I'd like to understand the mind of my Ukrainian coach, who, upon hearing that I was trying out for a Latin partnership (she coaches my standard partner and I) in addition to my standard partnership, told me that it 'can't be done.'
My coach is quite young and competes in professional standard. My standard partner, who was there when she said this, had been okay with me dancing Latin with other people but after hearing our coach say it wasn't all right, she too began to hum and haw and said,"now that I think it about, it does seem weird.."
It isn't for lack of ability that my coach said I shouldn't do it - the issue seems to be that having two amateur partners is somehow not okay. When I asked her why, all she could say was, "you just can't do it!"
A little background information: I practice 15 hours or so a week with my standard partner, and that hasn't changed since I've trained Latin with others. That will -not- change even after I decide to compete with one of these other partners. I have an abundance of time (yes, I know, good for me) outside of those 15 hours of standard and want to fill it with Latin.. and spend an additional 8-24 minutes every competition doing Latin.. that would be the practical difference from what I do now, to what I'd like to do.
I did ask my standard partner if she could/would do 10-dance, and the best she could do was offer adding Latin, but without any more practice/coaching.. so we'd split our 15 hours between the two styles, and just take one coaching a week for each, for example. As I don't want to slow down the progress of our standard, this really isn't an option for me. My own situation is that I relocated a few months ago to dance standard with this woman, quitting my job and leaving my friends and some family behind. My goal, at this time, is to dance and improve as much as I can. Standard is my priority, but I don't want to leave Latin by the wayside.
So I'd be very interested to hear what others have to say on this. Is there something strange about having more than one amateur partner? Why is my coach saying that I "can't do it?" To me, it's just the same as if I were enrolling in a yoga or chess club; both have no real bearing on my dancing or my partnership.
