Embracing Novicedom

July 07th, 2010

This past spring, I took an introductory modern dance class at my university. It was a great class, but also very, very humbling. I went in thinking I had a head start—after all, I’m a dancer already!—only to discover that in fact my five years of dance training didn’t do very much to make me a competent beginning modern dancer. Sure, some things carry over—mostly having to do with posture and general ease of movement (my theory is that those things may both be linked more closely with being comfortable in your body and the dance space than with number of years of previous training)—but both the vocabulary and the technique were by and large absolutely new.

Here are some things I found myself thinking in modern class:

I should be able to repeat these movements/sequences after being shown them.

I should look like my teacher when I dance.

Since I have attained some level of proficiency in bellydance, I should be able to quickly pick up this other dance form.

Since I couldn’t get this move/concept in ten weeks, I should stick with what I know instead.

I’ll never be a competent modern dancer.

Now I could do my rhetoric thing and deconstruct all of the above statements (they all contain fallacies of some sort—mostly logical fallacies). Instead, though, I’ll save you the boring stuff and get to the important part: none of that thinking was helpful. I don’t mean that in a think-positive-happy-thoughts way. I mean that actually, practically, in the real-time real world, none of that sort of thinking ever did anything to improve my dance.

As an English composition teacher, I’ve done a lot of thinking about assuming a “productive novice” standpoint. A huge part of my pedagogy has to do with first positioning my students as experts in something—basketball, mathematics, whatever it may be for each person—as a means of empowering them to be novices at writing. Yes, I just said “empowering them to be novices.” Assuming the mantle of novicedom is hard in a society that values the ego/I above all. Paradoxically, any learning experience is made richer and ultimately more productive if you position yourself as a novice—even at something you already know you do well.

Which brings me to an important point: of course, this expert/novice paradigm is relative. I am the bellydance expert only with my friends that don’t practice and have never seen bellydance! In a group of other dancers, perhaps I’m the expert only in executing omis, knowledge of musculo-skeletal anatomy, and ability to break down a maya in different ways for different learning styles and body types (before you ask, no, I’m not an expert in any of those things. ) In other groups of dancers, I may not be the expert in anything bellydance-related (but I might be the group expert on South American geography, tincture-making, and early Christianty!)

The novice doesn’t think like I did in my modern dance class.  After reflecting on the experience of that class, I decided to make some mental changes. Next time I take a modern dance class, I’m going to try to transform my thinking into something more like this:

It’s normal that my movements look different from my teacher’s—I have a different body and different experiences. How can I make these movements look more natural for my body?

I don’t have to perfect this art form for it to be useful to me and my dance. I don’t have to be perfect at everything I do.

Getting out of my comfort zone is useful in and of itself—that experience is useful to my dance life even if I don’t learn any modern dance at all.

Positioning oneself as a novice all the time also helps in avoiding what I call the “post-workshop blues.” I find that watching an amazing, inspiring dancer has a dual effect on me. On one hand, I feel incredibly inspired to dance and create! On the other hand, I sometimes feel discouraged—why should I even bother to dance when there are people who do it so much better? Why should I bother when life is not long enough to learn everything there is to know about the art form?

The novice doesn’t need to ask those questions. She knows that she’s never going to be the world bellydance expert—and why would anyone want that goal? Rather, the more you are a “novice,” learning from those more “expert” than you, the more “expert” you become.

Easier said than done, I know. For me especially. But I have found that when I’m able to position myself as a novice, good things happen for me—both in terms of my dance life and my emotional health.