I
am very happy to introduce you to not only a great dancer and person but a
fabulous teacher... Mr. Enio Cordoba!
JJ:
First of all, let me ask you: How did you got started teaching? And Did
you ever have a mentor that sort of really got you involved
with it?
E:
I had just won the US Amateur Championship with Natalie Mavor, but we had to split up because she was living in Houston and I in LA.
She was 14 and I was 23 so travelling was a bit difficult. Since there were no
amateur girls of her caliber everybody told me to try the professional ranks. As
for a mentor there have been three. Ron Montez, the 7 time US Latin champion,
started me out. He’s an incredible teacher and a good friend. He introduced me
to Nina Hunt, who at the time, was the top coach in the world. She took couples
and focused them laser sharp. Next there was Bob Medeiros, another US Latin Champion, who turned everything
I knew to that point upside down. He was trying to educate the ballroom world to
what latin dancing really was like. He introduced me to Rueda and the
differences musically between Mambo and Salsa.
JJ: Do you believe that a really good dancer doesn’t necessarily make for a really good teacher?
E: No, that’s absurd. There is something to be said for a person who started out a “natural” vs someone who had to struggle. Lots of baseball allstars made lousy managers because they didn’t know how to teach something that came natural to them. I wasn’t particularly gifted, I just had the bulldog mentality. I refused to give up. When you start by learning from the best teachers - everybody else pales in comparison. If you learned to sing from Pavarotti you’re suddenly not impressed by Ricky Martin. I did two things that made me a better teacher. I never accepted anything at face value and I analyzed everything to see if it made sense. (I’m sure this thrilled my teachers) I questioned everything. Not challenging them, mind you, but it had to make logical sense. I’ve heard some teachers make some really asinine claims and students accept it like it was Gospel.
JJ: What’s the hardest thing to teach a beginner student?
E: Every student who walks in has his mind set on the myth that learning to dance means learning where to put your feet. No matter how you as a teacher try to convince them that partner dancing involves leading and following more importantly than footwork, the student is going to focus on what to do with the feet independent of the body. I finally gave up trying and now the first 30 minutes of every class I give them what they expect- basic footwork. Once I’ve given them what they want, I give them what they need- leading and following skills. The hardest thing to teach a beginner latino is that while the rhythm may be genetic, leading and following isn’t.
JJ: What advice can you give a beginner teacher?
E: Beginning instructors always try to impress students by teaching them cool moves. Instead they should teach the students how to make everything easy without being rough. A great lesson can be learned by taking a beginner class from a master instructor and learning how and why they teach a certain way. Beginner instructors often have an excited enthusiasm that sadly, many experienced teachers often lose. A beginner teacher may have lousy technique but their enthusiasm makes up for a multitude of sins. As for learning, the best advice is to set aside about three hours a week for yourself to learn. Whether it’s Ballet, Ballroom or Swing, the principles of movement and the physics of gravity affect us all the same way. Learn another form of dance- it will improve your teaching and your dancing. You’d be surprised how technique improves your teaching. For the business side my most important advice is to decide what you want to do in the future. Do you want to make a career out of this or just make a few bucks? Decide what kind of a life you want at the age of 50 and determine if a dance career can provide it. If your answer is that you want a career, you should learn as many forms of dance as you can. While Salsa may be hot today, there will be a time when you can’t give it away. Happened to Swing – happened to Hustle- it happened to Mambo. The ability to teach other forms means you’ll be able to survive in the lean years. Otherwise you’ll be teaching 3 people in a group class. As much as I detest the business practices of the chain studios, I must say that learning the business side allowed me to build a very successful studio. While most teachers run around from grungy bars to rec halls in search of a place to teach, students come to us.
JJ:
How do you create a good student?
And what I mean by that is, I’ve been told that when someone gets a
student and you want to be able to maintain them, you want them to stay
interested; so what is it that teachers can do or should do to create
someone who’s a student that will learn well and get them to stay
consistent? Are there any tricks or certain things that we should know?
E: Educating the beginners’ eye to good dancing is the first and most important thing I can think of. We usually demonstrate everything two ways good and bad. We let them choose which way looks better. When you teach a student- demonstrate the cause and effect of his actions. Demonstrate what they did. The student realizing what he looks like then understands where he is in relation to a good dancer. An example of this would be that many dancers have over busy hands and arms- what we jokingly call “wax on wax off.” We like to emphasize economy of motion- how to create a movement with the minimum of effort.
JJ:
Being a studio owner, you deal with a lot of instructors. Is there any
advice you can give to teachers or anything that you would like to see teachers
do that you don’t see often?
E: Yes, I am a studio owner, but that deals with pushing pencils around. I am also a teacher. Most teachers forget how to social dance. They get so caught up in competitive dancing that they lose the joy that they first experienced when they were learning. As a studio owner I would never make a teacher dance at parties with students- that’s the quickest way to kill the enthusiasm in a teacher. Instead at our socials our teachers are allowed to dance with each other. Students get off on watching top level dancers cut loose. Forcing someone to dance with somebody they don’t enjoy reeks of insincerity and it shows. On the other hand, the ability to dance with a beginner and enjoy it is the same as the ability to strike up a conversation with a complete unknown and walk away enriched. But nowadays most people can’t do that either so it’s a rare gift. Often the young dancers want to dance only with other young dancers- like you’re dating. Some of the best dances I’ve ever had have been with someone 20 years older. Go into a conversation and tell the other person your life story- at the end you walk away empty. Instead ask them their life story and you may walk away enriched. Dancing is the same thing.
