If you’ll excuse the pun, the first few steps are the hardest – we know that because we’ve been there.
Just like you we were intimidated because all the other dancers looked so good, we were at a loss about what to do, and we didn’t know how to take part or what to say.
Here’s what we’ve discovered.
Let’s start with the basics:
Usually a friend has taken you, willingly or otherwise, to a local hall to keep her company and learn to dance modern jive. You haven’t heard or seen modern jive dancing before but, hey, there’s usually a bar so it can’t be too bad.
The good news is that most venues, either Ceroc or similar, have a standard format consisting of a beginner's dance lesson, then an intermediate dancer lesson followed by social freestyle dancing, so you quickly pick up what happens and how.
At the 45 minute beginner/warm up class you learn three or four basic moves followed by 15 minutes of social freestyle dancing to practice the moves.
Freestyle dancing is a big part of the evening’s fun. This gives everyone, beginner and experienced, the opportunity to practice moves, and as most dancers change partner after each track you get the chance of dancing with lots of different guys. This short freestyle is usually followed by a 30-minute intermediate class teaching more complicated moves, while beginners have a separate class to practice their basic moves.
The evening finishes with about an hour and a half of social freestyle dancing, changing partners, resting when you need to, but definitely not being a wallflower!
Without doubt we all find the first six months the most difficult, but stick with it, try to learn at least one new move a week. It adds up to a whole Aladdin’s cave of fun.
We found that by going to two classes a week for about 4 to 6 weeks we soon learnt the basics and knew enough to move up to intermediate level and feel confident about freestyle dancing. If you work at it and feed your addiction with lots of practice it really is that quick!
So over to you, give it a try and see if you get hooked
– go on we dare you.
