Finding Inexpensive Dance Instruction DVDs

[Nicole17]

I'm part of a college ballroom club that for years relied mainly on more experienced students to provide technique instruction for the newcomers. We do have a professional instructor who comes to teach for two hours every week, but a lot of improvement occurs during student-run practice sessions where everyone works together and helpful critiques are highly encouraged. Unfortunately, in the past few years our club has gotten a little bottom-heavy and most of us (including me) are freshmen and sophomores bronze or below. This is unfortunate, and since our school doesn't give scholarships for ballroom dancers, we're unlikely to recruit any experienced dancers anytime soon. From what I've heard, the club was just super lucky so many higher level dancers decided to enroll in the past. Now we've just got to figure out how to get so many of us up to silver without enough helpful upperclassmen to give us a hand. We were hoping to invest in some solid, technique focused instructional videos or DVDs club members could use on their own to really drill and improve their technique, but there are so many videos out there and most of them are quite expensive! With competition registration and instructor fees, we really can't afford to spending $50 on one DVD covering just one dance that we don't even know will be helpful!

Sorry for the super long-winded explanation, but does anyone know where to obtain good video instruction that doesn't cost an arm and a leg? Or have any advice for other ways we can help people improve (aside from convincing them to go out and take lessons on their own, that is )?

 

[fascination]

first of all, and we have a thread where you can put this, if you are brave enough to list your school and a contact person and mailing address, you might get some members here to part with some of their dvds and/or gift you with some...additionally, you might find some advanced local folks who would volunteer their time to come and help...lastly, have you checked your local library?...sometimes strange donations happen...have you also asked the visiting pro if they have some loner dvds from their studio?

 

[dbk]

YouTube actually has some excellent lectures (and a whole s***-ton of bad ones, so be careful ).

Try searching for things like "dancesport lecture" or the name of one of your favorite couples. Avoid anyone who looks like they are teaching at a social dance, not dressed super-duper professionally, etc.

You might want a more experienced dancer to weed out the misinformation and find the ones that are really useful - some of them are IMO not useful at all (even if the lecturer is world-class) and some will only confuse newer dancers. But keep in mind, even if newcomers/bronzies can't DO something yet, doesn't mean they should be ignorant of the idea.

 

[theAnnelis]

Off the top of my head, the youtube channel TheWDSFAcademy has great stuff.