Riot and Frolic

a mostly ballroom dance, but also a bunch of other stuff, blog

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about

I own and rock people’s faces off teaching ballroom dancing at Dancers Studio in St. Paul, MN. My husband and I compete professionally in American style and wrangle eight children in our spare time. I’ve been teaching and competing in ballroom dancing for over 25 years and have lots of opinions on it. I am an expert by any means, but there are quite a few dancers who are better than me and I have a solid knowledge of basic technique, so suck it.

Month: May 2022

  • The Perfect Storm : a Group Class

    I have taught many group classes.  I've underestimated it to be around 3,000 group classes.  Beginners to advanced, 3 to nearly 300 people, teacher training, formations, weird gigs at corporate events, high schoolers, collegiate… you name it. And like a sailor at sea, there's calm days that go according to plan, and there's disasters that…

  • “More” Dancing

    I've noticed a phenomenon in syllabus levels of ballroom dance competitions where a couple (or a student, in a pro-am situation) will make several cuts in competitive events and as they get closer to the final, their dancing changes.  Their dancing becomes MOAR.   MOAR ARMS. MOAR SMILES. MOAR HIPS. MOAR BIG. MOAR DANCING. And…