Dance Practice: What Has Helped You Improve The Most?

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There are many ways to improve your social dance skills. Some dancers prefer traditional methods like in-person group dance classes or private sessions with instructors. Other dancers like online classes, apps, or watching YouTube videos to improve. Also, the pandemic has surely lead to a rise of dancers taking virtual live classes. With that said, which do you prefer? Take our poll below!

Dance Practice: What Helped You The Most?

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  1. In over fifteen years of dancing I had several different things that enabled my continued advancement in dancing. I am best described as a Social Dancer who takes their lead seriously and emphasizes the improvisation of social dancing and happy follow engagement. Technical skill development has been one of the continuing center points of my dancing.
    It is tough when one starts out as a dancer because there is so much to learn. I simply took all the low cost group lessons I could find and was dancing at socials three times a week. One of my faults was getting off time and to resolve this I purchased a Salse timing CD with songs that called out the eight beats timing. By practicing to these songs in home movement drills I was able to correct my timing and work on a precise form in practice.
    The purpose of taking a private lesson is to address those details of dance that the instructor doesn’t have time to address in class. It is easy to miss something that is acceptable in fun social dancing but is a fault in more serious dancing. About 18 months into dancing I had an experienced follow help me in a private lesson to identify that I had a weak left arm lead that needed work. I would suggest taking a private every three to six months to review your development as a dancer.
    Critical for me all this time was developing my form and precise movement skills in dance drills I did three times a week at home. These kept my timing and foot movements sharp as I could work on movement details without the distraction of a dance partner. One important item after I had been dancing for six years was to recognize in a dance with Magna Gopel that my movement combinations were too lengthy and this limited my improvisation skills. When I went back to my dance drills, I sought to break up my combinations by executing them in different orders and in smaller pieces which considerably improved my improvisation ability. I checked my development by seeing if I could dance random step combinations equally well while registering to a stationary point on the floor and had good symmetry while turning right or left.
    I gradually became a very good technical dancer and my experiments with doing random movements allowed my development of over a dozen movements that go beyond what any of my instructors had taught. It is the highest expression of the art of social dancing to go to another city and have effective dances with experienced partners or to accommodate the unexpected moves of a new dancer with confidence.

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