Humping the day
Dec. 7th, 2005 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bethlakshmiEver wake up feeling out of tune? That would be me today. Nothing spectacular, or even grumpifying. Just... out of kilter. Stuff like first shirt attempt had a spot, hit a curb on the right turn into my office park, can't find my scarf (even though I went back and double checked on it at Applebees), etc, etc. Nothing awful, nothing terminal, just off-putting. I'm here with my Holiday Cheer Ritazza coffee trying to sync up with the day.
Last night was lovely. Just the kind of night I wanted. Isn't it nice when you don't want anything too unusual or uber-fancy and then the time just hits the nail on the head? It's like a present, because I really didn't have to do anything and things just happened. Did class with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jezebelpussycat, then paxindustria joined us and we did dinner at Applebees, and I invited new_man who at first said he wasn't coming and then came anyway. He opted not to spend the night, but that was OK, since I was feeling just enough hermit-ish that I didn't necessarily long for an over-night guest, seeing him was quite pleasurable enough. And it was the silly little stuff that made the evening so nice - good class, lots of stuff clicking into place, good company at dinner, lots of laughing, lots of topics of conversation, not having to drive at all, and as such, having company for the drive to and from the restaraunt. Little, trivial no-big-deal stuff, but just the right flavor for my mood.
Class is progressing nicely. I feel just like a real teacher. I'm sure some of you are thinking "duh, Lakshmi, you are a real teacher". But... this is the first time I've done continuous classes and really enjoyed them. I burned out, hardcore, teaching SCA Middle Eastern classes years ago. I lacked a good agenda and class was more about socializing with other SCAdians than about actually learning anything. I felt frustrated and bored, and that combo makes me a terrifically bad teacher. I realize now that it was combination of not having material to draw from, and not having students on the same plane as me. I think I have both now, and it transforms teaching from something I was obligated to do into something I am eager to do.
I've been a little worried that I was boring the crap of my student. We are doing stuff that you just need to do and do and do some more until it comes as naturally as breathing - the adavus - the Indian dance term for "practice series". And while you do it ad naseum, your teacher corrects all these little details about your form.
This is hard for me, I don't actually like nit-picking other people. I'll be anal about myself all the time, but I don't honestly like telling people they've done something wrong. And in belly dance I don't have to - much of it can be chaulked up to persona style. But... Bharata Natyam has "right" and "wrong" in a major way (even if "right" for school A is "wrong" for school B, schools A & B will no hesitate to draw the line), and so I've just got to suck it up and be critical, because otherwise I'm doing Jez a disservice.
But... when she misheard "eye moves" (stretches for the eye, which we skipped this week) as "adavus" and was like "no! We HAVE to do the adavus! I need my ass kicked!"... I knew this was a keeper of a relationship. She gets it, she's not abyssmally frustrated and bored, and she sees the challenge as a challenge and not some grueling, awful thing to be endured. Yay! Makes me feel better about being critical.
... technical geekery...
I forget sometimes, that even the beginning stuff is hard and challenging. We are doing the seemingly infinite sequence that is nattu adavu. Nattu means "heel" - so these are "practice steps exercising the heel". Different schools handle adavus differently - but the hardcore classic schools seem to have a TON of each adavu. We have 4 sections to nattu adavu, each one having 4-6 'exercises' within it. Each exercise has, on average, 8 beats, each with it's own movement. Each movement can be broken down into *at least* head, arms, legs. So... for a single exercise you are memorizing 8 beats * 3 things per beat = 24 things. And then for the entire adavu = 4 sections * ~5 exercises * 24 things per exercise = 480 discrete things to do with your body.
None of the other adavus I know of are this intense - most have just 1/4 of that.
Now... that sounds horrible, but honestly, this is not as hard as it sounds. You don't think of it as 480 things - you think of it is 4 sections, with n number of exercises, and there are basic combos that get repeated. So if you know the first section, exercise c, you may well reuse adavu 1-c as part of adavu 2-d, and 3b, and you might just use the feet, with alternate arms for 2-e, 2-f, 3-c and 3-d. Which means that you start reducing number of discrete movements ENORMOUSLY. And... I think... that's probably some of what this adavu is about. Getting your brain into a structure where it starts making little containers of 4-5 items each, and then memorizes series of containers, not the items itself.
