How Did You Get To Be Such A Good Dancer?

[joreth]

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I've been asked a lot recently about my dancing, so I thought I'd make a public post.  I get told that I'm a good dancer and people want to know how long I've been dancing and where I take lessons, so here's the story:
I've been dancing for 18 years, and yet I'm only considered a "beginning-intermediate" dancer.  See, I've only had 2 lessons and

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Styling class

[edm]

In case it helps, some dance schools (eg, the one I've started learning Swing with) will offer the same dance classes on multiple evenings (especially at the lower levels), and be okay with students swapping back and forth amongst the days to fit their schedule. Particularly if the student is reasonably experienced (can pick up the rhythm, knows the basic steps, comfortable dancing with people they've never danced with, etc) so isn't completely thrown by changing between classes that have been taught a bit more/bit less. Possibly you'd still have to skip a week for work (eg, multi-day work), but most schools cope with students doing that too anyway.

ObTopic: To your list for good social dancing (keep moving in time, communication), I'd add "be in your body" -- by which I mostly mean "try not to over-think it, just do it". If it feels like the right thing to do, and keeps you in time, for social dancing it'll probably work if you just do it and carry on -- not so much, if you spend too much time distracted trying to figure out if it's the "right thing to do".

Ewen