KISS - Keep It Simple
Social Dancing Is All Built
Out of the SAME Building Blocks
Dance Music ain't hard!
From a dancer’s POV,
there is only 1 Pop Song,
going back 200 years, now
with 4,000,000 variations.
See Rita Hayworth below.
Dance Steps ain’t hard!
Dancing is just
WALKING, with
PAUSES & ATTITUDE
=== >>
The only CRUCIAL part of Social Dance
Have FUN &
Make Your
Partner Happy
Kent's Dance Concepts
Kent's 38 DANCE STYLES - Basic Steps
Q = Quick S = Slow (AKA Q+Pause)
Walking
Waltz – Marches - Ragtime 1-Step - Peabody
Blues – Cuddle Dances
Hustle (syncopated) – Western Swing (basic)
QQS QQS
Salsa – Rumba – Mambo – Samba – Bachata
Conga – Zouk - Cajun 2 Step – Zydeco Swing
Balboa - Night Club 2-step
QQSS
East Coast Swing – Foxtrot – Country 2-step
__________
Substitute Triples for SLOWS
TripleTriple
Rockabilly - Country Swing - Polka
QQTriple QQTriple
Cha Cha – Lindy Hop
QQTripleTriple
Triple East Coast – Double Triple Country 2-Step
West Coast Swing – Carolina Shag - Boogie Woogie
QQTripleTripleQQ
Jive
QSQ QQQQ
Texas Push
Outside the Box
Charleston – Quick Step
St Louis Shag - Collegiate Shag
Kent Dance Class Goals
Have Fun
Make your Partner SMILE
Dance Like YOU!!!!!!
With Dance Lego Blocks:
You Learn By Dancing
Particularly with Dancers Better than You
1/10 Second Connection!
Social – Emotional – Spiritual - Physical
Just ONE American Pop Song, w/ 4 million variations
Intro – 8 bar phrases – Exit
Dance the phrases and you’ll be a Top Dancer!
34 of 38 Dance Basics
are just combos of Walking Slows & Quicks
Don’t let new Styles Scare You!
Walk w/ ATTITUDE, like a Panther
Pattern Hints
Patterns Take Too many Brain Cycles
PROS Teach Patterns; They don’t dance Them
Redirect those to PLAY & CONNECTION & CONVERSATION
Do LESS!!!!!
Patterns are just ways to keep Beginners on the Phrasing.
AND Dance Tools to add to your Tool Box
"Moves" are nice, but just frosting.
Their purpose is to
FRAME the SPACES in Your DANCE
The SPACES are where the MAGIC happens.
”Music is the space between the notes.” Debussy
“The music is not in the notes,
but in the silence between.”
Mozart
Dance Like YOU!
You are Unique. There are Things you can do better than anyone.
Your challenge: Find Them!
How? Trying Stuff Out on the Dance Floor
“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.”
Miles Davis
Learn from Everybody
Beginners to Pros
"I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns" - Ella Fitzgerald
Exactly copying somebody superb is not a compliment.
Picking up a bit of their style
And integrating it into YOUR style
HUGE compliment!!
__________________________________________
Steal from the BEGINNERS!!
BEGINNERS have a SUPER POWER!
You haven't learned all the things
you "CAN'T DO"... yet.
EXPERIENCED DANCERS...
Seek out BEGINNERS and MINE them!
And make them into Experienced Dancers!
CHRISTMAS GIFTS!!
Every 3 minute dance is a Gift Exchange
Your job is not to “fix”, but to "give"
You give and receive 3 kinds of gifts:
"I have 37 of those". Be gracious, then chuck it.
"But I never had a pink one... I want more pink in my dance."
"WOW! I never thought that existed. THANKS!"
______________________________
Crazy Fast Partner Intimacy
In "real" life - we keep our distance.
On the dance floor, "space" is
Inches, or an Inch, or a Micron
When we are feeling body heat, and
breathes, and heart beats...
We are Sharing Life Stories
Often with someone we don't know at all.
That can be scary and threatening.
We must strive to be gentle with that, always.
That can be HEAVEN
Partner MAGIC:
When you Become "One Body Dancing"
Have Fun
Make your Partner SMILE
Dance Like YOU!!!!!!
Using Dance Building Blocks:
You Learn By Dancing
To be an Experienced Dancer...
You Must Experience Dancing!
Particularly with Dancers Better than You
Connect & Converse on many Levels
Social – Emotional – Spiritual - Physical
Wiht Sublime 1/10 Second Connection!
Just ONE American Pop Song,
w/ 4 million variations
Intro – 8 bar phrases – Exit
Dance the phrases and you’ll be a Top Dancer!
34 of 38 Dance Basics
are just combos of Walking Slows & Quicks
Don’t let new Styles Scare You!
Walk w/ ATTITUDE, like a Panther
On the Dance Floor, almost always
LESS > MORE
These dance pros are dancing to dozens of different songs, but now to a song that was not written until decades later. How did they know how to do that? Because it is all
the SAME SONG!
Note: They are just walking and pausing MOST of the time. The pros! You can do that!
Note: If you can just walk like Rita at 0:48, you don't Need No Steps!!!
Rita Hayworth
Staying Alive
"Fight" With Your Partner
About Who is the Best
You're The Boss
Miranda Kerr - Bobby Fox
Ideas to do more of:
Leading: wait longer for long latency dancers to "get it"
Teach 4 dance styles in Sept. EC Boogie Country2 StudenPick
Lay FUN PLAY CONNECTION CONVERSATION
between the lines
Website restructure: Root Pages... keep SIMPLE
Go at least 2 layers DEEPER in links
Define better, for each
teaching / leading:
Beginner
Low connection
Mid Connection
Good Connection
Pro
Not your style
Need Etiquette - Tips
Asking / getting asked
Saying NO
Floor craft
Bad behavior VS bad person
Assume "bad night"