When an instructional video, no matter what its subject, expects the learner to do-along, it must fulfill a bunch of criteria. At least that’s the way I see it! To put it in a nutshell, the instructor must visualize the many ways a learner could be learning with that video.
When I sift through the videos in my dance and fitness collection, I find that the ones I go back to have one thing in common: they’ve got the do-along basics in place. That would be pace, vocal cuing, music, amount of extra chat, repetitions, locus of attention, instruction consistency – and maybe a few other points that aren’t in my conscious awareness. For me, the lack of attention to do-along details often means the video will get shelved and I’ll keep thinking I must get to it one of these days because the content of the program is basically so good.
Jehan’s Ultimate Fitness immediately comes to mind. I loved the look of this video right from the beginning. It has 5 or 6 beautiful segments with moves that are both workout-friendly and danceable by themselves. It’s led by accomplished and attractive dancers who do their job well. To me, what kills it is the instructions. For the first one or two segments, the voice cues don’t exactly match what is going on in the sequence, and the necessary movements are not cued. Instead, it is assumed that you’re watching so very carefully you won’t miss every little twitch.
An intermediate or advanced dancer will figure out what’s happening. But not an early beginner – and that’s what I was when I bought that video. The result is that I keep feeling a twinge of guilt for not having worked with it, but then other videos compete for attention and it stays forgotten. Which reminds me… I totally must pull it out and work with it one of these days!
Let’s not even take up here the videos that are mostly explanation-centered and happen to have a few do-along segments. We’ll look at pure do-alongs that teach almost entirely by looking a little and then learning quite enough to practice along.
One dancer whose voice-cuing I really admire, is Shamira. I’ve long since outgrown her videos, but I do remember how very easy she makes it to learn. She has a nice, comfortable pace to her instruction, but that’s not all. Shamira has perfect timing with her cues. A second or two before you have to execute a move, she calls it out, and she does this without breaking the flow of the move you’re already doing with her. The result is a nice unbroken flow to each segment of her program. And she keeps this going whether she’s teaching a choreography or separate belly dance basic moves. In addition, she switches angles and tells you whether you’re mirroring her ot not. Because of the skillful way she cues, you don’t notice the talking and instructing separately from the stuff you see on screen or even separate from your own moving along with her.
Cueing gets even better when you have to just watch the video thoroughly a few times in the beginning, perhaps stop to learn the moves, and then you never actually need to look again, except to cross-check a detail. Some instructors get that right too! I see that on many of the WDNY videos such as Sera’s East Coast Tribal and Bellydamce Rhythms. I needed to learn Sera’s wonderful 30-minute warm up by looking at it closely a couple of times in the beginning. After that, I haven’t seen it in a long time even though I do the warm up very often – with the video. This is totally because the voice instructions include everything you need. The cues are called out naturally, exactly on time, at the right pace. So, I’m free to not look at the video and instead focus on doing the move better and better and correcting myself in the mirror. By now, I actually don’t need the mirror either. In fact, I can do the entire workout, including the right number of counts, because Sera’s voice has “stuck” in my head and gives me the right cues.
Much the same has happened with Neon’s Rhythms. That, of course, is a more tightly structured program with lots more repetitions to each move, but for all of Flow 1, I no longer need to look. In this case, the dance pattern goes exactly with the drum pattern and so the drum pattern is the cue. That makes the voice cue challenge a little less, in my opinion.
Some of the dance flows that move very quickly from one move to the next drive me nuts. Jenna’s drills, on both her Basics and Beyond and Next Level, are in that genre. I have to watch and watch and memorize to be able to do them along because by the time you watch her and imitate, she’s gone on to another move. Neon’s unique Body Shaping series from much earlier, used this format but had instructions reflected graphically on the screen. Those, and counters, are cute and slick, but they still present another problem for me – calling my attention and focus 100% to the screen.
Many intermediate learners are completely derisive about the need to be looking at your own moves in the mirror while working with a video and insist that you’ll end up getting mirror-dependent forever. I beg to totally disagree. If you can learn a move without watching how you do it, you’re lucky, but to me, a do-along video should take into account the existence of learners who do need to go beyond assuming their bodies are getting it right and not checking at all. Some otherwise great videos have been badly compromised for me because of not having taken different learning styles into account. One of them is the otherwise strong Drills Drills Drills. While its predecessor Pop, Lock and Shimmy does better, this one has isolation drills for which you absolutely must focus on the screen because the move is spelt out briefly on-screen with text. Certainly, it’s explained in a previous section, but when it’s time to do along, you have to be looking to catch the change of move. Arbitrary numbers of repetitions mean that also can’t just remember and change to the next move on your own. While separating a detailed breakdown of the move and explaining its dynamics carefully at leisure in its own section is a good idea, when you get to the practice section, chatting when you should be cuing the next move, is a problem. Chatting comfortably with extra tips and reassurances is really quite nice, but it has to be timed ever so carefully if the pace of the practice is to be kept up. I’ve often found myself listening to a good tip and saying “yeah! Quite right, that!” only to find the move we were doing changed without warning, making me go oops! I lost that… The newsly released Ballet for Belly Dancers needs you to watch watch watch, while the practice sessions have no voice cues and no “plan” on how much of what we’re going to do. There are even places where there are changes in foot position going on but the camera is focused above-waist. I am going to have a tough tough time handling this one – and I so want to work with ballet basics for belly dance. There’s a change in move every few seconds, so there’s nothing for it but to watch the screen. I may get my own positions all wrong – but oh well, that’s not important.
The do-along basics go all haywire when we’re dealing with homegrown videos. Then, the instructor is usually so focused on trying to get you comfortable, she does it by chatting endlessly and distractingly. I believe that this factor adds about 30% “flab” to the video. Joking around too much is not, contrary to belief, cool on a video because if you’re going to work with the video again and again, those jokes are going to begin to annoy you and finally drive you up the wall and down the other side. Saqra, Zhaleh and Veda are some of the instructors that take the chatting too far on their videos. So, instructors have to keep in mind that those videos are going to be used repeatedly and mange the amount of talking – and the overall pace of the instruction – accordingly.
Another odd problem happens when instructors use too many different descriptions for one movement or sequence. While it’s great to describe things in different ways during the explanation, during the practice, stick to one way of referring to the movement to avoid confusion. Anasma can be seen doing just that in her new Liquid Fusion video. She describes how to do something by taking two or three different approaches and analogies. But in the drill, the reference is limited to one.
Of course, there are learners who are intensely visual and must focus wholly on the screen right through. Dancers very much value the music-only sections of instructional videos. It’s a great idea to have such sections but there are also aural learners so just as it isn’t mirror- vs non-mirror learners, it shouldn’t about visual vs aural learners. It’s about taking into account that there will be different types of learners. By the time a learner reaches the stage of using the music-only segment of a video, learning is, more the most part, over. So, the needs of the learner from a video can change over time.
I want to end this with a strange suggestion for those making videos. Try to work along with the do-along sections with your eyes closed. If you can do most of what’s happening on screen, you’re good to go. If you find that you’ve completely lost track of what’s happening and need to open your eyes and look – think it through some more.
Tags: Dance Diary by Mala
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