Introductions
Now that I'm dancing, I just wish I had started sooner."
"They always look so graceful on TV. I guess I never danced before because I was afraid of looking clumsy. Do you think you can teach me how to look like that?"
"I can't dance. Never could. But my wife wants to try, so here I am. I'll give it a shot."
Hello, and welcome to I've Got Rhythm. As the head instructor at IGR, it is my privilege to work with students of all levels of dance. In my time as an instructor, I've seen a lot of different people come through, all with their own reasons for wanting to learn. Some of those students started with the best of intentions and quit shortly after their arrival while other students started out very reserved but have since moved on to become advanced dancers. So what does it take in the dance world to meet with success?
As with most any endeavor in life, attitude is of supreme importance. If you posture yourself for defeat from the outset of your dancing career by convincing yourself that you can't dance, you will very likely fail. I have worked with fifth graders in the inner city schools, and there are certain kids who persistently told me that they absolutely could not get it. Yet while those kids were confessing defeat, other kids who were having just as much difficulty with the steps will spent that time watching me work with their classmates and absorbed the pattern within a matter of minutes. Attitude is everything. If you believe you can succeed, even when success seems unlikely, you probably will.
Belief is not enough though, and positive thinking will only take you so far. Practice is imperative. Students who do not practice, no matter how skilled or agile they appear in the beginning, almost always end up quitting. Likewise, students who practice regularly, no matter how clumsy or off-timing they start out, almost always move on to more advanced levels. Of course, this is to be expected. You reap what you sow. Sow sparingly, and you'll reap sparingly. Sow abundantly, and you'll reap abundantly. Put simply, if you want to succeed in ballroom, you must practice.
Perhaps most important to a long-term dance career is an enduring passion for the dance. Development of such a passion is largely contingent on the previous two points. If every time you walk through the door, you convince yourself that you're doing your spouse a favor just by showing up, you need a serious attitude adjustment. If you like the idea of dancing but are persistently haunted by performance anxiety for lack of practice, you probably won't last long. But if you approach dancing with an attitude that lends itself to learning and put in the time at home to solidify what you get in lessons, you'll find dancing can be one of the most wonderful and freeing experiences of your life. And that is where real passion begins!
Keeping these principles in mind, I hope that the pages to come will be of aid to you in getting off the ground in this new and exciting experience of ballroom dancing!