of the whole dance. Because of this, teaching made my general technique become cleaner and smoother, more beautiful.

In Catarina Branco Oriental Studio, we have a library with several books of mine about Anatomy, Arabic Culture and Oriental Dance for requisition.

3. Becoming a teacher also made me study much more. I wanted to give my students all the information I believe they should know: every part of the origin and history of the dance and of all its styles, the characteristics and structure of the Arabic music and of its’ different music styles, and so on. As a teacher, I feel obliged to study harder than before, I have a responsibility towards them, and I do my best to search and structure the information for them. All this knowledge has naturally made me a better dancer, with more understanding of the Arabic culture, dance styles, movements, and music. If you want to know more about this specific theme, read my post The Work Of An Oriental Dance Teacher.

4. And of course, teaching requires you to dance more often, which means more practice of everything (technique, musicality, stretches, improvisation, etc.), every single day, which obviously makes you a better dancer.

Teaching dancing also made me a better human-being, understanding better other people’s lives and personalities. But that needs to go in another post. What do you think?