Learning to dance, especially ballroom dancing, doesn’t come naturally to most people. You have to learn the step patterns and you have to match them to the right timing so that you can dance together, plus you have to know how to lead or follow to move together. It’s a lot to think about! Naturally, that leads to common beginner mistakes in ballroom dancing.
In this 15-minute video, George and Wendy cover the 5 most common mistakes beginners make in ballroom dancing that we’ve seen while teaching some 4,000 lessons over the years. If you’ve never taken formal lessons, or if you’re just learning to dance, there’s a good chance that you’re making one of these five mistakes. We even encounter a couple of them with seasoned social dancers.
The most common mistakes
Trying to avoid your partner’s feet. There’s a natural reason why we do that. Men in particular are desperately afraid of stepping on a lady’s feet when ballroom dancing. So they move the upper body first when moving forward in an effort to move their partner away from them before they step. Likewise, when moving backwards the move the feet back while leaving the body in place. This causes the upper body to lean forward in both instances. The solution is to line up properly so that you don’t have to worry about stepping on your partner.
Stepping too big. Even when lined up, people generally try too hard to move, taking huge, ungainly side steps when first learning to dance. This looks unnatural and is awkward for both partners, making it hard to move together. While it’s true that professional couples move a lot, this is something developed over hundreds of lessons by learning to utilize natural forces like gravity, pendulum swing, efficient transfer of body weight and more. This allows greater movement without looking like it needs any effort. That’s the key! You never want to look as if you are working hard when dancing. So take small side steps and you’ll look relaxed and comfortable, giving the impression that you’re an experienced dancer.
Looking down. It’s pretty common to look down at your feet when first learning ballroom dancing. In fact, this happens even with experienced dancers. It ruins your posture and puts a lot of extra strain on your back. Plus, it doesn’t actually help, because your partner is usually doing something completely different from what your feet are doing. Line up properly and trust your feet. You’ll look great in the process.
Leading with the arms. This is a common problem with leads. They use their arms to lead rotational movements. This is very uncomfortable for your partner! Arm leads feel very different from leads that happen from the core with the arms simply matching what the core is doing. Think of all rotational leads coming from your belly button. Allow your partner to follow your belly button through the rotation and let the arms travel with that rotation. She’ll be comfortable and will know exactly what you are intending, and how far you want the rotation to go.
Anticipating the next action. This mistake is very common with follows. It’s somewhat natural for the follow to connect the dots, going through a figure and thinking that they know what comes next. Then they decide to act on the next figure, believing that starting it earlier will make it better. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make things better. It causes the lead to get frustrated because he has his own plan for what comes next and you may well have hijacked his plan. In many cases, he now has to quickly change his plan and follow the partner while restructuring a new plan, all while the music is playing and while he is also thinking about his own technique and watching the space on the floor to find suitable space. It makes the dance much more challenging, and if you’re the follow you’ll find that you didn’t perform that next figure any better in any case. So allow the lead for the next action to begin in order to keep everything more fluid and natural when you’re ballroom dancing.
There you have it: the 5 most common beginner mistakes in ballroom dancing. If you’re interested in learning to dance, check out our group classes or contact us for private lessons or more information.
The post Video: The 5 Most Common Beginner Mistakes in Ballroom Dancing first appeared on Delta.Dance.
