about LaurieAnn , Dance History , teaching dance
Continued from previous post: People started asking us if we were doing some new state of the art disco partner dance and if we were teachers. That was the seed of an idea to start teaching dance. This was the time of a wonderful bay area phenomenon called the free university. Anyone could teach any […]
Continue readingabout LaurieAnn , Dance History , dancing with physical challenges , leading and following
People frequently ask me how I got started in this business. Actually, there is a lot that lead up to it. I folk danced in grade school and square danced in high school, but I really didn’t start to dance socially until I was in college. Singularly unpopular in high school, I never went to […]
Continue readingabout LaurieAnn , dance videos , dancing with physical challenges , inspirational dancing , leading and following , performance dance , social dancing , teaching dance , west coast swing
When my dance students are learning the skill of following, I often suggest they close their eyes. Closing your eyes takes away a lot of the urge to back lead, and it brings forward the senses you use to feel the lead. Even when social dancing, I often close my eyes because it’s relaxing and […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , social dancing , teaching dance
What’s the most romantic thing you can do on this day of romance? Well, yeah, go dancing of course! And if you don’t know how to dance? Well, if you’re a guy who’s with a woman who loves to dance, then take her out for a romantic dinner and give her a gift certificate for […]
Continue readingabout LaurieAnn , Connecting Socially , Dance History , dance videos , leading and following , Lindy Hop , same sex dancing , social dancing , teaching dance
Switching the Lead and Follow in Partner Dance When both partners know how to lead as well as follow, dancers can switch roles during a dance. This is truly the ideal solution for people who are worried about sexism in the roles of lead and follow, but not everyone wants to learn both parts. Yes, […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , social dancing
In last week’s post about obnoxious dance partners I neglected to mention that lack of eye contact doesn’t always come from a swelled head. Sometimes it’s a sign of shyness and it’s hard to tell the difference. One year at a dance camp in Sweden I asked a man to dance. I was watching […]
Continue readingabout LaurieAnn , Connecting Socially , leading and following , same sex dancing , teaching dance
A New Year’s Eve dance included a brief dance lesson for people who didn’t know how to do a basic waltz step. The instructor kept making a big deal about how the men should be leading even though he gave no instruction in how to lead, or follow for that matter. “Who’s the boss on […]
Continue readingabout LaurieAnn , Connecting Socially , cutting in , dance videos , inspirational dancing , leading and following , Lindy Hop , performance dance , same sex dancing , social dancing , teaching dance , west coast swing
The wonderful video at the end of this post from 1995 inspired me to write about these dancers because they were both a huge influence in my early dancing years. Sylvia Sykes was my teacher for the first six years I studied Lindy Hop and she, along with her partner Jonathan Bixby, also introduced […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , dancing in the golden years , dancing with physical challenges , inspirational dancing , social dancing , teaching dance
Now that you’ve read about Jean Veloz and other inspirational dancers who are still dancing in the final years of their lives, I’d like to take a look at how most dancers deal with the aging process. I addressed this earlier in Nov 12 post about the great tap dancer Fayard Nicolas When Aging […]
Continue readingleading and following , social dancing
I know a dance teacher who feels strongly that the whole concept of leading and following is sexist. She is trying to teach Lindy Hop as an equal partnership where no one is in charge of the dance. It’s an interesting subject, and I have very strong feelings on the subject as well. It is […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , cutting in , leading and following
Stealing is the art of slipping gracefully into someone else’s dance and stealing their partner. Ideally, you do this so artfully that the stollen partner hardly knows how it happened and the former partner can’t figure out why they are suddenly alone. It’s a version of cutting in, but more playful and requires considerable […]
Continue readingdance videos , inspirational dancing
What is it about real masters that makes their dancing so irresistible to watch? It’s not that they make it look easy. It’s that they make it look effortless. Some dancers have it and some don’t, but the difference is striking. Ruby Keeler was a prolific movie star who made a ton of musicals in […]
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