EDITORIAL

The Dance Student Clients' Right to Self-Determination
By: Roger M. Christian

There is a time in which every one us needs that one magical moment in which we are both appreciated, loved, and had achieved something significant and important. Moreover, the personal strings which exist in establishing social connections is where we, at first, are most vulnerable. All this is based upon the human need condition of acceptance finding.

The dance client who comes to us does so for many personal reasons, and our task is to empower those reasons. Empower means facilitation, and that by our professional facilitation is the means by which the client achieves the personal and private ends in taking dance lessons. Thus what we are doing is assisting the client in the ongoing development of further modifiying their social personalities based upon their rights to self - determination. This is the stage in which they are, also, vulnerable to exploitation ( for example, one of the catch words for exploitive motives, " they need reasurances").

What impell us, the dance teachers, to do this service is that our dance experience is significant enough as to invest our lives in others by teaching dance. Most of us who are Dance Masters realizes the vulnerable emotional component within our clients efforts at either self improvement, or developing social strings of communications-modified acceptance finding. We all at one time have " been there ", and what the facilitator realizes is that he or she has significantly " done that ", and have successfully established a dance personality, and professional performance experience as a result.

We can not, therefore, interfere with our clients' efforts to self develop, especially to explore on their own the social dance world-along with making errors too. To do so is exploitation. Nor should we ever develop social dependency by the client on our services. We are in the empowering business, and within dance, how we properly influence the sociocultural environment is to produce popular dancers by interactive ( which supports the exogenous social dance characteristic ), not proactive ( which supports the edogenous social dance characteristic ) teaching techniques. Proactive means taking charge of how the client, after the class or private dance hour settings, develops personal social connections by creating " a emotional dependent bond "which needs to be countinually reassured. Thus we do not dominate the local social dance floor nor it's social scene. Nor really dance locally.

It is in the professional expression of empowement by which our clients evolve those social strings as their means to organize their own social dances. We do not assume ownership of social dances, but in the facilitation of our clients goals of self - empowerment which according to USABDA actually influences the creation of healthy social dance ( exogenous ) environments.

What has confounded most dance groups, and especailly the Ithaca Swing Dance Network ( whose social dances phases periodically in and out being edogenous centered) is that when dance teachers ( who are vulnerable to income anxieties ), and social dances are separated, then more popular dancing ( exogenous ) becomes. Social dances, then, no longer are promotions for soliciting dance lessons-thus the tension ( the fears of exploitation ) is removed. It is, moreover, the act of humility by the dance teacher to empower clients as excellent dancers, where the clients dance social behavior is modified ( the radical exogenous ) to support others in their own quest to become popular dancers; for they do not need reasurances by the dance teacher, nor are they looking over their shoulders for our approval. It is this spirit which has histoically and socioculturally empowered dance as a successful component in our civilization, and it is based upon the clients right to self - determination. Thus the dance teacher must not interfere in the development of the client to form an independent social dance persona, nor do we interfere with its ends.

The circle relationship between the dance teacher and the dancer teacher producing social dances is nothing more than exploitive ( endogenous ) marketing controls-to, according to observations by USABDA, arrest teacher income anxieties. By transferance ( check your book on psychology ) many clients, as a results, are greatly influenced by this, and have become in several
instances 'dance cults'. What has happened is the greater the" clients' " dance dependent persona, the more likely is it's territorial social related neurosis; this is also a screen behind which dishonesty in credentials are maintained.

It was social dances which came first, then in their development, and more complex their behaviorism, and techniques, the need for instructors increased, and then came the money. It is for this reason alone why The United States Amateur Ballroom Dance Association is quite correct in allowing only those who are not money connected to dancing to its membership-dance teachers are kept at a respectable distance.

It is in a teacher's pride to a student who becomes successful, and it is dance teachers special pride to see their clients become successul in establishing their own dances. The one act of humility is to give other people that one time of their lives to experience a social success.