All right. Most of you know I’m in the process of trying to get my life in order, get a job, get out, become a human BEING.
I was thinking, perhaps once I get a steady job, get some income, etc, of taking swing/ballroom dancing lessons.
For several reasons:
1-I LOVE swing music, big band, etc and I’d LOVE to know how to dance to it
2-I don’t really have any friends right now, and it would probably be a fun way to meet people
3-it would be good exercise
I found a good website: www.pittsburghswing.com that lists events and lessons.
I found swing dancing to be one of the easiest dances to learn, and one of the most fun. Dance classes are a great way to meet people – my wife and I are together primarily because we took a dance class together and started going dancing outside of class to practice. I also recommend learning some waltz and some salsa.
As an aside, a friend of mine runs a dance website called http://www.bustamove.com which has ballroom dancing partner matching and event locators for different areas. (They also have little video lessons which are pretty cool – good for remembering moves you’ve forgotten or adding new moves to your repetoire.) Might be useful.
Guin, you’re fairly young, right? You should take a look at the collegiate ballroom dance programs in your area. If you’re in Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon has a very active team, which accepts non-CMU affiliate members. It’s almost certainly the cheapest way to go in terms of getting good instruction, and being part of a team is a lot of fun and a good social opportunity. You’ll also get more opportunities to practice, which is an important part of honing your skills.
Most schools have stuff geared both for “social” dancers and for competitors. Personally, I prefer competition, but social dancing is also fun.
(But then, I happen to like dance classes). Still, even if you end up hating it, it’s generally a short committment (6-8 weeks), and you will still have a useful skill at the end of the time.
If you love it, then it’s incredibly fun. I’d also recommend looking at the local colleges and seeing if they have ballroom or swing dance classes/groups/dances. They will most likely be cheaper than non-college-affiliated groups. And they might be younger (especially for ballroom).
As far as paying - many of the places I took lessons offered some people to opportunity to work for the organization in exchange for lessons - which meant more meeting people, more possibility of friendships (assuming you liked the people) and a lower cost.
I know Philly has a swing-dance group that does weekly or monthly dances, with instruction the first hour for newbies, then a general dance after – a lot of people go stag or doe. I’ve been a couple of times, though not recently, and it’s a friendly crowd, a lot of fun. It wouldn’t surprise me if you couldn’t find something similar way out west there.
Do it, Guin! You’re right – good exercise, good way to meet people, and great fun.
From the dancing perspective, my advice is to find some lessons where they don’t just teach moves, but also good lead/follow technique, and that have you dance with different people. For some classes, you pretty much have to have a regular partner, and then you only know a small set of memorized moves. Learn good dance posture and technique and how to follow, and you can dance with anybody that has a decent lead. Makes for fun social dancing.
Learn as many different dances as you can, too. It helps keep you from ever getting bored with it.
I started out taking partner lessons at a place that did mostly country dances, but there’s a lot of overlap in swing and ballroom (which I do also). The typical big band swing music will go with variations of Single Swing (East Coast Swing, Lindy, Jive, Jitterbug, etc). But here’s one more suggestion – once you learn some of the easier dances, find somebody that teaches West Coast Swing. It’s an awesome dance (but rather different from the Jitterbug-type dance) – slower and sexier.
This is interesting! My SO and I just had our first ballroom dancing lesson tonight! It was a lot of fun! I have 2 left feet, but we decided we wanted to do something fun together, and settled on this. We’re taking lessons at McMAster university. He’s a student there, but Ihave to pay more. Still worth it, though.
We learned the basics of the foxtrot, the merengue and the “triple jive” (?)(which I am terrible at!). I’m ok with the merengue, but its not all that tough…unless theres more to it than we covered tonight. There were a lot of people there, but this one was a “freebie” lesson where people could see if they were interested, so it might empty out a little next week. There were more men than women in our group, too, which was kind of odd, and there was quite an age range! 20-50 at least! Very interesting group.
I totally recommend it. I can’t wait til next Friday for the next lesson…I need to get my hands on some good-old cheesy ballroom music and practise
Let me point out that you already ARE a human being. I recall from past threads that your’re looking to get back into school, correct? Save your money, get back into school, and take a dancing class as a PE credit.
