You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘two left feet before.’ It is a common excuse to justify the fear that we may have when it comes to trying something new, say ballroom dancing. Don’t get us wrong…walking into a new, unknown environment can be terrifying! But you never know what’s on the other side unless we give things a shot, right?!

No one was born with two left feet, and in any situation, we guarantee that you’re going to do better than you think your first time out. We want you to get rid of any misconceptions you may have and encourage you to live up to your very own potential. You don’t have forever, so why not start today? Sometimes we hear people say I wish I had started this when I was younger…but age is just a number people and many activities, including dancing may actually extend your life! Just keep that in mind…

First and foremost, if we want to overcome a fear we need to start by wanting to do so. Hesitation is probably one of the agents that tends to hold us back, so you may start with a simple decision and see what happens next. Based on that, we want to remind you that at this very first stage you probably won’t be participating in “Dancing with the Starts” (maybe later, who knows?), so let’s take it easy and focus on just trying out a few steps and listening to the music. We are all our harshest critics, but try to avoid early assessments. Every day that you try, you’re making progress.  It would be unfair to judge the entire process at such an early stage.  We don’t have the miracle  pill  for  everything  we  want,  but  what  we  do  have which  is  even  better  than  a magic  pill  or  wand…we have a PLAN! When we plan any project (whether it be personal,  social, or economic) we are a step ahead of the three ugly Fs: Failure,  Frustration,  and  Fear.

What  does  a  plan  for  overcoming a fear of  Ballroom Dance contain?
How could it be carried out?

Try these ingredients:

1. The first step is the first step
Conquering the  initial  nervousness  is  the  key. Starting something from the scratch may be hard, but there’s nothing that practice cannot defeat. Practice makes perfect!

2. Forget about the cliché “I have no rhythm”
Does your heart beat?  Do you breathe?  Do you walk? Then you definitely have rhythm. It’s scientifically proven! We just have to refine it!

3-. Ballroom Dancing has no age limits!
Anyone at any age can dance. Don’t believe me?  Do you remember the 106-year-old lady who danced with the Obamas a couple of  months ago?  When asked what was the secret to still dancing at 106, she said just keep moving.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/barack-obama-michelle-obama-dance-106-year-old-woman-visits-white-house-a6888656.html

So you have all the ingredients, what about the execution?

Once your ingredients are ready and your fear has started to fade away, what  else do you need?  Well…for dancing you need a dance floor or studio for you to step in to! You don’t actually even need a partner! Plenty of group classes are structured for you to rotate so you get a chance to meet new people, and learn at a faster pace. If you have a built in dance partner, then you’re also set – just remember you’re both learning new skills and patience is essential. This is a fun and exciting experience to share, so keep it fun and light!

Enjoy this new adventure and keep us posted on how it goes. Remember that you won’t be the newbie all your life. Try something new today…what do you have to lose? Hope to see you on a dance floor soon!

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Staying on time in West Coast Swing is something that new dancers struggle with. Hopefully I can provide a couple tips to help you make the leap from ‘thinking through your dance’ into a state of ‘just dancing!’
Understanding the music. West Coast Swing (and swing in general) is structured in 2 beat increments. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8. When counting the music its important to identify these incrementsOnce you can find these 2 beat increments I want you to focus on finding these beats, the 2-4-6-8 beats. When dancing patterns in basic time, 2-4-6-8 will always be whole beats. This means you will be dancing one beat per step.

1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8

Looking at a triple step: If you look at a triple step. You have 2 beats of music. 1-2. When we dance a triple step we count it, 1&2. We are putting 3 steps into 2 beats of music. 2 steps into the first beat (1&) then one single step in the the second beat of music (2)
Exercise: Stand up and dance a whip why yourself. Count out loud. 1,2,3&4,5,6,7&8. Now dance the whip again and really pause on the 2-4-6-8. Now you are starting to feel the most critical parts of the timing.

timing is everything – west coast swing
You gotta understand your timing!
Know the rules to bend the rules: First you need to know these rules and recognize the basic rhythm structure of the dance. You need to be able to dance all of your basic patterns and timing by clearly identifying the 2-4-6-8 in each pattern you dance.
Once this is accomplished you may want to begin to play a bit more within the patterns. As pattern become more complex it becomes necessary to have your basic understanding of timing to fall back on. This is where the real magic happens as you watch high level dancers seemingly know what their partner is doing even though you don’t recognize any basics at all. They are often playing within the ‘structure’ of the dance, within these basic rules of timing. Skippy Blair says “The separation of Dance Rhythms into “2 -Beat” increments – allows the dancer to feel the connection to the heartbeat of the music….and allows for greater musical interpretation of the music.”
Explore timing in a slightly more advanced way: Return to the previous ‘whip exercise’ and explore accelerating and decelerating your dancing, leads and follows within your 2 beat increments. Just remember to always return to a clear 2-4-6-8.
There are more advanced things to do with timing but I’ll stop right here for now. I think if you master these things you will have accomplished your goal of staying on time in West Coast Swing and you’ll be well on your way to “getting really good!”

