How hard is it to count to 4 while walking in a circle?  Just ask everyone who learned a new line dance from Dianne Kent at our USA Dance chapter’s Valentine’s Day dance last month:

A lot of ballroom dancers who consider themselves “serious” won’t go anywhere near a line dance.  We are serious about ballroom but don’t believe in taking dancing, or ourselves, too seriously!

I seem to be on an “advice for beginners” roll this week, maybe because I am always interested in sucking new people into the ballroom world.  Especially when those people are my friends. Extra-especially when they’ve been saying for years that they plan to start lessons, RIMA. (and also CRYSTAL.)

Our friend & instructor Paula East recently sent me a few thoughts about leading and how to approach a new partner:

“How many times have I heard a lady dancer complain about a male dancer with whom she just finished dancing their first dance together.  ‘I had no idea what he wanted me to do.  He just started doing all those crazy moves.’

“Gentlemen, believe me, the secret is to keep things simple until you know what the lady can do.  If she does not follow a step you are trying to lead, it is for two reasons.  Either you don’t know how to lead it or it was beyond her level and she couldn’t follow it.  In either case you are to blame.

“One more point, I may observe a couple dancing intricate and advanced steps together and because of this I may put her into a higher category of dancing.  Looking good with a regular partner is not always an indicator of how good a leader the gentleman dancer is.  Those two dancers know each other so well that they are not really leading and following any longer but are executing a personal routine.  I would still use the same procedure outlined above if I were ever to dance with her for the first time.

“The bottom line is always: Make your first dance a pleasant experience for both and other dances are likely to follow.”

I can attest that Paula’s advice is correct.  With Daniel, I can pull off some complex moves because we dance together so much that I know his lead extremely well.  With someone new it’s a lot easier to get lost.  So, guys: resist the temptation to show off with unknown ladies!

I love to talk about shoes!

Wearing ballroom shoes rather than street shoes really does make a difference.  Ballroom shoes are purpose-built for dancing, so they are easier to move around in.  They help you do the rise & fall in waltz or roll through your feet in rumba, for example.  The suede soles give the perfect amount of grip on the floor–not totally slippery but not sticky either.  Women’s ballroom shoes have well positioned heels that are easier to balance on and help with heel turns in the dances that use heel turns.  They are also soft enough to allow you to point your feet.  Men’s ballroom shoes are lighter, trimmer, and more flexible than street shoes.

Serious dancers have different shoes for different dances.  Daniel and I each have 2 pair: one for Smooth (waltz, tango, foxtrot) and one for Rhythm* (cha-cha, rumba, swing).  Smooth shoes for women have a closed toe while Rhythm shoes are sandals.  Smooth shoes for men look like jazz oxfords; men’s Rhythm shoes have a Cuban heel.  I think that if you only buy one pair, men should buy Smooth shoes and women should buy Rhythm shoes.

Those are the plain facts.  Now for the deep, dark secrets of shoe-buying:

• Women dancers wear their Rhythm sandals really short–you want your toes to hang off the end a little bit so you can feel the floor as you dance.  This feels weird at first; then you get used to it, and wearing them the “normal” length feels weird.  My Rhythm shoes are an English size 5, which is like an American 7.  I wear an 8 or 8 1/2 street shoe.
• Dancing with men who aren’t wearing proper dance shoes makes me nervous.  A lot of men’s shoes have that extra ridge of hard sole around the outside.  It’s easy to bump exposed toes with that part of the shoe–I’ve had the broken toenails to prove it.
• As you probably guessed from the above, dancers check out each other’s feet and figure out who the dedicated ballroom types are by spotting who is wearing ballroom shoes.
• Suede soles can’t be worn outdoors without damaging them.  That means carrying your shoes in a bag when you go to an event.  You might feel silly walking into a black tie charity ball with a shoe bag, but it’s worth it.  Plus, if you go in sneakers, you get the enjoyment of putting your sneakers back on after a good long evening of dancing.

Not wanting to give anyone free advertising unless they want to give me a shoe sponsorship, I haven’t mentioned any brand names or models in this post.  But if you are curious about what shoes to buy, email me and I’ll be happy to give some recommendations.  Good shoes for social dancing are available for around $60.  Worth every penny, as far as I’m concerned.

