Patience, Practice and the Pursuit of Excellence

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By Barbara Bernstein
Originally published in The Scene Magazine, March 15, 2009

An old joke goes as follows: A woman walking down a street in New York City stopped a passer-by and asked, "Excuse me, but can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?" The gentleman answered, "Practice, practice, practice!"

A new book out by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink) makes a startling proposition about how to explain exceptional talent. Gladwell describes a principle he calls "the 10,000 hour" rule. He says that to be very outstanding at some skill-like a top flight pro tennis player-requires 10,000 hours of practice. That amounts to 20 hours a week for 10 years.

Whether you train to perform or just dance for fun, the same rules apply: you just cannot become highly skilled without lots of practice; and you cannot get a lot of practice without being comfortable making mistakes, picking yourself up and trying again. No matter how talented someone appears when they dance, they didn't start out that way. They made mistakes and kept on trying.

Just as children learn to walk before they run, students of dance learn to do things slowly before accelerating. It is best to learn new material first to very slow music and once the move is in muscle memory, gradually kick up the pace.

Slow tempos are very "forgiving." For example, if you have excess motion in your lead, you may be able to slog through a move to a slow speed. But a faster speed requires greater cleanliness to get through the move, which can be done once you have practiced the move enough to commit it to muscle memory.

It's important to recognize that knowing something is really a matter of degree, rather than all or nothing. You don't simply know or not know how to do a cross body lead, for example. You start out doing it hesitantly and with awkwardness, and the more you practice, the more confident and smooth the movement becomes.

Dancers may feel that they already know a move, and understandably want to learn new moves rather than review what they know. But since learning is incremental, the more you do it, the better you'll do it (at faster tempos, with less thought, adding embellishments).

That smoothness and improved technique is what makes you feel good to dance with and look great on the floor.