Isn't it interesting that most of these adavus group into the number that psychologists and UI people say is the optimum number to present in a GUI list? 5. They say the human brain is able to simultaneously think of about 5-9 things at once - results vary by human. So... if you have to present a GUI list, menu, radio buttons or other selection option - do not present more than 9 options, preferably 5. If you find yourself with 13, break them up somehow - unless you have a damn good reason not to - like providing a drop down of state abbreviations. Usually the easiest thing to do to users is to make the GUI traversal into a tree-hiearchy of some sort, using additional menus or screens to break things up.
Is that not strikingly like what I describe for dance? It rather impresses me that this adavu was spec'd out long before any concept of "user interface" was figured out. And long before most of the West was doing this kind of human mind examination. My best guess on the history of this is that adavu-like steps existed, but the Tanjore quartet of the early 19th century is credited with actually hardening them into the sequences we work from today. How cool is that?
... end technical digression...
So... it's my job to be the meanie and make sure my student has it all down pat. In many ways, developing this structure in the brain is what will help make everything else easier. But this week went really well, stuff that was wobbly the week before had hardened up nicely. I expect this adavu to take several months. We've got the 1st quarter down, and we're chewing our way into the 2nd quarter. I think the speed increases as the brain starts organizing itself, but it's still a bloody long adavu. Compared to tattu adavu which is taught in 1 class, and other, later adavus that are frequently taught in 1-3 classes, and then digested and perfected in another 3 classes - this is slooowwww.
Then we moved on to abhinaya. Yet another challenge for memorization. And it's really tough when you are still sorting out the grey matter to do the stuff above. The first slokum you ever learn can take a cursedly long time to memorize. But this week the sabha slokum finally hardened. All the hands and feet happen at the right time. Which is fabulous, since we have moved into a devaranama which builds complexity into the concept of moving with meaning. A slokum is solemn and every work of the little slokums has a specific meaning. The sabha slokum is also wonderfully symmetric. Do 1 repeat right, 1 repeat left of each verse, and only 1 move in two verses has any variation between the move and it's mirror image. The devaranama by comparison is insane. There *is* a symmetry, but you have to back up from it several paces to see it. And you don't ever do the same sequence twice. There's strategy here - the song gives you room to *play*. By repeating phrases 4 times, you have plenty of space to tell a complete story but variations and repetitions of moves. But you raise the 'bar' - you can't just do the same thing twice - after four repeats the audience will be bored out of their skulls. So you pull out different things to focus their attention.
So... I'm really happy that the sabha slokum settled itself down, since that clears the way for adding all this complexity. It's funny... thinking back - it took me about 4-6 weeks to be done with the sabha slokum - not so different from Jez. And then maybe 3 or so months of devaranama. But then, when I had to learn another slokum, I was able to learn 1 slokum per class. We did two back to back at one point... I call it slokum-fest.
Aparna told me once, that everything you learn makes the things you have already learned better. I agreed back then, but I see it now all the more as a teacher. At the time, I figured it meant doing moves more cleanly, because you had spent more time working on them. But that's just one side of it. You also have grouped information in your brain in more efficient ways, and unbeknownst to you, your noggin actually sorts things you already know into these more efficient structures. So when you return to a previously learned piece, you have more brain power to apply to making it good, as you have to spend less brain power figuring out what the hell you need to do next!
How cool is that?
I'm reminded that some folks I know say that as a dance student I'm a little scary - I learn fast, I mimic well, I manage tempo well, and I immediately tune in on details. While I'd love to say that it's my super-natural IQ, the truth is, it just ain't so. In high school I was a horrible, horrible memorizer. I flat out couldn't memorize violin music, and I struggled with line memorization for theater, only to have it vanish once I was done with the show. ...but now I have memorized 6 years of dance study - every single freaking choreography is in my brain. I forget small details and have to review notes. But... if asked to recite the lines I memorized for Our Town the year after we did it, I couldn't have done more than 1-3 lines. Now... I can pretty much do the peices I learned last year, and then I'll do them a second time through, much, much better.
