tirade
i Miss the way things used to be.
i Miss the studio, the girls, my friends, my family, my home, my Place.
i Miss having an identity, being known as a teacher, a person that people knew, listened to, respected and trusted.
here, im nobody. i have one person that i would consider a friend (mr. apocalypse) and a handful of people i might hang out with but am not close to. and pretty much no one here has clue one about Who I Am. hell, im not even sure i know Who I Am here, so maybe thats not fair to wish for from anyone else.
today the jazz class worked on the piece im doing with them for the faculty concert in 2 weeks. its a fucking mess, to be polite. and according to the other teacher, its because my "time management skills arent all that good" and its "too hard for them." ..... back up. lets set the stage:
originally, i was going to teach this beginning jazz class at the university. and then hopefully, in the spring, i was going to teach a jazz and a modern class. except that all fell through at the last minute due to all sorts of bullshit having nothing to do with me. thankfully, annie (the teacher) let me still have the piece to choreograph for them. but now, i cant work in class on skills and steps and styles of movement that might be in the piece--like a fucking class should be structured. i only get 20-25 minutes at the end of each class to teach **27** kids not only how to dance, but how to do what i am asking them to do and how to do it in a stupidly small space without dancing on each other. and what are we doing for the rest of the class? what she considers "warming up" and going across the floor. which amounts to about 10 minutes of leg lifts, 25 minutes of crunches and 15 minutes of random shit across the floor. they havent learned SHIT. these kids have so much potential. and its being fucking wasted.
anyway, so i came up with what i think is a really cool dance that they have the potential of doing, if i have the time to TEACH them. granted, i made the piece an interesting, artistic piece, so its a little complicated, but i thought a) i was going to have more time to work on it and b) that i didnt want to sell the kids short and give them something boring just so it could be clean (which is what her pieces are like). so maybe, there is something to be learned there...that i should have let go any artistry and just given them something boring... (you can tell i dont like that lesson...) there is a lot of group work because there are so many damn kids and when people arent there (which happens every class--about 5 to 10 of them are missing on any given day), it makes it nearly impossible to teach; a LOT of time has been wasted catching people up and reteaching. and really, all in all, we've only worked on this for a total of maybe 5 hours. which is pretty much UNHEARD OF in the realm of teaching a piece for performance, let alone to beginners....anyway.
so today 5 people are missing, and i needed to finish the end. so we ran it once and it looked awful (and annie made that clear as well), i clarified a few things, went over a bunch of stuff, taught them the end, and ran it a couple times from a spot towards the end and then we were out of time. awesome... we ran it once from the beginning with music with about 12 of them because everyone else needed to leave. first thing annie says to me is "you need to work on your time management--you only ran it once." ..... yes. that is because i see NO FUCKING POINT TO RUNNING SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE DONT KNOW HOW TO DO. if people dont know the counts or the movement or their entrances, what the HELL is the point of making them do it over and over when you could take that time to teach them how to do what they need to do so that when they do it they will do it right??!! and then she says "if i was a beginner, i would tell you this is too hard for me. its too fast and way too hard for them." .....yes... i know that now. but thats because THEY ARENT BEING TAUGHT ANYTHING IN CLASS TO BUILD ON. and its a little too fucking late to unravel it all and teach them something easier. so, the fucking SMART and KIND thing to do would be to give me more time to work on it with them instead of WASTING THEIR FUCKING TIME DOING CRUNCHES AND LEGLIFTS. Seriously??? i know those are important. but if you want to talk about time management, lets talk about that. i cannot STAND her "warmups". there is nothing warming about them, and in fact i injured my hamstring earlier this semester during one of them doing something we shouldnt have been doing without warming up first. this is not a "jazz class". this is doing calisthenics to jazz music.
i Know that i know how to teach. and i Know that i could teach these kids some seriously awesome things if i had them for class or at the very least for a longer time at the end. but i dont. so im making do with what time i have, and all in all, theyre doing pretty damn good. but a) i dont feel like they are being done justice with so little time to work on this and b) am really angry and frustrated that it is my teaching/choreographic ability that is being called into question here, and ultimately, no one will see or know otherwise. if it looks like shit, it will be my fault, and annie and laurie (the woman who will hopefully be the head of the minor next year....) will look at it and judge my ability to choreograph, and more importantly teach, accordingly. and that FUCKING SUCKS. its like asking someone to be blindfolded, stand on one foot on top of a teetering pole over a pit full of alligators and ask them to give an impromptu lecture on astrophysics. conditions not exactly ideal. and yes, i KNOW that a good artist/teacher/person doesnt blame their circumstances for their shortcomings, they find a way to work with them. i Know that. but at the same time, theres something to be said for looking at what is and recognizing when it fucking SUCKS.
oh--and annie kept stressing to me that "they are trying really hard for you" ..... a) like i havent noticed and would need to have that stressed to me and b) like theres ANYTHING else that really matters to me as a teacher?!! ALL i really care about is that people try and push themselves and learn to truly Dance from their hearts. yes, i would *like* them to get the choreography. but if they cant and i can see they are trying their hardest, and are enjoying themselves and are really truly Dancing, that is truly ALL i care about. and if you fucking knew me at all, you would know that.
it makes me so sad and angry that annie, the one connection i have to the dance world here, has no fucking idea Who I Am. as a person or as a teacher. she honestly thought i "wasnt the emotional type". yeah. thats me. total stoic. and she feels the need to tell me constantly how i need to talk to them or be with them or what to do with them. really? i know i havent been teaching as long as you, but i would wager that i could teach them so much more (and better) about truly Dancing if they were my class. i know that is a snarky, shitty thing to say. im just angry. and frustrated. and hurt.
and fucking Sad.