Your dance. Your place. Your schedule.
We've done our share of talking over how you can make a good impression at a dance social, so you can start building up dancers who know and like you. But none of that matters much if you don't put them first on the dance floor.
Continue reading "Boost Your Social Dance Popularity, Part Four: Entertain Your Partner"
It's ironic really - on one hand, ballroom dancing is a great way to meet the love of your life, while on the other, the dance itself makes it hard to tell if someone is genuinely interested.
Can YOU tell the difference? I created a short quiz in the video below to find out. Also, I include a few pointers on how to progress from that initial interest to serious romantic chemistry.
CAVEAT: These answers don't apply to every situation, and I am not a relationship guru. Experts agree however, that if someone is giving you these signals it's generally a very good sign. Continue reading "Dance and Romance, Part Three: Are they Interested?"
It feels good to dance! But it's one thing to know it, another to know WHY we love dancing so much. Knowing where our enjoyment of ballroom dancing comes from helps to motivate us through the hard times, and enhance the good times.
In this penultimate episode on the benefits of dancing, I'll be covering:
Continue reading "Benefits of Dance, Part Three – Personal Development"
If you have been following from last time, I was relating my experiences at the West Coast Swing Dance Camp in Ancaster, Ontario - 5 gruelling days that taught me a lot about what drives us, whether we’ve been dancing for 10 months or 10 years.
The first two days of camp were challenging, but I knew from past experience that the worst - and best - were still yet to come. Continue reading "A 5-Day Dance Camp Taught Me Perseverance, Part Two"
Ballet. Hip hop. Jazz. Contemporary. By comparison, ballroom dance is often found wanting, described as ‘stiff, flat, and lacking real self-expression.’ But an expressive dance is defined by more than range of motion alone.
True, you are compromising for your partner, sacrificing some movement so you can move better together. But there’s plenty of character that can still be conveyed, not only through each of you separately, but in the story you tell together. Continue reading "Why Ballroom is an Expressive Dance"
‘Kids: They dance before they learn anything that isn’t music.’
- William Stafford
Thinking in dancing is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it helps us plan the next step, and interpret what we learn in a lesson. But too much thinking can stifle our body’s natural movement. You can tell if someone is dancing more in their mind then their body; their movements are stiff and robotic, and they seem unaware of their partner, or the music. Virtually all of us suffer from over-thinking sometimes, but we can counter it with the body awareness. Continue reading "Body Awareness in Ballroom Dance"
As we talked about last week, how we communicate with our partner during a dance lesson can have a major impact on how strongly you feel towards each other. We do this using the 5 languages of love, which are:
Today we’ll flesh out each of these love languages with some specific ballroom dance examples. Continue reading "Using the Languages of Love in Ballroom Dancing"
Wrapping up our series on how to do a dance turn, we’re targeting the reverse and natural turns, those smooth and elegant rotations of the smooth/standard arena. Before we get into how to do these dance turns though, what’s the difference between them? Continue reading "How to do a Dance Turn: Reverse and Natural Turns"
Now that we’ve looked at the basics of how turns work and how they differ between rhythm and smooth dance styles, what are the qualities behind a well-executed dance spin? As you practice, you will gradually increase your mastery over each of these 5 elements, allowing you to make every turn unique, and uniquely yours. Continue reading "The 5 Elements of a Good Dance Spin"
All the prep work’s been done. You’re walking out on stage for your dancing performance when… Oh my goodness, look how many people are watching! Wait, did my shoe unlace itself? AHH, IT”S ALL GOING WRONG!!!
Don’t let this be you. The 5 strategies I’m sharing here will keep you focused and lower stage jitters to a minimum. I owe both my own coaches and other ballroom experts for this hard-won advice - may it do you as much good as it did me. Continue reading "5 Ways to Shine in Your Dancing Performance"