Floortime

I. Toxic dance culture, competitions, and connecting Feel free to skip this section if you just want the useful content without the ramblings Being a westie, I'm going to start from our perspective first.  I think that people who dance wcs tend to have a weird resentment toward dancers who come in from other dances and seem to progress really quickly. Part of this is due to a cultural issue in how we teach and share wcs--the 'you need to stick with it for 6 months,' there's a high barrier for entry, don't expect to have fun right away mindset. Apart from hampering the growth of our dance, it brings a potential bitterness when westies see someone skipping the initial struggle step that they've been brought up to believe is mandatory.  This reveals itself in local communities, classes/lessons, etc. as well. Someone coming from fairly serious lindy doesn't have to go to a beginner lesson and learn to count in 6 or 8 or triple step. Sure, it's a different da...

First, the mirror here is an analogy. Looking in a mirror while you're dancing isn't wrong, and it isn't even rude as long as your partner knows you're practicing and sees the dance as such. But it's inefficient and will throw your dancing off. It'll change where your head weight is, possibly affect where your frame is at, and you'll have to abandon it if you're spotting anyway. Plus, watching yourself *directly* flat from the side or front isn't as good as a slight angle. You can get this if you have full unbroken mirrors on two perpendicular walls, but it's still not as good as a video. Or a video of the mirrored dance space! So take videos.  Everyone hates seeing themselves dance , at first at least. There are exceptions, but I think they're too scarce to mention. Even most people who are really, really self obsessed have insecurities and are surprised when the way they look doesn't match the images in their head.  You can think of thi...

Here's an example of breaking an element down into the biggest, most fundamental chunk possible. What we want is efficiency. Humans have limited brain power, I've seen it suggested that at any given time we can really only think of, at most , two physical cues at once.  For dance this doesn't necessarily mean that we can and/or should only think about ONE thing the whole time we're dancing--although that's entirely valid as a training method--but definitely at any given point in time we need to limit the number of directions we're trying to split our attention. For instance, I can think about different things on count 2 and count 4 of my underarm turn. However, trying to think about five different things on my count 2 alone isn't going to go so well.  I think it's a natural human trait to want to believe that more is better. If I can conceive of six different things wrong with what I'm doing every time I lead down slot, that's good! I have more ...

Here’s a dance trick that has a good chance of helping you be more present in your body while working on a given technical aspect! Pay very close attention to how what you’re wearing makes you feel. And I mean in a directly tangible/physical feedback sense, not ‘feelin’ yourself” (although that’s always helpful). For example, skinny jeans make me really aware of my leg action. They have to be a certain kind of stretchy/snug to have a potentially noticeable impact. Yes, I know what the ideal fit and brand is to help me work through my legs the best. (American Eagle skinny/athletic tapered 360 flex in 29/32.) The feeling of compression helps me articulate my legs properly; it was harder to feel without that feedback when I was trying to learn.  Plenty of dancers obsess over how shoes look aesthetically, or how they feel throughout a long event weekend. But footwear is also a great and very underrated tool simply for skill development. A different height of heel, how long the sh...

initial disclaimer: this is all about one on one private lessons. Group classes especially at a beginner level are more than a little different West coast swing isn’t like most other dances. Even for non-syllabus, ‘street’ dances there are usually only a few clear technical variants at a high level of the dance. As such, teaching ‘good dancing’ especially from a technical standpoint tends to be a bit more objective than it is in our case. Our brains working the way that they do, we tend to teach from one of just a few perspectives:   1.        Here’s what I do, it works for me, thus, it should work for you too 2.          This is what my teacher told me, it works for them (maybe not yet for me), so it should work for you too 3.        I haven’t tried this at all but so and so said it and I think they’re smart, so you should listen to them           ...