Memphis, TN Blues Retreat

Mihai hired me to be the organizer of his blues retreat in Memphis, TN. This was one hell of an inspiring weekend. The blues retreat is based on my get-together teacher's retreat that I run each year at my home in Sacramento. The idea of these retreats is to bring together about 10-12 full-time teachers and dancers aspiring to be full-time teachers to teach each other and have lots of self-discovery thru out the weekend. I was a little hesitant on the outcome because of how quickly the whole thing was being put together and because the level of the dancers was so strongly varied. We had everything from full-time international instructors to dancers who had only been dancing for 6 months and they were all supposed to teach each other something about blues dancing that would keep each other's interest. It has always been my belief that someone with only 6 months of dance experience or less could teach someone with 10 or more years of experience if the correct subject were chosen and presented in an appropriate method. However, I have not personally tested it to this extreme of a degree. I have had people with as little as 3 or 4 years of experience in my retreat teaching with people with 10 or more years of experience but never only 6 months. Also, could someone with only 6 months experience keep up in the same class with someone with 8+ years experience? The answer was YES and it was totally inspiring to see it happen! It is so rare to see such an amazing rate of progress both by someone who had only been dancing 6 months and by myself who had been dancing 8+ years!

Labels: get-together, mihai, retreat

posted by Andrew Sutton @ 2:06 PM