Merry Christmas y'all! The holidays are a great time to get together with family and count your blessings. After all, we all have things to be grateful for - and for an aging dancer, focusing on what you have can be the fuel and keeps you going and growing. Continue reading "Dancing at any Age, Part Four: Age is a State of Mind"
Dancing At Any Age, Part Three: Surviving the Social
When it comes to ballroom dance socials, some people seem to never lack for a dance partner, regardless of their age. The discriminations that seem to old many senior dancers back just don't apply to them. How do they do it? Continue reading "Dancing At Any Age, Part Three: Surviving the Social"
New Content: Ask an Instructor
Instructional videos are great, but one of their drawbacks is if something I explain doesn't work for you, you're kind of stuck. I mean, it's not like you can replay the video, and I will magically explain it differently. Or can you?
Well no, no you can't. But this is the next best thing! The "Ask an Instructor" series is a new monthly video program I'll be releasing, in which I answer - with demonstrations - any dance-related question you have. How do you ask these questions? That's the subject of this video:
New Content: Vote for Your Videos!
We can't just come to your home and teach you directly (you probably prefer it that way), so we're giving SBD members the next best thing - the option to control what videos are made next by voting for them!
Every month, votes will be tallied up, and winning dances will have new videos released for them in the following month... So long as they aren't winning every month anyway 😉
Here's how it works:
Dancing at Any Age, Part Two: Doing Classes with Class
Let's be honest: attending classes at a studio for a senior isn't as simple as just checking what's nearby. There's some important considerations - like how many stairs there are between you and the dance floor.
There's also the challenges of protecting your body during a lesson from partners who don't know better, as well as keeping up with the pace of the lesson. If you want your dance class to be an enjoyable experience, watch on! Continue reading "Dancing at Any Age, Part Two: Doing Classes with Class"
Dancing at Any Age, Part One: General Tips
I've heard a lot of talk about seniors lately, and usually the language is one of limitation: "They always want to dance with the younger dancers.", "I can't change jobs - I'm too old to find another".
It makes me doubly sad when the limiting talk comes from a senior themselves, because I know where they learned it from. And I don't accept it. Why not? Because I've seen too many people buck the trend.
I've danced with women over a hundred. I've competed with a 60-year-old with multiple sclerosis in one foot. I refuse to accept my life - or anyone else's - is done at 55.
Continue reading "Dancing at Any Age, Part One: General Tips"
The Home Schooled Dancer, Part Four: Supplementing Your Lessons
While instructional videos can't replace learning in person, it does grant us increased flexibility in improving on what we've learned before, or at least refreshing our memory. After all, you can't simply hit rewind on a lesson and play it back whenever you need a reminder.
Today I interviewed Candace, a student who dances and practices at studios, socials, at home, or even waiting for an elevator! Candace's occasional migrations south make this flexibility of learning especially important, as she recognizes how easy it is to forget what she's learned. Continue reading "The Home Schooled Dancer, Part Four: Supplementing Your Lessons"
The Home-Schooled Dancer, Part Three: Practice Strategies
It's one thing to want to learn to dance, quite another to have the time and space necessary to practice. True, this is a BIG advantage of going to a dance studio, where the space is provided along with the lesson. But there's plenty of options for a creative home-schooled dancer as well.
When I was first learning dance as a teenager, my parents would pay for ONE group lesson a week, and sometimes the occasional private lesson, nothing more. And I couldn't use the studio space to practice in between classes.
So I, like many of you, had to make-do from home. Usually the only place that wouldn't put me in anyone's way was my own bedroom. The walls were about 10 ft. apart, less a shelving unit on one side - but you better believe I made the most of it!
Every night after completing my homework, I practiced, learning to take smaller steps, or even break some of the patterns into two pieces so I had room to complete them. It wasn't easy, but it was enough to prepare me for that next group class, or social.
Now that I think about it, I had plenty of other options, but they simply never occurred to me at the time. Since I can't rewind the clock, I'm including them here.
For more tips on making time for dance practice, check out my video on Positive Dance Habits. Continue reading "The Home-Schooled Dancer, Part Three: Practice Strategies"
The Home Schooled Dancer, Part Two: Finding Videos
Take a couple of hours - or in the case of this vlog, about 5 minutes - to understanding your options before choosing, and you can save yourself hundreds of hours of wasted time.
Novice dancers choose the first instructor a studio sticks in front of them, without knowing if another could have taught them in half the time. And many home-schooled dancers rely on YouTube for their information, then spend years unlearning the many bad habits they picked up along the way.
If you decide to learn, or at least supplement your learning from home, it's important that you understand that YouTube isn't your only option. It's not even your only FREE option. Continue reading "The Home Schooled Dancer, Part Two: Finding Videos"
The Home Schooled Dancer, Part One: Benefits for the Office Worker
"I just don't have time to try dancing." "I'd like to, but where am I going to find money for lessons?" These kinds of objections are what inspired me to create Social Ballroom Dance - so the benefits of dancing could be available to everyone, not just those with money and the means.
In preparation for the site launch this December (more on that later), let's look at some ways dancing can improve our life, health, and productivity.
Continue reading "The Home Schooled Dancer, Part One: Benefits for the Office Worker"