I maintain that Bharata Natyam is the reason for that. I thought so by cause and effect - it's the class I've always worked the hardest in, and after all that work, other classes were easy. But now I realize that it's more than that... I think Bharata Natyam actually teaches you to learn how to learn, and it sets your mind up not just for Indian dance styles, but for anything you should want to jam in there.
Isn't that neat?
Last night was lovely. Just the kind of night I wanted. Isn't it nice when you don't want anything too unusual or uber-fancy and then the time just hits the nail on the head? It's like a present, because I really didn't have to do anything and things just happened. Did class with
jezebelpussycat, then paxindustria joined us and we did dinner at Applebees, and I invited new_man who at first said he wasn't coming and then came anyway. He opted not to spend the night, but that was OK, since I was feeling just enough hermit-ish that I didn't necessarily long for an over-night guest, seeing him was quite pleasurable enough. And it was the silly little stuff that made the evening so nice - good class, lots of stuff clicking into place, good company at dinner, lots of laughing, lots of topics of conversation, not having to drive at all, and as such, having company for the drive to and from the restaraunt. Little, trivial no-big-deal stuff, but just the right flavor for my mood. Class is progressing nicely. I feel just like a real teacher. I'm sure some of you are thinking "duh, Lakshmi, you are a real teacher". But... this is the first time I've done continuous classes and really enjoyed them. I burned out, hardcore, teaching SCA Middle Eastern classes years ago. I lacked a good agenda and class was more about socializing with other SCAdians than about actually learning anything. I felt frustrated and bored, and that combo makes me a terrifically bad teacher. I realize now that it was combination of not having material to draw from, and not having students on the same plane as me. I think I have both now, and it transforms teaching from something I was obligated to do into something I am eager to do.
I've been a little worried that I was boring the crap of my student. We are doing stuff that you just need to do and do and do some more until it comes as naturally as breathing - the adavus - the Indian dance term for "practice series". And while you do it ad naseum, your teacher corrects all these little details about your form.
This is hard for me, I don't actually like nit-picking other people. I'll be anal about myself all the time, but I don't honestly like telling people they've done something wrong. And in belly dance I don't have to - much of it can be chaulked up to persona style. But... Bharata Natyam has "right" and "wrong" in a major way (even if "right" for school A is "wrong" for school B, schools A & B will no hesitate to draw the line), and so I've just got to suck it up and be critical, because otherwise I'm doing Jez a disservice.
But... when she misheard "eye moves" (stretches for the eye, which we skipped this week) as "adavus" and was like "no! We HAVE to do the adavus! I need my ass kicked!"... I knew this was a keeper of a relationship. She gets it, she's not abyssmally frustrated and bored, and she sees the challenge as a challenge and not some grueling, awful thing to be endured. Yay! Makes me feel better about being critical.
... technical geekery...
I forget sometimes, that even the beginning stuff is hard and challenging. We are doing the seemingly infinite sequence that is nattu adavu. Nattu means "heel" - so these are "practice steps exercising the heel". Different schools handle adavus differently - but the hardcore classic schools seem to have a TON of each adavu. We have 4 sections to nattu adavu, each one having 4-6 'exercises' within it. Each exercise has, on average, 8 beats, each with it's own movement. Each movement can be broken down into *at least* head, arms, legs. So... for a single exercise you are memorizing 8 beats * 3 things per beat = 24 things. And then for the entire adavu = 4 sections * ~5 exercises * 24 things per exercise = 480 discrete things to do with your body.
None of the other adavus I know of are this intense - most have just 1/4 of that.
Now... that sounds horrible, but honestly, this is not as hard as it sounds. You don't think of it as 480 things - you think of it is 4 sections, with n number of exercises, and there are basic combos that get repeated. So if you know the first section, exercise c, you may well reuse adavu 1-c as part of adavu 2-d, and 3b, and you might just use the feet, with alternate arms for 2-e, 2-f, 3-c and 3-d. Which means that you start reducing number of discrete movements ENORMOUSLY. And... I think... that's probably some of what this adavu is about. Getting your brain into a structure where it starts making little containers of 4-5 items each, and then memorizes series of containers, not the items itself.
