Coaching

The October 3 New Yorker has an article on coaching by Atul Gawande, a surgeon who can take criticism and write about it.
"Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence." I love that.

Having reached the final stage, a success in one's field, a professional needs outside eyes and ears to improve. Gawande writes about musicians, athletes and teachers using coaches who can "break down performance into critical individual components." He doesn't mention dancers.

Once my students have the muscle memory for a step, I look at them and see how they could do it more easily.