RSCDS Virtual Dance Display - Tom's Learning Process

by Tom Halpenny

I registered to participate in the RSCDS Virtual Dance Display sponsored by the RSCDS Youth Services Committee. I received written and video instructions and the music track for the display of Jig-Strathspey-Reel dances (with approximate duration 2:22), learned and practised the choreography, and I recorded my dancing to send back for inclusion in the video collage project.

I am interested to study how the brain learns dancing skills. This is a good exercise to test my learning process.
I read the written instructions and viewed the video instructions facing toward the camera and away from the camera . The video instructions were more intuitive, especially viewing from behind with dancer view, and it helped my comprehension to redraw the written diagram with positions rotated 180 degrees to show the dancer view. Following the video and listening to the music helped me learn the choreography. It helped to imagine three separate Jig-Strathspey-Reel dances.

I had several short practice sessions over the course of one day with spaced repetition, for gaining the feeling of dancing to music and visualizing the patterns until I could dance the display all the way through. I was eventually able to change from viewing the video from the back to viewing the video from the front, and then by listening to the music track only, played by Luke Brady.

The following day I recorded my dancing with a Zoom meeting on my laptop PC. I recorded five mostly-successful runs plus a few runs with some memory lapses.
Viewing my video reminded me of opportunities to improve my dancing technique, like turnout.

Thanks to RSCDS Youth Services Committee leaders Philippa McKee, Abigail Brown and Malin Altenmüller for imagining and producing the Virtual Dance Display.