Helpful reminders:

Identify the critical 2-beat increments in the music
Focus on keeping the 2-4-6-8 clear when you dance your patterns
Practice to different types of music till you can identify the critical timing without getting distracted.
Once you have mastered this start to explore different ways of accelerating and decelerating your dance inside of these critical 2 beat increments.

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Have you ever felt that you hit a plateau in your dancing? Maybe you have lost focus and feel your enthusiasm for dancing slipping. Maybe you are super excited and can’t imagine EVER losing your love of dance, and you simply want to learn as much as possible as fast as possible. I want all of these thing for you too!

My name is Brian Barakauskas and a ballroom dancer with over 20 years experience I’ve felt the same thing at many points along my journey thorough ballroom dancing. As a teacher its become my mission to teach the lessons that have helped me the most. I sincerely want you to enjoy dancing EVEN MORE THAN I HAVE! Here are my 3 favorite tips to faster learning and avoiding plateaus.

#1. Set a goal for your dancing

This may seem simple but I can’t tell you how many people simply don’t have clear goals. Pick the next thing you want to achieve and write it on a sticky note. I’m serious! Write your goal down RIGHT NOW! Stick that note on your desk by your bed or even on your bathroom mirror. Your goal could be learning the bronze syllabus for Waltz, Foxtrot and Tango. I could be doing a ballroom dance competition. Whatever your goal is write it down!

Another pitfall I see in goal setting is TOO MANY GOALS! If this is you, you might want to read this article on too many goals at once. Trust me, you can’t be good at every all at once. Faster learning in ballroom dancing does not mean do everything at once. Please sort through your goals. Pick the one dance goal that is most important to you right now, and write it down. All those other goals running thorough your mind…don’t worry we will get to those in a second.

#2 Set a time limit for achieving your dance goal

Do you ever wonder why people flock to stores on Black Friday? Its because that’s THE ONLY DAY that you can get those special deals. (honestly the prices are lower in July but I digress) Honestly its a mental trick that retailers play on us to get us to shop. The psychology works. Thats why you NEED TO HAVE A DATE on your goals! Write down the date on your goals. “I want to learn bronze waltz, foxtrot and tango by the fall.” or “I want to dance at the “Ohio Star Ball” this November!”

#3 Find a teacher, mentor or coach

This is one that has been a HUGE TIME SAVER for me personally in dancing but also in my dance studio business as well as in my other hobbies. I even wrote a blog on it. Investing in a ballroom dance coach will do wonders for your progress. Its not only taking dance lessons that will be helpful but dance coaches are EXPERTS AT THE BALLROOM DANCE LEARNING PROCESS! Let me say this again, they are experts at the process for learning ballroom dancing. They are expert goal setters. They have the knowledge to asses you personally and help you set goals that are right for you!

Now let me say this….

As a dance teacher its SHOCKING to me to see how many student don’t take the advice of the coach they are paying. We all want to think we are special or different and our egos sometimes won’t let us submit and listen. (trust me I know. I have a big ego lol) But provided you have a good relationship with your teacher, then trust them! Keep in mind that you won’t always agree. You’ll have to trust them! The title of this blog post was faster learning in Ballroom Dancing while avoiding plateaus. Your teacher is your greatest resource in this process.

Oh and what happens when you get to your ‘pot of gold’ at the end of the rainbow and achieve your goal?

Go back though the process and set another one! Perhaps you can reach a little higher next time. After all its about the journey, not the destination!

All the best in dance,

Brian B

Dance Louisville

PS I know I suck at editing but writing is a learning process for me. One step at a time. LOL

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This might be a little philosophical but I think it a great subject and a great lesson to pass on. While searching for a topic for this column a friend posed this. “How can I look cool and relaxed while performing my hardest moves. Brian its a specialty of yours and I’d pay to have just an inch of your talent there!”

Over the years I had coaches tell me that I was fantastic at almost falling out of my hardest moves but yet I was still able to keep my composure and look great. The somewhat philosophical answer to the question of “how did I do it?” was taught to me in a chance meeting.

Sometime last year a dance idol of mine came though town and invited me out to dinner. This guys was a bit older than me and for every story I had from my dance career he had 2 to top it. We headed to a local pub pulled up a seat at the bar and sat down for a bite. During the meal he told me about all his stories performing and competing around the world. He gave me advice on teaching and on running my studio. It was a fun conversation but little did I know how important it would be to my understanding of dancing.

