This is not aimed at you, small weird offspring of mine. No, it's aimed at YOU, my dancerly friends and acquaintances.
Stop trying to grow up so fast.
Ballroom dancing is a great, social, musical, fun, athletic thing to do.
It is also a technical, PROGRESSIVE, CUMULATIVE skill to learn.
I promise, PROMISE, PROMISE that feeling a sense of prowess in one level will make the next level of dancing possible/easier/pretty.
I know that those more advanced levels look super fun, everyone else is doing it, and you can totally do it.
In time.
So many of you dolls see one amazing Open Professional event and want to copy it the next day. [You can also sub in "Dancing With The Stars Routine" or "scene from a movie" or "this thing I saw in the club" or even "instructional video" for "Open Professional event".] Even if you could replicate the steps, can you do them with the technique that has been honed with hours and hours of practice?
Any of the situations above are GOALS, y'all: be That Guy in the club (with all the sweet moves who all the ladies want to dance with), look like Edita and Mirko (oh, that hair), have a sexy transformation like [insert nerd character from any dance movie] in [that one dance movie], perform a routine that gets a 10 from any judge, etc.
But like any skill, you have to learn the basics.
For comparison, imagine you walked into a ballet studio and said, "I just watched Swan Lake and want to do that. So, teach me how to do that." That, meaning, dance in pointe shoes.
Seven years later, after working at the barre in one of five positions for HOURS AND HOURS, you might be in pointe shoes doing a mediocre version of some of the choreography from Swan Lake.
[AND WHO DOESN'T WANT TO DO POINTE WHEN THEY SEE BALLET?! IT'S SO AWESOME!!]
A Quiz
Circle that which most applies:
1) Do you remember learning how to read? Probably not, but your parents do.
A) English is confusing.
B) How do you not remember that word that you just read three words ago?!
C) Did you have to sound out "the" ONE MILLION TIMES before you recognized that it was "the"?
D) Did you have to read "The Cat in the Hat" before reading Shakespere, or even Nancy Drew books?
E) All of the above
2) Likewise, a sports reference:
A) Could you catch a ball the first 200 times you tried?
B) When you did catch that ball, was it bigger than the total volume of your body?
C) Could you throw with ANY accuracy the first 200 times you tried?
D) When you could finally catch that ginormous ball, did you try and fail with a slightly smaller ball 200 times before you could mostly catch and throw with some skill?
E) All of the above
It's E. E is the right answer.
As much as we'd like to think our learning curves accelerate as we get older, they don't.* Ask yourself how many times you've really done that box step, the underarm turn, the progressive change step, a twinkle; how many times have you REALLY practiced your Latin motion, or your rise and fall.
You have to do it SO MANY TIMES before you really know it.
And if you go on to something that looks fancier before you master that thing that is simple, it will be so not fancy and SO HARD.
And you'll do it wrong for SO LONG.
And then you'll have to master the thing anyway, just using more complicated steps and TIME.
And you'll get frustrated trying to break the bad habits that you formed by doing the thing the wrong way and you'll ask why you didn't learn it correctly the first time.
MAYBE, your instructor was trying to teach you the right way and you didn't want to do it. I've lost students because I wouldn't move them up to a level when they weren't ready for it. More than a few of them have sheepishly told me I was right in trying to pound in the basics, albeit years later.
WINNING.
[Maybe your instructor doesn't know the right way, or knows an old way, or is holding you in a level too long, or doesn't care about quality, and that's fine, as long as it's okay with YOU. But if you're looking to master a skill and progress, then choose your instructor wisely.]
The problem is it probably seeeeeeems like you've been at your level forever and everyone else is moving up soooooo fast, but let's do some research:
- how often do you practice/take lessons?
- how much experience do you have in athletic movement? do you have a high level of body awareness?
- compared to "everyone else", ask yourself the same questions.
- and those "everyone else" people, do you want to dance like them, or do you think they're moving up before they're actually ready?
For reference, while practicing 5-10 hours a week (I'm a little obsessive), I was in Beginning level for 6 months, Bronze for 2 years, and Silver for 3+ years after doing elite gymnastics for 10 years before I started teaching. [I'll go over the teaching journey another day.]
Conquer your level with amazing excellence. Know all the names for all the steps. Dance those steps without a partner. Learn the techniques, not only in your head, but your body as well. Practice all of that 1000 more times.
Stay children for a little longer, my friends. Take your naps. Recite your ABCs. And remember those teenage years? Let's try to avoid those all together.
*And that's science.
Three years ago: 'Tis the Season, in which I reference Tron.
Riot and Frolic 