Speaking of dance lessons, we were discussing taking dance lessons again in January, and once again, another couple who would otherwise be interested in taking the lessons will not be taking them because the class makes everyone switch partners. The only response I have for people who don’t want to switch is that they will learn the dances better with other leads and follows, but their response to that is they only want to learn to dance with their spouse anyway, so what do they care if they don’t learn it well enough to dance with anyone else?
Does anyone have any better responses to people who refuse to take a dance class because they have to switch partners, and are not interested in anything beyond recreational learning?
Ok, as a single guy, I’m going to try and take a dance class when I’m in town.
But I’m also here to offer a caution. I had a male friend, single, who started taking country line dance lessons. He really liked the line dancing and found that as a single male he was quite popular. He was meeting women, meeting new friends. Pretty soon he was staying out late 3-4 nights a week line dancing, he was spending money on new clothes and boots and hats, showing up late for work, spending his weekends going out of town for line dancing competitions, etc. He realized he had an addiction to line dancing was really getting in the way of his life.
With the rare exception of a dance instructor who’s willing to teach couples either on an individual basis or in small groups, I’d say their only option would be to spend hundreds of dollars on private lessons if that’s the level of individualized instruction they want to get. That, or start trying out instructional videos in the privacy of their home … ? (not suggested)
BTW, I’d guess that most teachers, even if they typically say “change partners” for the general class, will not throw a couple out if they don’t. For that stubborn husband/wife pair who don’t want to even dance with another human being, there are probably many classes in which they can just hang on to each other and let the switching person from the couple upstream move on past them.
I get a lot of my dances from UK sites. They have the coolest moves and the best music to go with the dances.
Hehe…me too, you sound just like me. I have been taking lessons since I was little, jazz, ballet and in HS gymnastics, but only started with the ballroom and stuff about 12 years ago.
I’ve never had teachers make people switch partners, by forcibly moving people around. It’s always been announced that we would be switching and then highly suggested to people that they do switch (and explained why people should switch). But there are almost always couples who just dance with each other. If everyone were doing that, it would be a problem, but it’s usually just a few couples.
The dance class that we would like people to take with us didn’t used to force people to switch in the past, but people were dancing so badly and complaining about it that the organization decided to make partner-switching mandatory. I just need better arguments to tell people who are thinking about taking lessons why they need to get the hell over themselves and just switch already.
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