As it turns out he was in town teaching. “What are you teaching?” I asked, expecting to get a straightforward answer like cha cha, waltz or two step. “Oh just my expansion and contraction theory” he replied? “Expansion and contraction?” I inquired. See after 18 years of dancing I know enough to be pretty dangerous. I understood his theory, or so I though. I mean, I understand that to increase angular momentum you need to decrease the radius of gyration right? Ever watch an ice skater? To spin faster they pull their arms in. Contraction right? Pretty basic stuff I though. I knew all of the fancy terms to describe it. My mentor however had a much more simple less technical explanation.

“Brian have you ever slipped while walking?” he asked. “Sure.” I replied. “What was your first reaction.” I thought for a min then grabbed the bar top in front of me. “I would grab something so I wouldn’t fall.” He agreed, “Normal reaction right?” “Of course.” I responded sensing the there was more to the story.

He went on to explain that as a baby our first reaction is to contract. Thats what the fetal position of a baby is all about, its a contracted position. As we grow we lean to stand walk by expanding our arms and legs in search of balance. Still the desire to contract remains, if we are falling our normal reaction is to contract our bodies. Ever slip while walking on ice? You get the idea.

He continued to tell his theory. “See Brian  as a dancer performing more difficult moments there will inevitably be moments of lost balance. Its in those moments that we need to learn to overcome our inclination to contract but instead learn to expand. The better a dancer gets at expansion in those moment instead of contraction the better success they will have.”  BINGO!  That was the moment of understanding for me.

Let me put it in my terms, a less philosophical way. Don’t be a baby! Don’t contract all the time. Learn to extend your arms and find your balance as your first reaction while doing harder movements. Imagine dancing with your elbows slightly out away from your body. If a drop of water could slowly roll down your upper arm slowly down your forearm and off the tips of your fingers they you are on your way to better balance and style. Now puff your chest out. Seriously! Roll your shoulders back and puff your chest out. Now open your palms forward and say “I’m the king of the world” Like Leo DiCaprio said in the movie Titanic!

Without getting hyper technical or anymore philosophical I think keeping a positive mindset will help you maintain perfect posture. The mind certainly does control the body. Ever see a depressed person? Contraction all over their body language.  Try to find the moments in your dancing that give you the most trouble and apply a positive mindset and then try the expand instead of contract theory and see if it doesn’t improve you ability to look your best while doing your hardest moves.

All the best in dance.

Brian B

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Teaching

Being a dance teacher is difficult. You need to be a proficient dancer in your own role as a leader or follower but you then need to understand the other role as well. Leaders have to learn the steps of the followers and the followers have to understand the steps of the leaders. This obviously a huge step towards become a dance teacher but its still just a baby step toward become a mentor or coach.

As a beginner teacher your relationship to your students tends to be a very transactional one. The student pays money and the teacher teaches what they know. The teacher is simply working out of a the small knowledge pool that they possess with very little experience in communicating that information. It tends to be a very structured process because the teacher is simply regurgitating what they know. The students will ask questions and the teachers will answer them based on their own limited knowledge. If a teacher is to grow out of this stage its important to understand that they don’t have all the answers. This is the most basic level of teaching dance. The teacher is simply now a student of the learning process itself.

Mentoring

I think beginning dance teachers should strive to be monitors as quickly as possible. Here is why. As a mentor you will be forced deeper into your relationship with your students. You may not always have the answers so you will need to seek advice from your own coaches and begin to open your mind. Not all students will process information as you did. Often times only a small percentage of students will understand things as you did. You will need to find alternate ways of communicating and organizing the information so that you may taylor it to your particular students. You will begin to find your uniqueness as a teacher and will be able to better apply your particular knowledge and experience. This is a process that takes time to learn. Its helpful if  you do this under the guidance of your own mentors and coaches. Personally I was in the phase for the better part of 10 years and still use my coaches and mentors to help me to this day.

Coaching

If you know the way broadly, you will see it in all things. -Miyamoto Musashi

I believe as a teacher moves in to the roll of coach the teacher now understand things on a far deeper level. The teacher is now able to foresee the problems a student will have in advance and will be able to give advice in advance to head off these bumps in the road. The teacher is able to create a culture in the relationship that allow the student to discover things on their own. Its impossible to reach this stage without lots of experience in the mentoring role. The lessons in this stage are far deeper than just the dancing. Learning steps is now easy. Learning and choreographing routines is a piece of cake. Exploring the motivation of these things in now the concern. Learning to manage your mind and enjoying the process become the focus. The dancing is just a vehicle through which we explore our lives. Its hard for the new teacher or the new student to understand the final level of the student teacher relationship but when this level is achieved the true joy of dancing can be had.