Stay tuned for explanation of “Smooth” and “Rhythm” and related terms.

It happens all the time when I meet new people.  They find out that we are ballroom dancers, and they say something like this: “I would love to dance, but I’ve got two left feet!”  A popular variation is “My wife wants us to learn to dance, but I’ve got two left feet!”

These people seem to think that the ability to dance comes from innate talent rather than from instruction, practice, and experience.  Yes, at a more advanced level, or in competitive dancing, talent is a factor.  But no one, no matter how talented, walks onto the floor for the first time and walks off the floor a world 10-dance champion.  Everyone had to take that first lesson, go to that first social dance, make those embarrassing mistakes.

Brand-new ballroom dancers do have to get over an initial “hump.”   To have fun at a ballroom dance one probably needs to know basic steps in at least 3 dances.  I think the learning curve is more significant for men, who have to lead and therefore must think one step ahead.  Getting familiar with music is necessary too.  Daniel used to turn up the car radio and ask, “What can we dance to this?”  Soon I could quickly identify the right dance for any song he played.  Songs at social dances are often short; if you have to ponder too long, you’ll miss the dance entirely. So it’s true that getting started is the hardest part, because there is a lot to learn.

And yet I don’t want to suggest that learning to dance is hard.  It’s challenging, but in a fun way.  My point is that you do have to learn to dance–and everyone can.  Natural talent helps with, but doesn’t replace, that process.  Even the best dancers still make crazy mistakes.  The fact that Daniel and I have won a few blue ribbons doesn’t make us immune to stepping on each other, losing the count, giving bad leads, failing to follow, doing foxtrot steps to tango music, or crashing into other couples (and some of those things happened on the comp. floor!).

Our friend & instructor Paula East says that “all you need are two left feet and a good attitude.”  That good attitude is the real determining factor–if you have that, the feet will eventually take care of themselves.

2010 has been so busy thus far that I’ve been guilty of tragic website neglect.  But luckily for our readers (both of you, ha ha), this coming week is Spring Break at Macon State.  I plan to catch up with lots of posts, including

• video of Dianne Kent leading our USA Dance chapter in a new line dance.  Counting to 4 is harder than we thought.
• casualty reports from back-to-back lessons with Eddie next Wednesday and Thursday.
• tips for new dancers from Paula East.
• a roundup of upcoming events and classes: maybe I’ll even get crazy and update the “Local Dance Opportunities” page!
• idle musings.

Stay tuned…

Yesterday afternoon we met up with our friends Kelly & Steve (known to Kelly’s toddler niece as Kecky and Teeb) to help them work on their wedding dance. They are getting married at the beginning of May. Kelly started ballroom at the same time I did, but didn’t stick with it seriously for want of a steady partner. Maybe this wedding dance will be the gateway drug that turns the newlyweds into dedicated dancers!

They already had a song picked out and we agreed that they should dance a rumba.  They are quick studies and worked up a routine in less than an hour.  I can’t wait to see them dance it at their wedding.

Surprisingly, they had not had enough dancing in the afternoon and agreed to have dinner with us and then go to the USA Dance chapter’s monthly dance in the evening.  Paula taught some waltz basics at the lesson before the dance, which was very well attended.  Everyone was decked out in their Valentine’s Day red.  Daniel got to be one of several “dance hosts”: women paid $1 for a ticket to dance with a dance host, with the money going to our chapter.  He collected ten tickets!  He also took a bunch of videos during the evening, including the debut of a new line dance/mixer that Dianne taught us.  I’ll post that to our YouTube channel as soon as Daniel figures out how to get the videos off his camera–it’s brand new.

We saw Eddie again last weekend and spent most of our lesson learning a tango routine. Now we have 2 routines to practice while he is traveling for the next few weeks–we won’t get another lesson till early March. So far I have elbowed Daniel in the face twice (once each in waltz and tango) and gotten a hockey-style two-minute holding penalty for leaning on him too much in one section of the tango. I would characterize our routines at this juncture as “not ready for prime time” but we are having a lot of laughs learning them.

