Connecting 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 , 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 readingabout LaurieAnn , teaching dance
My friend Michelle Moquin dresses people (not necessarily dancers) for a living, a happy solution for people who need to look good but have no idea how to dress themselves. That was me at the beginning of my career. If you know me, you may find this surprising because I’m known for my unique and […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , dancing in the streets , Lindy Hop , music for dance , performance dance , social dancing , teaching dance
Dance and music are intrinsically linked. My favorite dances are the ones that arise organically from the music, street dances like Lindy Hop and Hip Hop. There is something special about a dance that makes a dancer out of someone who fell in love with the music, as opposed to a dance with rigid rules […]
Continue readingdance videos , dancing animals , rhythm
Dancing in infancy, these babies demonstrate human rhythm as nature intended. [embedplusvideo height=”388″ width=”640″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/Ibg9gM” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/to7uIG8KYhg?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=to7uIG8KYhg&width=640&height=388&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep5108″ /] I’ve blogged in the past about animals, like cockatoos, that have a real sense of rhythm, and inherent in that concept is the supposition that it is also […]
Continue readingabout LaurieAnn , Connecting Socially , social dancing , teaching dance
I specialize in working with people for whom learning to dance is a huge challenge. We all have things we do easily and things that are particularly difficult. Especially when we are challenged by that which we see others do with ease, it’s tempting to focus on what we have yet to master and fail […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , leading and following , same sex dancing
Leading and following are very different skills and most people are either natural leaders or natural followers. Not unlike the rest of life, you have about a 50/50 chance of falling into the category society has assigned to your gender. If you’re heterosexual, you won’t have much opportunity to dance if you choose the non-traditional […]
Continue readingConnecting Socially , dance videos , teaching dance
I teach a lot of freestyle dance because it’s the one kind of dancing you need as a basic social skill. It will never go out of fashion because it requires no skill except the very rare and useful attribute of not caring what other people think of the way you dance. The people who […]
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