To really become a dance coach you have to go through these levels of discovery and understanding both as a dance and as a teacher of dance. After 36,000+ hours on the dance floor myself I truly believe that the reason we are dancing is to discover ourselves and learn the lessons of live thought dancing. As the winningest coach in NCAA baseball history said “Baseball is nothing more than another classroom in the educational process. Really, baseball is a metaphor for life.” I believe dance to be the same thing. As a coach the more quickly I can get my students to understand, this the more successful I will be in my role.

Final thoughts

Tips on finding a good coach.

• Find a teacher with a good track record. You can’t replace experience.
• You will have a strong relationship with your coach. Find someone you trust and respect.
• Have fun with your coach. Isn’t fun what its all about?
• Ask questions of your coach. Once they earn your trust, stop being critical. Now its time to learn!

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Maybe you have been dancing for a while and feel like you’re spinning you’re wheels and not ‘getting better’?

Maybe you’ve heard that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of something? Do you have that kind of time? Most of us don’t, still we want the result We want to achieve!

Here is my story and how hope to help inspire you!

I’ve been dancing for 18 years now and easily logged close to 30.000 hours on the dance floor! I know a thing or two about the learning process and developing skill. Whats better is that I still learn more more everyday! Over the past 10 years my passion has shifted a desire to master dancing for myself to one of utilizing my skills as a teacher to helping others achieve theirs!

Along the way I have worked with amazing coaches, listened to hundreds of talks and read literally dozens of books on human performance. I have tracked down not only the best selling books but also researched the rather dry research work that went into those books. Although the research saying that it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra competitive field is solid, most of us don’t need that level of skill development. We just to become proficient.

Just a few of the book I’ve read on the subject.

Recently a student (one who got good very quickly i might add) forwarded me a fantastic TedTalk that summarizes what I have learned about the learning process in a very compelling and inspiring way! In his talk John Kaufman deconstructs the first 20 hours of the learning process and breaks it apart into 4 parts.

So here is my challenge of 20! Give yourself 20 minutes to watch this Ted Talk, then promise yourself you will you commit the 20 hours of deliberate practice required to achieve your goal! I promise. I’ve read the research. I’ve done it myself in many things in my life and I’ve watched it happen for dozens of dancers in my studio. If your goal is centered around dancing… I’m here to help! Dancing has been amazing to me and I want nothing more that than

Years ago I remember reading that there are 250,000 words in the english language. Learning that many words is an almost insurmountable task! However the 25 most common of those words make up about 1/3 of all printed material. The first 100 most common comprise 1/2 of all written material, and the first 300 make up about 65% percent of all written material. See where I’m going? I learned that if we focus on the right things we can learn anything rather quickly! But how quickly???

“Mate, at this stage of my career I’m more of a cheerleader. I just encourage people” -Famous ballroom & latin coach Ray Rivers to me

The beginning phase of learning a new skill is so awkward that most people simply can’t handle it emotionally. They feel awkward being so far outside of their comfort zone that its easier to quit than to deal with the sheer uncomfortablenss that comes with learning. Thats when the words of the great ballroom & latin coach Ray Rivers came to me. See Ray has been dancing since the 1950’s. Thats a LONG time and he is an expert to the experts. Before a lesson one day he said to me, that after 50 years of dancing he had become more of a ‘cheerleader’ than anything else. Thats when it started to make sense to me. My roll as a teacher was more to encourage people.

How long will I be a cheerleader? I wondered.

Having taught dancers from scratch to the professional level I knew that what I was teaching was technically correct. Having worked with so many brilliant coaches over the years I knew that how I was communicating that material was correct as well. It just didn’t seem to work for everyone. There needed to be some sort of minor shift in my understanding. I became convinced that the hardest part of my job was convincing people to not quit on themselves.

“If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything.” – Miyamoto Musashi

As a teacher I felt that! When a student walked in that had previously learned to say, fly a plan, or gone thought medical school, or learn a martial art, those people seemed to stick to dancing more easily than others. For the people who had previously gone through the uncomfortable struggle of learning something new, those were the one who seemed to succeed at dancing. They understood the process. My struggle became “how do I get people to invest their time?”  I needed them invested for just long enough to get over the initial uncomfortable part of learning something new.

Recently a student (one who got pretty good pretty quickly) forwarded me a fantastic TedTalk that summarizes what I have learned about the learning process in a very compelling and inspiring way! So here is my challenge of 20! Give yourself 20 minutes to watch this Ted Talk, then promise yourself you will you commit the 20 hours of deliberate practice required to achieve your goal! I promise. I’ve read the research. I’ve done it myself in many things in my life and I’ve watched it happen for dozens of dancers in my studio. If your goal is centered around dancing… I’m here to help! Dancing has been amazing to me and I want nothing more that than

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