Poll: What was your first dance goal?

[nucat78]

I'm curious what ppl had in mind when they first started dancing - social dance, showcases, compete, etc. You may select more than one answer.

[jjs914]

I picked both social dance and compete. I started at college because I thought it would be something fun to try...but was thinking about competition within the first week (pretty much as soon as I knew it was an option).

[danceronice]

Um....Other. I started taking non-ballroom lessons in high school (private lessons, sort of jazz/tap/whatever seemed useful) to help with musical theater auditions as that was the part I always botched (now I can still act, but no, I will not sing for you) and I started taking ballroom to help with skating. Social dance wasn't even on my radar (I didn't think anyone did ballroom socially anymore) and I assumed you had to have a partner to compete.

Then I found out about pro-am....

[fascination]

I just wanted to waltz beautifully

[samina]

didn't have any goal at the outset 'xept "the feeling"...movement, connection, fun.

but within a month i was committed to a showcase performance of two dances...and within four months i knew i wanted to compete.

still always gets back to movement, connection, and fun for me, though. :)

[latingal]

Competition was my goal right out of the gate....10 years before I started Ballroom dancing I watched the PBS forerunner of America's Ballroom Challenge (then called Championship Ballroom Dancing) and knew that one day I wanted to try it....

[GGinrhinestones]

I just wanted to waltz beautifully

Same here!

Little did I know 6 months later I would do my first comp...in rhythm. And it all kind of took off from there.

[Phil Owl]

Strictly social dance for me.

[Ray Sison]

for social dancing...

[pygmalion]

What was my stated reason or what was my underlying motivation? Stated reason -- social dance. Underlying motivation -- fill an emotional hole.

[TangoRocks]

I said social dance, but this was based on a total misunderstanding of what the term meant. I now can dance ballroom/latin and some Lindy, none of which fit under what I thought as "social dancing" (i.e. dancing done with friends at non-specialized venues) Sadly enough, I still can't do any "washing machine" moves if I go to a club or something.

In short, I like and enjoy the dancing I learned but it was not extremely helpful in achieving my original misconstrued goal :)

[pbdc]

I started with social swing, but I started ballroom with the intent to compete.

[DancingChristianne]

For social dancing - a way to be a part of a community, connected with a partner, and have the opportunity to continue to learn and grow if I wanted to - a Saturday night out in a generally alcohol free atmosphere.

[wonderwoman]

I guess my initial goal was higher self-confidence. I remember seeing a ballroom chacha on tv and thinking, I want to dance like THAT! The woman seemed so confident and sexy. Four years later, I have the occasional confident and sexy moment when dancing lol

[pygmalion]

I guess my initial goal was higher self-confidence. I remember seeing a ballroom chacha on tv and thinking, I want to dance like THAT! The woman seemed so confident and sexy. Four years later, I have the occasional confident and sexy moment when dancing lol


That is hilarious! I can so relate. :-)

[mindputtee]

I think I started taking ballroom lessons because I thought it'd be a good skill to have and it was free with my college team. I think my first real dance goal though was to be worthy of wearing one of those fantastic looking dresses. I'm still working towards that though ;-)

[chomsky]

What was my stated reason or what was my underlying motivation? Stated reason -- social dance. Underlying motivation -- fill an emotional hole.

ditto...
though stated reason was recuperating from a herniated disc

[laucy.my]

I was forced into it and when I finally fell in love with dancing, I wanted to impress my instructor and to compete.

[flashdance]

I've always been like Alex in Flashdance (apart from having a bucket of cold water drop on my head on stage wearing a Leotard) - Always loved the feeling to boogie... so someone I knew on another forum persuaded me to give dancing lessons a go and so the story goes...

[DWise1]

I checked "social dancing", but actually my choice was "other". Since I knew I could never possibly learn (my then-wife had taught me that all too well), my first goal was to just have fun doing something with my wife. Part of the "just have fun" was to not take it seriously enough to get frustrated by my inability to learn.

[Martel]

I put social dancing. It was purely for social reasons, the dancing part didn't figure into it at first.

I was a shy computer geek and my sister dragged me out to an East Coast Swing dance when my computer broke. I thought it might be a way to meet some new people and I had been thinking about getting some sort of social hobby.

A month later I was so busy dancing I still hadn't had time to take my computer to be fixed.