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Why don't you teach any Bootcamps?

Posted 10/23/2018

By Francisco De La Calleja


    I am often asked why I don't teach any dance "boot camps". The fashion these days is for dance instructors to stick the boot camp label on everything they teach, usually followed by one of these tag lines:

Get out of your comfort zone!

No pain, no gain!

Challenge your learning abilities

Have you got what it takes?

Take your dancing to the next level!

 

    The boot camp expression has obviously become a marketing gimmick. Teachers do this because it sells. And it sells because we live in a competitive society where if something sounds hard and difficult, most people assume it has better value. But sadly, most teachers and students have a cloudy understanding, at best, of what a real boot camp’s purpose is.

    So let us look at what a real boot camp is really like and why my dance classes are never advertised as such:

    The term boot camp comes from the introductory training programs that were put in place by western armies as a way to introduce conscripted and later, volunteer recruits into military life. These programs were supposedly challenging, (the beginning of US Marine boot camp during the Vietnam war was known as Hell Week), and developed the reputation of being a system to weed out the weakest individuals. The challenge often resided not just in the difficulty of physical training as it did in the psychological adjustment to an unfamiliar environment and social structure.

    To begin with, this last part is not mirrored in the dance “boot camps”, since the social structure is the same as any other dance class, despite the intensity level.

    Let’s not forget that the main psychological objective of a military boot camp is to morph independent minded civilian individuals into obedient organs of a martial machine, which in war is essential to their individual survival and their collective success. But this too is incompatible with the artistic goal of developing uniqueness and creativity in dance through technical proficiency. I have never met a good dancer who was able to express his individuality and creativity because he was so well drilled.

    Much has been made about the supposed physical difficulty of an army boot camp but those who have been through a real one know that it does not take an uncommon talent or a gargantuan effort to succeed. It requires effort, true, but it is more designed to motivate, rather than to discourage the recruit. Armies would have too few soldiers in their ranks if only the topmost elite were able to complete the first part of induction.

    In parallel fashion, it would be economic suicide for a dance school to hold classes where the stated purpose was to weed out the more challenged students through physical intensity. Also, the use in a dance class of high physical intensity to improve anything other than physical conditioning is unnecessary and usually counterproductive.

    Since a military boot camp fosters the attitude that if you just try, you will succeed, it also strengthens unit cohesion and team spirit, the attitude that we are all in this together. There is no shame in weakness in a military boot camp but rather, solidarity built on the idea that the stronger help and encourage those who straggle. This stands in sharp contrast with the competitive attitude that some dance instructors foster in their events. So in a real army boot camp the attitude of keep up with me or drop out does not exist.

    Dance teachers who market themselves as drill instructors would do well to remember that the sergeants in charge of real boot camps are responsible not just for recruit training through intense and repetitive drills, they also accompany the recruits through the adaptation process, instructing, counselling and correcting them in every detail and are primarily responsible for their safety.

    But the way most dance “boot camps” are taught these days basically consists in a set of intensive and repetitive drills that become progressively more complex, as if the objective was to overload the student’s short term memory. This is somehow supposed to “challenge the student’s learning ability”. What is never explained is why their ability has to be challenged in this fashion, since memory is only a small part of the learning process.

    Additionally, some teachers teach with the assumption that the student already knows and understands everything the teacher will be doing so they work with the look at me and copy system, rarely taking the time to request feedback since such pauses take away from the boot camp “experience”.

    As I’ve often said: “Before challenging his student’s learning abilities, a good teacher will think about challenging his own teaching abilities first”.

    Lastly, many dance “boot camps” these days are marketed as advanced classes, for the experienced dancers who do not need a nurturing learning environment. But ironically, the official name of boot camp in most armies is BASIC TRAINING.

    So, for those who ask me why I don’t teach any boot camps, if I were to faithfully apply the principles of a true military boot camp to my dance instruction, the closest concept I would be left with would be… you guessed it: a beginner class.