Ask a room full of dancers that question and you’ll get almost as many different answers as there are dancers in the room. Some answers may be very general, others more specific to personal experience.

Some responses to the question have been:

• For exercise
• As a hobby
• Because of a Significant other
• To meet people
• For emotional healing
• To return to something s/he did as a child
• For stress relief
• Because it makes him/her happy
• Why not?
• As a dare
• His/her own personal bucket list

For the dancers who devote time to dancing, invest in improving their skills, and find the joy in exploring it, partner dancing is an essential element in who they are. They have found growth in some way shape or form through dancing.

For 2011, I made a deal with myself to live my life with these three words as guides: honest, focus, pro-active (See the article “Your Three Words For The New Year“)

Have I fulfilled my mission in keeping true to these guide words? For the most part yes. Using these words have helped me to be much more cognizant of the way I wish to live my life day to day, mistakes and all. In the dance realm, I most certainly have followed them. Because of that, I have found an exponential growth in the quality of my dancing. This change has given me both a stronger sense of self confidence and joy in dancing.

This year, I have chosen three new words:

• Explore
• Dare
• Share

Go out there and dance. If you’ve never tried it, go out and find a class nearby, whether its at your nearest gym, college, neighbor, or dance studio. But don’t just dance. Dance with a purpose, a mission. Decide what you want dance to do for you, and follow what steps you need to take to make that mission a success.

Through this drive, you will a find growth not just in your dancing, but in yourself as a person. There are very few activities that reflect so strongly the inner workings of a person – or that can affect those same inner workings. That’s the beauty of dancing.

Happy Dancing!

No matter which dance is being taught, good music choices have:

• an easy beat to hear.  The less a student has to concentrate on finding the beat, the better.
• some familiarity.  In this age of cover songs and mash-ups, there are many versions of favorite and familiar songs.
• the ability to inspire the right mood for the dance.  Whether the dance is sultry, bouncy, or classic, make sure the music reflects it.

To get your clients to dance their way out of the room, to groove long after they’ve walked away, and get them excited to return for more, remember:

• to keep your library fresh.
• that your students want to dance to music they would like or may have heard before, not just your personal favorites.

For example, in an Argentine tango class, using a classing song like “La Cumparsita” or “El Choclo” is useful since most people are familiar with the tunes and they reflect the mood of the tango well.  It doesn’t matter that the songs themselves are rarely played socially.  The purpose they serve – to inspire your students – is paramount.

It can be tough to predict what one will walk away with as they leave the class, especially the first few times attending it.  One can have their own set of expectations based on the class description, comments from other students, knowledge of the reputation of the instructor, and his/her own personal aims.  If those expectations aren’t met, a person can walk away feeling like money and time were wasted.

My dance partner and I traveled down to Buenos Aires for a combination of travel and intense Argentine tango development and dancing.  We took lessons with my dance instructors (teachers note: no matter how good you are, there is always room for improvement).  These lessons were chock-a-block with details that I needed reminding of as well as newer points of view on topics that we’ve worked on previously.

Over the course of the trip, I found myself hitting a nadir in my confidence as a dancer.  The corrections and new material that I was given were not settling into my body, my arms and back were full of tension that I don’t normally carry, and I felt as if I was not helping my dance partner work on her new material at all.

As frustrating as that drop in confidence was, I knew it to be a part of my growth process.  I was working on new ideas and techniques that needed time to be engrained into my brain and my muscle memory.  The difficulty for me was in knowing that I had a finite amount of time in Buenos Aires and I wanted to make sure that I took full advantage of it.  I had to accept the process and welcome the frustration with the knowledge that there will come a point when what I’m working on will “click.”

Eventually it did just that.  I would have preferred that the upswing happened sooner than my last night in BsAs, but processes like these cannot be forced.

The dance floor and life can be very reflective of each other.  Growing and learning are referred to as “processes” for a reason. There will be other undulations in my progress as a person and as a dancer, some greater or easier that the last month.  I’ve gone through them before and will go through them again.  It’s the same for everyone to some degree or another.

Facing the challenges these processes present with confidence and patience will enable us to grow from them.

I am currently enjoying my third visit to Buenos Aires. Each visit has been focused on improving my tango technique and vocabulary, and this trip is no different. This time I am here for a full month which gives me more time to observe the culture on and off the dance floor.

The streets of this city have a fast paced energy with lots of bobbing and weaving on the sidewalks and streets. The cab drivers and pedestrians alike will go out of their way to avoid any sort of bumping or collision. Every possible inch (or here, centimeter) is taken full advantage of – which can be quite a scary experience in the passenger seat of a taxi.

Yet, at the same time, these same pedestrians will shove themselves into an already grossly overcrowded subway (Subte, as it’s called here.) It’s culturally acceptable to enter the Subte backwards and use your rump to create enough space for yourself to get on the train.

It’s amazing to see the amount of tolerance people have here for filling in these crowded spaces, respecting the flow of people around them, and accommodating one another without blinking an eye.

This culture of flow and flexibility adapts itself to tango wonderfully. Take a 40 square foot dance floor and you can fit over a hundred milongueros (tango dancers) without any one dancer colliding with another.

There’s a beauty in the simplicity of this way of coexisting on and off the dance floor:

• respect one another’s space
• know that everyone is just trying to get by, literally and figuratively
• don’t take up more space than you need

In an ideal partner dance class, an instructor is able to share their love for their craft through  their teaching and in turn, students are inspired to pursue the dance even further and make it their own.  This is a concept that I hold dear to my approach to teaching and it helps me appreciate being a student in a well taught class.