In other news, I am branching out my dance experience by going back to ballet classes after several years away. After a couple of weeks of “Teen/Adult Ballet” at the Madison Studio, I was asked to take a small role in the studio’s upcoming production, “Swan Lake Selections.” I am the Queen, which is a pantomime role rather than a dance role–in some of the traditional story ballets there are pantomime parts that serve to advance the plot, using pantomime as a kind of sign language. I went to my first rehearsal today to learn my part in Scene 1. I get to “greet” everyone at my son’s birthday party by walking around in a big circle while they bow to me, then have a conversation in pantomime with my son. My son is turning 21, which means that if you go by my real age, I had him at age 16. The Queen is a teenage mother! You can see the Queen in this video of an American Ballet Theatre production of Swan Lake:

Much like our waltz & tango performances, my Queen performance is not too polished yet. But at least I did not elbow anyone in the face.

Yesterday we had our first private lesson in months–Daniel’s surgery and then the holidays shot the wheels off November and December but we are getting the ball rolling now. We talked to Eddie about moving up from Bronze to Silver level at competition and discussed the possibility of skipping the syllabus levels altogether and starting to compete at Novice, which is the first open level. Neither of us felt quite ready to make that jump but Eddie wanted to start teaching us open choreography anyway. He says it will make us “more rounded dancers.” So we learned a new waltz routine that is so much fun! It is much more complex and strenuous than what we’re used to, but we can already see that once we learn it and polish our technique, it will look fantastic.

Daniel bought a video camera last week so we took it to our lesson. Eddie danced through the routine with me and by himself so that we could review the steps if we needed to when practicing. And boy, did we need to! We practiced a little this afternoon and had to look at the video several times to remember the steps correctly. I am hoping we’ll know them by our next lesson next Saturday.

We are excited. I am not yet sure what level we’ll end up in this year but since we know we want to move up, we are not planning to compete for a while anyway. We want to make sure we go to Gumbo this year and that might be our first competition of the year. If this waltz routine is any indication, we will need every minute of practice between now and then to be ready!

If you are looking to move beyond the basic waltz, tango, & foxtrot (or cha-cha, rumba, and swing), check out this workshop coming up:

This is a workshop for those wanting to learn the basics of West Coast Swing and Hustle. Step patterns will be given.

Instructor: Philip Jones. Philip started dancing in high school as a favor to his sister. She needed a dance partner. He says he didn’t want to but when he danced the waltz he was hooked. Since then he has studied under professionals such as Ashly DelGrosso (Dancing With the Stars) and Min Suyoung and currently studies with Olga Kormanovskaya in Atlanta. He has competed in American Smooth, Rhythm, Standard, and currently competes in International Open Latin.

Assisted by JoyDawn Perry

When: January 16, 2010

Where: Macon Health Club

Time: West Coast Swing 1-2:30pm and Hustle 2:45-4pm (15 minute practice following last session)

Cost: $15 per person each class or $25 per person for both classes

To sign up please contact: Paula East at paulaeastdance@yahoo.com or 478-750-0802.  Registration begins now and will end on January 10, 2010.

Saturday, November 7 was the second annual Stars over Macon Ball.  This event is co-sponsored by the Medcen Foundation and USA Dance Greater Macon Chapter #6059 and it benefits Hospice of Central Georgia.  For the second year in a row we had a great turnout, fantastic music by the Celebration Band, beautiful décor (put together by volunteers including yours truly!), and some amazing dance exhibitions.  The unstoppable Eddie Ares brought two couples to Macon to show us how it’s done: Joe Locurto and his amateur partner Lynne Riddle; and a young professional couple, Jeremy Norris and Emily Loyless.  Eddie also agreed–swayed by raucous audience participation–to return to Macon and give us a workshop in 2010.  Exciting!

As fantastic as the whole event was, for me the highlight was seeing Fran Kirsh recognized for her hard work on Stars over Macon and her dedication to ballroom dancing.  Since her back surgery in August she has not made it onto the dancefloor, but she was at the ball in a well-deserved blaze of glory.  Her hard work in 2008 made the first Stars over Macon possible.  Now it is on its way to being a gorgeous tradition, and the Hospice House is on its way to completion.

How about some pictures?

UPDATE: I talked to Paula East this afternoon.  Our chapter and the Medcen Foundation have set the date for Stars over Macon in 2010.  It will be October 23.  Mark your calendar!