Maybe some people feel more comfortable learning the basics in the comfort of their homes? I'm assuming this is the pre-VHS/DVD era where people can't buy videos and learn the basic steps.
Hey it's like what I always say... go with what works for you! I learn differently at school for instance than with Ballroom. So, you need to find what works for you and just enjoy it!
Er, a quick check on this forum should turn up many comments discussing how 'steps' have little or nothing to do with learning how to dance...
oops, sorry SPratt74, didn't mean to put you on the spot, I was just thinking from the business perspective of why would this model work. saludas, i agree that "steps" have little to do with learning how to dance but for newbies, it's a confidence booster and it gives them bit of feel of what dancing is like. Believe it or not, some people find it very intimidating to walk into a studio and knowing just a few simple steps may make the difference and give them the courage they need to walk through the door.
I agree.... I've seen couples who were taught east coast swing for their first lesson (easy dance to pick up)... they left feeling like they were naturals at dancing. Whereas couples who try to learn cha cha or foxtrot usually end up leaving and not coming back at all.
Now that's not necessarily true lol. I actually am probably one of the few beginners that love the fast dances. I rock at all of the different kinds of Swings in fact and the Cha Cha is my dance lol! It's the slow dances that are giving me a harder time than what I had thought to begin with. Go figure!
Of course, in the fast dances, you can't hold a bad position, you work through it. It is in the slow dances that all the little things become apparent!
There actually could be some benefit to having the material set out before you, especially if you can take that home with you. It's certainly possible to teach a hands-on lessons where the student leaves feeling like they have danced, but they don't have the first idea how to recreate that without the teacher. My biggest concern with putting footsteps on the floor would be that it encourages an emphasis on placing the foot rather than sending the body. But that emphasis, and the resulting way in which intermediates hit a plateur until they abandon it, seems to get included in most hands on teaching anyway, so...
I don't think you can worry about sending the body till there is at least some sense of where the feet are that you are sending the body above.
Yes, but I often see something in beginners' lessons that I don't quite understand. Someone will be doing a box step or something and their movement will be so odd and awkward. There's no way they walk down the street that weirdly. Is there something about the way beginning dance is taught that makes people move worse than they usually do, or is it a necessary stage to go through, sort of one step back and two steps forward (metaphorically)?
When the over-riding concern is with putting the foot in the proper place, the body tends to stay over the standing foot until the moving foot is placed, which is contrary both to standard/smooth technique and ordinary walking. And counter productive, too, if the goal is to avoid stepping on your partner - move your body and she moves out of your way, but stick out just your foot and you may well find hers. Leaders do need to learn the geography of the figures they are working on. But to dance with another person, it is necessary to learn to set two bodies into joint motion. Figure that out and you can eventually make up your own material anyway. There can be a lot of benefit to taking a single repeating basic step in amercian foxtrot or rumba and dancing it over and over and over again, until the brain goes to sleep and the feel of moving in that style settles in.
I think that you do need to break it down. When you are walking, you already have in your subconcious how it works, and it just happens. You have to re-learn to move when you start to dance. (At least IMO)
I just thought I'd post a comment that perception of cost is a relative thing that is going to vary from person to person. One of my co-workers, who apparently took dance lessons in NYC (not ballroom, some other forms of dance), informed me this morning that I'm paying way to much for private lessons. I pay $65 per lesson, and I think that's a bargain! She said I could get instruction much cheaper in NYC. She also said that anything over $5 was way to much for a group class. My thinking is - you get what you pay for.
Well, I wouldn't pay more than 5/10$ for a quickie group lesson before a dance night in a bar. But that is a special case.
Fascination and I actually had a closely related converstaion on the phone the other night. One of the things we ended up discussing was that, aside from person-to-person variablility, location is a major factor... not only in the sense of what the going local rate is, but also in terms of what it's worth to work with higher level/visiting instructors, etc. If you're in a fairly dense dance market that makes it much easier to pcik and choose how much you are willing to spend and on who. In more remote dance markets there can be little choice if you want to take lessons, especially higher level ones.
