Relationships: Student > Teacher > Guru?

Teacher or Guru?

Pre-blog I wrote long form newsletters to my email subscribers. This was one of my most popular from last year so I'm sharing the message again in this blogorama post.

I’d like to tell you a couple of stories from my dancing days and a production called Natural Disasters.

First a disclaimer: even though looking back I'm a bit horrified at what I went through, I actually had a great time in the process of making this piece as well as performing it...

Natural Disasters was a dance/theatre hybrid-ish sort of a thing that included:

• video projections
• rock climbers coming down a wall face first
• plates being thrown at that same wall by a woman in a ball gown
• a scissor lift
• a giant block of ice suspended by a chain
• dancers
• a couple of bodybuilders
• dry ice
• and some trapeze work.

Story #1 starts with the trapeze work, are you curious yet?

The piece opened on a blank stage with two trapezes hidden up inside the fly space so the audience couldn’t really see them. I was standing on one of them holding on for dear life. There was no safety device of any kind should I fall, I was about 25 feet up in the air, and the guy on the controls that would lower the trapeze down into the performing space had been drinking.

Yes, you read that right, can you say fly by night operation? 🤣

Did I have any aerial experience?

No.

Did I just do what the choreographer/producer asked me to do without question?

Yes.

Should I have?

In retrospect, yeah - no.

Story # Two involves another dancer and me (I’ll call him Josh because that’s his name).

At one part of the work I was supposed to run across the front of the stage and take off, turning my body in the air to fly sideways into Josh’s waiting arms. He would absorb my momentum, swing me around and then on we would go with the choreography.

Josh was a lovely guy but not a very experienced performer. For all of our rehearsals, not only during the creative work in the studio but also the dress rehearsal on stage, he wore glasses.

For some reason, on the first performance he decided to ditch his specs which I didn't notice until it was time for this particular flying through the air movement sequence.

(Can you see - ok terrible pun - where I’m going with this?)

As I began to run across the stage preparing to jump and fly through the air, he was spacing out - glasses free - just gazing out into the audience. I could tell that he not only didn’t see me he’d also somehow forgotten he had to catch me.

As I began my takeoff into the air I loudly stage whispered his name at which point he snapped to the fact that my mass was hurtling towards him. Luckily he did manage to catch me but trust me it wasn’t one of the smoothest or most comfortable transitions ever performed.

Thankfully my ability to take care of myself and my omg-split-second-thinking-in-the-moment-skills kicked in big time and saved me from crashing and burning in front of hundreds of people. Let’s hear it for self preservation!

photo by Viktorija Lankauskaitė

Here's where I'm going with these two snippets of what turned out to be a very memorable performance run...

In a very circuitous way these two memories got me thinking about the student/teacher dynamic and particularly the social media/influencer/cult-of-celebrity thing that is very prevalent these days.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about following people and getting inspiration from all the wondrous creativity that's out there on the internet (or any other place you might find it). What people share on-line can be amazingly helpful and motivational but sometimes I have to stop and ask myself is this person (or am I am treating this person as) a guru*?

• Am I blindly following their ideas?
• Do I believe something just because they say it is so?
• Have I somehow abdicated my half of the teacher/learner relationship?
• Would a better approach be to look at them as a guide, or mentor instead?

 *(to clarify I’m using the word guru to describe someone who inspires their disciples with no room for questioning or discourse)

photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya 

Looking back I realise that I treated the choreographer/producer of Natural Disasters as a guru. I didn’t even think to say that I wasn’t comfortable up on that trapeze and more than that I didn’t think I had the right.

I thought that he knew best and that, here’s the kicker, he would take care of me.

I thought that it was my job to do whatever he said.

...just to reiterate, I had a blast in the process and performing of this work but am looking back at it  almost 30 years later with a less naive point of view...

So, here are a couple of questions to ask yourself:

Do you need a guru? 

Should you want a guru?

Maybe you do which is fine, but if you decide that you don’t want to learn through that particular model what other options do you have?

What should your teacher/guide/mentor offer you and on the other side what are your responsibilities as a student, as a learner?

Remember the parable

"give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime"?

In my opinion it should be like that, by which I mean, your teacher should nourish you.

They should guide you to think and feel for yourself.

A good teacher, not just a good Pilates teacher, will welcome questions and not be defensive if they don’t know the answers.

They’ll want to help you find them.

And your job a a student or client? 

• Show up.
• Trust yourself and your body, always remember you are the expert on you, no one else.
• Take responsibility for your learning - no abdication.
• Stay humble and open to new ideas.
• Keep an eye on why you’re resisting things:

Is it because it’s a challenge physically or mentally?

Is it because you don’t like it? (I’m raising my hand right here)

• Enjoy the process of learning!

The take-away from story #1

Be alert to the Guru, with a capital 'G', mode of engagement. Decide if it's for you (and maybe stay away from the trapeze? 🤔🤣 )

And the learning from story #2?

Simple, I had been well taught so in the moment of flying sideways through the air, realising I might not be caught, I could trust myself, my body, and my skills - luckily it all came out okay.

photo by Katya Ross

I truly hope you have a great teacher in your life and that your relationship is based on learning through collaboration.

xBec

The information contained above is provided for informational purposes only. The contents of this blog are not intended to amount to advice and Rebecca Forde disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this post

 cover and social photo by Nadir sYzYgY