Learning to Dance is Difficult, Do Not Get Discouraged                                                               by Michele Rasmussen

If you have never danced with a partner before,  be kind and patient with yourself. Dancing with another person can be a difficult activity to master, but is well worth the awkward and often frustrating beginnings. Do not compare yourself to other dancers. Some adults were little ballerina's or tap dancers. Others grew up spinning on their heads! Some of us have perfect balance, while others are naturally more clumsy. Accept who and where you are on your own personal dancing journey.

The most important thing that you can do to improve your own dancing is to practice. Start with your most basic step. Do it over and over and over, until you can repeat it without having to think about it. Repetition is key and make certain that you are practicing the steps correctly because you are creating muscle memory. It is much easier to learn to dance correctly right from the beginning, than it is to go back and retrain yourself to do something differently than you first learned it. You create either correct or incorrect muscle memory and, in my opinion, it is easier to just learn it correctly right from the start. 

Do not compare yourself with any other dancer. Pick one aspect, say the size of your dance steps, and work  diligently on that.  What your comparison should be is: "Am I doing this better this week, than I was last week?", NOT am I doing this better than "Miss Ballerina" at the end of the row. Ask yourself: "Am I personally improving?",  "Am I able to consistently achieve the result that I am striving for?"  Do not ask yourself if you are "As good As" any one else.

When you feel as though you have reached your goal, it is time to move on to another portion of the same step. Suppose you have the "size" of your step just perfect, but you notice that you just clomp it down onto the floor. Spend the next week "placing" your foot onto the floor.  Now you are working on two aspects, not just one.

1. The size of your step  2. The way your foot lands on the floor.

If you continue on your journey in this manner, slowly building and adding skills, and only comparing what you are doing now vs what you were doing when you began, you are sure to develop into a competent dancer. Enjoy the journey and allow yourself to make mistakes and laugh about them. Do not become discouraged, dancing is a great social activity with the added benefit of exercise! Hang in there and it won't be long before you will be Dancing Like a Star!

For those of you that have trouble remembering what you learned in dance class, we have a variety of dance instruction that is broken down step be step. Visit  www.LovetoDanceOnline.com for more information.