It has been wonderful receiving all the positive feedback, fantastic observations, and suggestions from my subscribers.  I look forward to the next 100+ articles along with contributions from other instructors and students, video editions, and more.  This blog will continue to be a useful resource for anyone interested in the world of partner dancing.

For my 100th article, I want to share with you some of my favorite, most inspiring quotes

Enjoy!

1. There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good. ~Edwin Denby
2. Never trust spiritual leader who cannot dance. ~Mr. Miyagi, The Next Karate Kid, 1994
3. We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance. ~Japanese Proverb
4. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. ~Dave Barry
5. Dancers are the messengers of the gods. ~Martha Graham
6. You can dance anywhere, even if only in your heart. ~Author Unknown
7. Dancing: the vertical expression of a horizontal desire legalized by music. ~George Bernard Shaw
8. Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. ~Ted Shawn, Time, 25 July 1955
9. There are short-cuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them. ~Vicki Baum
10. To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. ~Agnes De Mille
11. Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. ~Faith Whittlesey
12. Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another. ~Author Unknown
13. Dance till the stars come down from the rafters   Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.   ~W.H. Auden
14. I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance. ~George Balanchine
15. Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order. ~Samuel Beckett
16. Stifling an urge to dance is bad for your health – it rusts your spirit and your hips. ~Terri Guillemets
17. Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here we should dance. ~Author Unknown
18. Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery. ~Martha Graham
19. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it. ~Martha Graham
20. The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. ~Mata Hari
21. Dancing is the world’s favorite metaphor. ~ Kristy Nilsson
22. And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
23. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. ~Kurt Vonnegut
24. To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak. ~Hopi Indian Saying
25. Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain. ~Author Unknown

Being the small world that it is, I see a lot of the same people at multiple locations over a week.  Many of these dancers have been dancing for years, and yet, at each venue, the nature of their dancing changes, with more or less regard for those around them.

Why is it that the same people dance differently at different events?  After years watching dancers, I have made a few observations:

• People are more apt to dance bigger, or with more exuberance, at special events that happen infrequently.  For some, it’s because of the special nature of the event, or because dancers want to show off their skills to a newer audience.
• Some locations develop a reputation for drawing the creme de la creme and other dancers will feel as if they have to prove themselves around these “elite” dancers.
• Different spaces have their own energy and vibe.  Lighting, the location of tables, the bar, the amount of space set aside for dancing, all of these details affect the energy of a space.  Fancier places make people dress up and dance as if they are in a movie scene or on stage.
• Many studio events are populated by the students of that specific studio.  Having an audience of fellow classmates will make some dancers feel more comfortable and confident.
• People dance bigger when there is a non-dancing audience watching.  Impressing people with a less trained eye can be an exciting ego boost for many dancers.

We have all been guilty of these offenses at one point or another.  The challenge is remembering that we are not alone on the dance floor.  The well known quote, “Dance like no one is watching” can be a dangerous concept for those dancing around us.

We all need to remember that there is an etiquette on the dance floor.  It’s one of the few remaining places where etiquette is practiced on a regular basis.  Showing respect for our partners as well as our cohort will leave a much stronger impression on those audiences who get such a kick out of watching us dance.  It’s fun to show off a little and soak in the atmosphere of a grand event, but not at the expense of someone else’s enjoyment or safety.

Over the course of the class, it is important for the instructor to monitor how the students are keeping pace with the objective.

• Are the students having an easy time with the objective?
• Is the information being absorbed readily?
• Are they having fun?

If the answer is no to any of these questions, then the instructor needs to adjust the game plan, so as to keep the students feeling challenged, but not frustrated.  Some of the ways to do this are by:

• changing the objective.  The goal is to help your students succeed and feel successful.
• reducing the amount of material you are offering.  If the students are feeling too challenged with the first two steps of your four part plan, then stop at the first two and help them own those parts.
• remembering to praise, correct and praise again.  Let your students know that they are doing a great job even while you are making tweaks and adjustments to how they are executing the objectives.

Students appreciate feeling challenged, so long as the challenge helps them feel better about themselves and the quality of their dancing.

Here are a few simple things to remember when those thoughts plague your mind:

1. Every dancer goes through the same process of ups and downs, growth and plateaus, progress and regress.
2. A big difference between experienced dancers and those less so is that they have more practice hiding their mistakes.
3. Refining your basics is always a great way to improve.

Those discouraging thoughts may creep up frequently.  I often find that plugging through those rough times allows for great growth and progress, not only in my dancing, but in my confidence.

Persevere!

Being an advanced dancer as well as an instructor, I paid close attention to the material the artists shared as well as how they shared their material.  I’m very happy to say that in every case, I came away with great ideas, reminders, reinforcements, and elements for me to explore and make my own:

• You never stop learning, nor should you.  Everyone has something to teach us.  These guest artists remind us that whether it’s a new idea, or a better way to understand an old idea, we are still growing.
• Exploration is the key to growth.  You are not going to get the skills and styles of these artists by osmosis or by copying to the letter.  You’re going to achieve a better quality of dance by just plain dancing and allowing for mistakes.
• Just dance.  We can exercise and practice all we want to.  We will not take true ownership of the elements we are practicing until we decided to dive in and just dance – without fear of consequence or mistakes.
• Deliver quality.  People take the workshops because they are aware of the artists’ reputation as performers in their genre.  The artists should always be ready to deliver an experience worth the time and money attendees invested in these festivals.
• A Great performer does not always equal a great instructor and vice versa.  Some artists are not able to express how they do what they do.  On the other hand, there are also artists who are great instructors, but are not great performers.

I came away from this festival feeling energized about dancing, learning, and with new ideas to explore as a dancer, a performer, and as an instructor.

Thank you Tango Element

“If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward”- Thomas A. Edison.