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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"

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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"

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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"

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Boosting Your Social Dance Popularity, Part One: Newcomer’s Guide

Newcomers have it tough. When they first step into the social dancing world, they are doing it with few to no connections, zero experience in social dance etiquette, and relatively little technique to work with. It's enough to keep a beginner from social dancing at all.

If only there was a guide to helping social dancing first and second-timers make a great first impression, so they can start making friends and potential dance partners from day one... Oh wait, now there is! (See what I did there?)

Continue reading "Boosting Your Social Dance Popularity, Part One: Newcomer’s Guide"

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Dance Wear, Part Two: Different Venue, Different Costume

Dressing well for a social dance is about more than simply leaving your sharp jewelry at home and dressing in breathable clothes. Different venues call for different costumes, as my interview with ballroom instructor revealed.

Now, before you start telling yourself how superficial all this is, remember that fitting in is often a way of saying "hey, I'm one of you". And of course, this leads to more dances. That's why you came, right? Continue reading "Dance Wear, Part Two: Different Venue, Different Costume"

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Dance and Romance, Part One: Mythbusting

Ballroom dancing can be an wonderful opportunity or a bitter disappointment for the single person - it all depends on their mindset.

Take a moment to ask yourself, 'do I have any negative beliefs about what ballroom dancers are like? Are there any assumptions I have about what happens at a sweaty dance hall?'

Fact is, the world of ballroom dancing is very different from the world we normally live in. And while I could just list each dance myth and explain why it's false, it's more fun to tell you a few stories to put it in perspective: Continue reading "Dance and Romance, Part One: Mythbusting"

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What A 5-Day Dance Camp Taught Me about Perseverance

dance camp

Every year, a 5-Day West Coast Swing (WCS) dance camp is held in Ancaster, Ontario. That’s 5 days of workshops, assessments, and coached practices, from morning to night. It’s quite the endurance run. And it’s often a painful process, as I discovered last year.

So this time, I kept a record of my journey, as a reminder to others who sometimes face doubts and negative thinking in their learning process; that they are not alone, and yes, it does get better. Continue reading "What A 5-Day Dance Camp Taught Me about Perseverance"

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Facing Your Fears: My First Salsa Club Night

So often I see students spend hours learning to dance, yet never actually going out and using it at a salsa club or ballroom dance hall. They’d like to go, but feel afraid to put their skills to the test.

I feel for you, I do. Despite what a lot of people say about dance instructors, we weren't born with some special ability that lets us dance anywhere without a care in the world. We all had to face that fear at some point.

Here is how I faced mine. Continue reading "Facing Your Fears: My First Salsa Club Night"