Dancing Help Needed

[UKStudent]

Hi

I am an 18 year old student preparing to go to university at the end of spetember.

I intend to take some dance classes once at university (primarily in club / freestyle / hip-hop dance). However ive never really had that much experience dancing (as im a realitivley shy guy + fear of appearing stupid), despite really wanting to dance at many parties and clubs.

I would really appreciate any advice for begginer dancers that will help me prepare me for future dance classes and allow me to feel more confident for upcoming parties (e.g. practice excercises). Also are there any styles of dance that are good for begginers (and will help me with styles like club dancing).

Many Thanks

PS I have tried looking at the Beginning Dancers FAQ but the links appear broken (and I cant find the posts by searching )

[DancePoet]

Hi UKStudent,

Welcome to Dance Forums!

With school being so close to starting, not sure there is much time to take lessons ahead of the class you have signed up for. Just remember to take a deep breath on your first day and this will help you relax.

I suppose you could still find a group salsa class to take through August, and that might help, but hey, if you got a class set for September, I suspect there will be others with little to no dance experience so you will fit right in with others who are tkaing the same class. ;)

Good luck!

[wyllo]

I'd say the best preparation for your dance classes is to make sure you are in good physical condition -- especially when it comes to strengthening your core muscles (pilates/yoga/gyrotonics are great for this). And just remember that everyone feels awkward and uncoordinated when they start dancing so focus on having fun with it, not whether you are "good" at it.

[DanceMentor]

Your confidence will increase as you learn more. See if you can find some ways to get extra prcatice outside of class. Just about any style should be okay in helping you get getter faster.

[DWise1]

I've also always been a very shy guy and I have no problem now asking a woman to dance. Or chatting with them between dances. You'll gain confidence as you learning to dance.

Here are a few suggestions as you're learning:
Relax.
Smile.
Have fun.
Don't worry about making mistakes, because you're guaranteed to. Every beginner does. Nobody will judge you by them, because they remember when they were beginners.
Don't take yourself too seriously and fret over every little mistake. Be ready to laugh at yourself -- you'll have many opportunities.

From the very beginning, I adopted those guidelines because I knew that I would take my mistakes too seriously and that I'd become so frustrated that I would give up (also be aware that I went in firmly believing that it was impossible for me to ever learn to dance). Even though I would become frustrated, smiling and laughing and making the experience fun helped to keep that frustration in check. BTW, I've long had a solid reputation of being the guy who's always smiling and laughing. And one day one of the women in Lindy class told me that the more frustrated she gets the more she smiles, so I'm not the only one using that trick.

And my very first classes were intermediate-level salsa and I stuck it through nearly half a year, stopping only because the classes were discontinued. Which should be a testament to how well those guidelines kept my frustration down to a safe level.


And in class your partner is undoubtedly also fretting over her mistakes. Last night in a beginning hustle class, I had a partner who's experience in other dances but was taking hustle for the very first time. As she was getting frustrated with herself for not getting the step right, I reminded her that everybody has a first night with a new dance. And I smiled when I said that.

And when you're on the dance floor, don't worry that everybody's watching you. Because they aren't; they're all watching that really great couple over there. Besides, in your mind there shouldn't be anybody else on that floor besides you and your partner. And a bunch of traffic hazards moving all around you.

[PasoDancer]

DWise is a stud- listen to him! :D

[DWise1]

DWise is a stud- listen to him! :D

Hmm. Obviously you've never seen a photo of me.

But I did go through the process I described as I went from far less than able to dance (ie, convinced, brainwashed I guess, into believing that I could never possibly learn) to where I constantly receive compliments on my leading and dancing (actually, on my leading the compliments started in the very first lesson) and have been called a natural dancer. My message to beginners is that if I can learn to dance, then anybody should be able to.

But the real "dance stud" is a friend of mine. He'll introduce me to others as his idol, but I insist that he's the real idol. He's close to my age (early 50's, but you'd love his photo because he's a surfer, whereas I'm just a computer geek) and he only started dancing a little less than two years ago, right after his divorce. He started out in Lindy and I helped him all I could in working out the rhythm; since he's a PhD, the theoretical approach helped him there. But he did something that I never would have been able to. He went out dancing from the very start. And he really sucked at it, but he kept at it and he had fun on the dance floor and his dance partners worked with him and didn't seem to mind that he was a beginner (actually, in those environments, most of our potential partners wouldn't have been much more advanced than he was; my big problem going out dancing in the general public is that most women only know free-style). I had been doing Lindy for nearly a year before I could build up the courage to go out dancing (added difficulty for me was that that was before my wife had filed but for a year already she refused to dance with me, so I also had to overcome the emotional hurdle of going out alone to do something that I had only ever imagined doing with my wife). He had courage and determination that I couldn't even come close to having.

After about half a year I lost track of him, but I heard from another friend that he was learning West Coast Swing (WCS), mainly doing privates. Last November, after about 6 months of WCS, he and his teacher completed in the Pro-Am at the US Open Swing competitions and took silver (second place).

A couple months after that, he showed up with his new girlfriend. She had only been learning WCS for about a month, but she was pretty good at it already. Turned out they would go out dancing 4 or 5 times a week.

So, UKStudent, do as my friend did. As frightening as it may feel, get out there as soon as you've started learning what to do and get in all the dancing you can. And you'll get good at it faster than you ever imagined possible.

Or as Frankie Manning, the 92-year-old living legend of Lindy, will count off the beat for his students (yes, he still teaches; he's coming again to Irvine, California, in September):

"A one, a two, you know what to do!"

[Peaches]

Hmm. Obviously you've never seen a photo of me.


Yeah, well, I have. (Pretty sure I have, at least. Do you have kilt?) And she's right. Very studly.

[Peaches]

Anyway, to the OP.

I don't know anything about club/freestyle/hip-hop. But I do know how you feel about being shy and not wanting to look stupid. That was definitely me.

What I learned in my first group class was that no one was paying attention to me--they were all to busy paying attention to themselves, trying to learn, same as me. When they started getting better they still weren't paying attention to me--they were paying attention to their partner.

And DWise is right--smile, relax, learn to laugh at yourself, and find some way to have a good time. If you're enjoying yourself, and making sure your partner is having a good time, no one will care that you're a beginner. No. One. He's also right in that no one is watching you--they'll all be watching the really great dancers strutting their stuff. But if you get out there and dance what you've learned, as much as possible, you'll soon be one of the people that others are watching.

[onthegostudio]

Well im sure that there are plenty of other people out there with the same delema as you. If you are worried try to learn a few things at home. onthegostudios can help by sending dance steps and such to your cell phone. check it out and mabey it can help ya out