Isn't it interesting that most of these adavus group into the number that psychologists and UI people say is the optimum number to present in a GUI list? 5. They say the human brain is able to simultaneously think of about 5-9 things at once - results vary by human. So... if you have to present a GUI list, menu, radio buttons or other selection option - do not present more than 9 options, preferably 5. If you find yourself with 13, break them up somehow - unless you have a damn good reason not to - like providing a drop down of state abbreviations. Usually the easiest thing to do to users is to make the GUI traversal into a tree-hiearchy of some sort, using additional menus or screens to break things up.
Is that not strikingly like what I describe for dance? It rather impresses me that this adavu was spec'd out long before any concept of "user interface" was figured out. And long before most of the West was doing this kind of human mind examination. My best guess on the history of this is that adavu-like steps existed, but the Tanjore quartet of the early 19th century is credited with actually hardening them into the sequences we work from today. How cool is that?
... end technical digression...
So... it's my job to be the meanie and make sure my student has it all down pat. In many ways, developing this structure in the brain is what will help make everything else easier. But this week went really well, stuff that was wobbly the week before had hardened up nicely. I expect this adavu to take several months. We've got the 1st quarter down, and we're chewing our way into the 2nd quarter. I think the speed increases as the brain starts organizing itself, but it's still a bloody long adavu. Compared to tattu adavu which is taught in 1 class, and other, later adavus that are frequently taught in 1-3 classes, and then digested and perfected in another 3 classes - this is slooowwww.
Then we moved on to abhinaya. Yet another challenge for memorization. And it's really tough when you are still sorting out the grey matter to do the stuff above. The first slokum you ever learn can take a cursedly long time to memorize. But this week the sabha slokum finally hardened. All the hands and feet happen at the right time. Which is fabulous, since we have moved into a devaranama which builds complexity into the concept of moving with meaning. A slokum is solemn and every work of the little slokums has a specific meaning. The sabha slokum is also wonderfully symmetric. Do 1 repeat right, 1 repeat left of each verse, and only 1 move in two verses has any variation between the move and it's mirror image. The devaranama by comparison is insane. There *is* a symmetry, but you have to back up from it several paces to see it. And you don't ever do the same sequence twice. There's strategy here - the song gives you room to *play*. By repeating phrases 4 times, you have plenty of space to tell a complete story but variations and repetitions of moves. But you raise the 'bar' - you can't just do the same thing twice - after four repeats the audience will be bored out of their skulls. So you pull out different things to focus their attention.
So... I'm really happy that the sabha slokum settled itself down, since that clears the way for adding all this complexity. It's funny... thinking back - it took me about 4-6 weeks to be done with the sabha slokum - not so different from Jez. And then maybe 3 or so months of devaranama. But then, when I had to learn another slokum, I was able to learn 1 slokum per class. We did two back to back at one point... I call it slokum-fest.
Aparna told me once, that everything you learn makes the things you have already learned better. I agreed back then, but I see it now all the more as a teacher. At the time, I figured it meant doing moves more cleanly, because you had spent more time working on them. But that's just one side of it. You also have grouped information in your brain in more efficient ways, and unbeknownst to you, your noggin actually sorts things you already know into these more efficient structures. So when you return to a previously learned piece, you have more brain power to apply to making it good, as you have to spend less brain power figuring out what the hell you need to do next!
How cool is that?
I'm reminded that some folks I know say that as a dance student I'm a little scary - I learn fast, I mimic well, I manage tempo well, and I immediately tune in on details. While I'd love to say that it's my super-natural IQ, the truth is, it just ain't so. In high school I was a horrible, horrible memorizer. I flat out couldn't memorize violin music, and I struggled with line memorization for theater, only to have it vanish once I was done with the show. ...but now I have memorized 6 years of dance study - every single freaking choreography is in my brain. I forget small details and have to review notes. But... if asked to recite the lines I memorized for Our Town the year after we did it, I couldn't have done more than 1-3 lines. Now... I can pretty much do the peices I learned last year, and then I'll do them a second time through, much, much better.
I maintain that Bharata Natyam is the reason for that. I thought so by cause and effect - it's the class I've always worked the hardest in, and after all that work, other classes were easy. But now I realize that it's more than that... I think Bharata Natyam actually teaches you to learn how to learn, and it sets your mind up not just for Indian dance styles, but for anything you should want to jam in there.
Isn't that neat?