JJ:
How important do you think it is to count as a student?
E: Absolutely essential. But they must first understand what it is they are counting. Any village idiot can count numbers. Connect the dots. They must feel the pulse of the rhythm and understand how a step relates to a beat. Without that it makes no sense to count.
JJ: Then as a teacher?
E: Too many teachers count as if that will magically give people rhythm. I cycle from counting steps 123-456, to beats 123-567, to rhythm QUICK QUICK SLOW, QUICK QUICK SLOW, to feet LEFT RIGHT LEFT, RIGHT LEFT RIGHT, to direction FORWARD BACK BACK, CLOSE FORWARD FORWARD, and through these constantly. The cadence in your voice helps train the student to the music yet you are giving them information in the process.
JJ:
Here’s a good one. There
are – I get a lot of questions, people write to me all of the time and I’ve
had several of this particular question from other teachers; and they basically
have said, “Jami, I love teaching my advanced students, I have such
a great time and I’m really comfortable with it, but then I get someone
who’s a really slow beginner, and I have a tough time teaching them.
What can I do to make it better?” Because it’s like, they find
themselves either getting frustrated themselves or whatever.
So are there any tips that you may have or things that --?
E:
Believe it or not I enjoy teaching the absolute beginner as much as the
top level dancers. It’s the intermediates that are boring to teach. Why? At a
pro level you show them something once and they get it. Or if you are creating,
the creative process is exciting. With a beginner the result is also immediate
if you don’t teach over their heads. The intermediate student often hits a
plateau stage where it might take months of repetition to get them to the next
level. At that level they walk out looking virtually the way they walked in.
After 20 years of teaching it becomes hard to stay totally focused for an hour
of crossbody lead. Try to approach the learning process from the viewpoint of
the student and use analogies from their background and daily experience.
JJ:
It’s been presented to me since I’ve been running this Instructor’s
Forum that people have asked about having certified instructors. And I’ve been
considering in creating something like that since in the Ballroom world where I
originally come from, we have that; we have a test that you take and it’s not
only learning patterns, but you learn how to count, you learn how to deal with
students and beginner students, you learn how to dress, how to save your money,
and all different aspects of being an instructor and being a successful
instructor. Please note that to me in certifying an instructor wouldn’t be
about what count you dance on – I
don’t even know that we should even set a syllabus, you know? But what I would
probably like to see is that they have to know how to count in phrases. They
also have to know and understand how to do teach music, know the history,
understand beat quality, etc…. So I guess what I’m asking is… what do you
think about this and what advice can you give me to go about creating such a
thing?
E: As usual this will make me lots of friends in the teaching community. Being certified and $4.50 will get you a venti latte at Starbucks. Some of the most certified teachers in ballroom dancing couldn’t find a latin beat with a divining rod. Some judges in competitions stay stupid things like “I would have marked you but I didn’t like your… (hair, dress, makeup)”. Some people have the ability to memorize a technique book and regurgitate it back for an exam. Ask them to dance and you have no clue what dance they are doing. The Imperial technique book in ballroom could turn the brain of any Caltech (MIT, Stanford) physics whiz into tapioca in 2 hours. Yes technique is important but there is SOOOOOOO much more. The ability to convert a dance step into an analogy that they can relate to- like running, swinging a tennis racket etc. I used to say that unlike brain surgery, poor dance teachers don’t usually cause injury. But nowadays I see many of them leading turns so roughly that they tear shoulder rotator cuffs. Many of these newbie teachers teach drops and lifts which will cause injury later. I had a “professional” throw herself into a backbend so hard that the act of catching her cracked three of my ribs. They can create a learning handicap that will make it harder for the student to undo the bad habits than if they had never learned them in the first place. On the other hand a great technical dance teacher can turn off more students than enticing them to continue. I think teachers should watch each other’s beginner classes then go out for a beer and open a dialogue. As for business sense, that’s where I would love to do a seminar and teach business ethics and intelligent marketing. One of the dumbest things in dancing (and it happens in all dance forms) You go to a dance club (where someone teaches) and what do you see? Flyers from all the new wannabe teachers. Instead of trying to entice someone else’s students to your place, why not go somewhere where people don’t know how to dance, and leave your flyers there? Instead of cutting an existing pie into smaller and smaller pieces, why not bake another pie. For example there are 13 million people in LA. Instead of trying to subdivide the existing 10,000 dancers go out and create another 10,000 dancers. The scene grows and everybody makes more money.
JJ:
OK…Last One…. Is there any saying or motto that you use that people
would say, “Oh! That’s a Enio saying!” Anything in particular?
E:
I have 4 I use a lot. While teaching, if people are not dancing in rhythm, I will call out over the music- “If the music is bothering anybody I can turn it down.!” The second is “If you were any closer to her, you’d be behind her” another one I stole from a swing dancer friend. “Dancing is the only place where you can put your hands all over a girl’s body for 6.5 minutes, and at the end she thanks you for it.” My favorite is when beginner guys hold a girl like shes a live hand grenade- “If you don’t like girls take up bowling!”