Learning to dance can be a real negative. I don't mean all the little negatives, such as the blisters, periodic episodes of ' Swarovski blindness" (caused by trying to glue micro sized rhinestones to everything you own) or even the moment you realize that your last outfit cost more than your car. No, I am talking about the negative curves. The realization that learning to dance will consist of a journey along many negatively accelerated learning curves. This is the case with most motor skills. This means that at the beginning of the learning process you will see a large amount of improvement in your skill (but hey, we started with nothing so anything will look better at this point) and then suddenly things start to slow down a bit. This doesn't mean we aren't improving, the changes are just smaller. There are good and bad points to this. The good part about this type of curve is that in the begining, we are excited about new things like sudden changes in ability. It spurs us on to want more. This gives us the needed boost to continue forward. (Kind of like marriage - no one would really be that thrilled with the idea if it was introduced as a long and arduous journey towards self-discovery. It is the thrill of being in love that gets it started!) The less curvy " bad' part of this style of learning is that it is easy in the later stages to get discouraged. We can feel like we are slow or maybe we just aren't cut out for this. So how do we avoid this? How can we really assess our learning? With dance, the first thing we want to define is the difference between "performance" and "learning”. A performance is defined as an observable behavior, such as: a competition, recital, social dance, etc. A performance is temporary in nature and how you perform may not be due to practice and can be affected by performance variables like a crowded floor or audience. Learning, on the other hand, is relatively permanent and not affected by performance variables. We often infer improvement in learning from performance but it is important to note that is only correct if based on permanent improvements across multiple performances. For learning assessment, there are five tools we can use to help us determine our progress and provide that needed encouragement along our negative curve.

1. Improvement - does our performance of the skill show improvement over a period of time? Can we releve higher today than yesterday? Are we able to develope our leg to a higher point than before? Look for improvement in individual skill sets. As these improve, our overall movement coordination will become stronger.

2. Consistency - Has our performance of the skill become more consistent? Do we find our balance on one leg easily each time we look for it?

3. Stability - a system's stability is determined by how quickly it recovers from a perturbation. When you err in your dance, how fast can you recover?

4. Persistence - learned skills should be able to return to the surface in a relatively short amount of time even after taking a break from focus on that particular skill.

5. Adaptability - can we adapt the skill set to multiple environments, emotional and psychological states of mind and physical requirements?

Evaluating learning with these criteria help us to find the positive in the negative and hopefully we can continue to enjoy the curve in our road!