Ballroom Dance Lessons

[GCurry]

Thanks Mummsie, you had probably explained that before, but I had forgotten the huge amount to competition you have in OZ. Gee, English Old Time? That sounds stately, and regimented but then so is new vogue.

I'm sure there are a lot of competitive serious dancers in Texas, I don't know any, but they are out there. I think it's great that you are positioning yourself to judge to keep involved with what has been a very big part of your life.

 

Well the count down has begun, the Curry's and 6 of their closest friends head for Hawaii next Monday. Two days on Oahu, and then ten days on the Wind. In spite of what you read on Norwegian reviews, there are at least on paper, two formal nights. Our party of eight will dress to the 9's (can someone explain that expression?) as one of our couples are celebrating a 20th anniversary. Formal wear takes up no more space then a suit, the rest of the time, we have no shortage of beach and tropical wear down here, and will we dance? "Seguro Que Si" yes we will. Also we'll have one more birthday dance this Friday.

[smoothdancer]

Oh the countdown!. I love when it gets to that point! It sounds like such a great vacation. I will go formal on our NCL cruise too... We will dress for any occasion, and I never let what other people wear stop us! I am sure you guys will all look great!

 

I am sure there are competitive dancers in Texas! I know of two large comps in Texas. One in Houston, so approproaitely called the "lone Star Classic!", another in Dallas. We have never gone ourselves, the timing just never fits our schedule.

 

I am running around trying to put a costume and stuff together for a showcase we are doing on Saturday Night.... Lucky for me my Mom is a fantastic seamstress, and retired! They just asked us to do this last week, so it has been tight finding music, deciding what to dance, ect... Around here there are not many competitors that are a married couple. Most dance with a pro..... We tend to recruit in new students for studio owners because when a couple sees us dancing they can relate to us and figure if we can do it they can do it too. I absolutley hate to dance in showcases, but being new members of the studio we agreed. Off to our lesson to try out the music... I picked "It is you" from the Shrek soundtrack. It is a beautiful waltz

[GCurry]

Smooth, what is a showcase and where?

Our area South of Houston, is social dancing, with not many people teaching, and none training competitors. Old Galveston, however, does a lot of black tie, social as well as benefits. The Mardi Gras balls are taking place right now, which are fun and festive.

Ole Lance did have a studio in Houston where he taught and trained competitors, he specialized in "styling".

 

Country & Western and Rock & Roll remain the most prevalent, but with DWTS, people are beginning to pay attention to ballroom.

[smoothdancer]

A showcase is a show/production that a dance studio will put on. Students will dance to a chorographed piece, to music taylored to the routine, full costumes, the whole nine yards! It is attended by the public, usually full houses. It will then end with a cocktail party, and dance. The last studio I belonged to had a few of these a year requiring weeks of rehersals, they would bring in professionals to do the lighting, props, ect...

 

The reason I dont like them is because you spend sometimes months perfecting this one rountine that when it is over has little value.... What are you going to do with it??? You cant social dance it, you cant compete it. Our showcase routines usually have a drop and a lift or two. (A no-no in comps!)

 

Also in some studios the students that are in the showcase, are by invitation... Asked to be in the show. I think that stinks, and could have a negative effect on a persons self confidence. I think all levels should have the opportunity to be in the show.

 

Many students however like showcases. It promotes a common goal of the studio, a chance to work on something new and exciting. This showcase is different... We will end up maybe spending two weeks of lessons on it and then move on.

[tropicalsunset]

GCurry: have a great cruise!! I wonder what they consider "formal wear" in Hawaii??!!

 

Smooth: that sounds like fun..!! our studio doesn't do anything like that... I hope you dazzle them!!

[GCurry]

Sounds like a marketing evening to me Smooth, all expenses charged as that no doubt. It's for certain you are only going to show potential customers your best. Quasimodo doing the Bell-ringer Shuffle, won't make it to the stage. Seeing you, they won't realize the time and practice it takes to dance as you do.

 

Tropical, formal wear in Hawaii, is probably a flower in your hair. But our four couples on ship will be tuxed up for the two formal nights. The rest of the evenings, I've got tropical shirts, white pants and huaraches.

We'll do Germain's Luau on Oahu, and the Old Lahaina Luau on Maui, so we should get that out of our system. Snorkeling at Fanning Island, Kona, and possible Oahu. Whale watching off Maui, and a drive to Waimea Canyon on Kauai. We'll have two rental cars on every island but Maui, and Fanning, of course. We saw some old daily's from the Wind, so we should be dancing every night.

[smoothdancer]

Oh man... I want to wear flower in my hair!... Your whites with a tropical shirt sounds great! Be sure to bring back pictures for us to see... Hey sneak me in a few pictures of the dance floors while you at it! I think I read on a previous post that you are bringing your digital and laptop

[Zajdie]

Anyone going to be dancing on the Queen Mary..8th March onwards for two weeks? Really looking forward to it now because we've all been ill with awful bugs that are going around here.

[tropicalsunset]

Zajdie: I checked out that itinerary... great... LA to Valparaiso!! 14 days... looks like a great cruise and a great deal!! please do give us a review when you get back... hope the seas are calm and there is great dancing onboard!!

one of my dream cruises is To S america... I really want to do a B2b and go all the way around.. tho' I understand it can be rough sailing..!!

 

Guess the flower in the hair would look so much better with an altogether tan!!! :) :) Sounds like you have some great excursions planned!!! ALOHA!!! And may you get lots of beautiful leis everywhere you go!!

[GCurry]

Tropical, it will come as no surprise to you that MSGCurry has arranged for her and her three friends to get lei'd as soon as they get off the plane. In any other state, this might generate some controversy, but we husbands were told it's perfectly acceptable in Hawaii. We get there at 2 pm and will board the ship after 3 on Wed.. In the mean time, we'll explore Oahu, climb Diamond Head, do a driving tour including Polynesian Cultural Center with a luau Tues. night. Wed. before boarding, the women finish Oahu with a visit to the Swap meet at Aloha Stadium for more tropical wear, while the men get bombed at Pearl Harbor, or something like that. We are staying at the Ohana Islander Hotel in Waikiki about a block off the beach. Ohana is Hawaiian for "cheap"!!

 

Thur., it's Hilo on Hawaii, driving the Hawaiian Volcano National Park and down to a black sand beach. As the ship sails that evening, we should get shots of the lava flowing into the sea. Half of this cruise (5 days) is spent going down to Fanning Island and back, but that is probably good, as we can use the rest. I can spend the time with cultural self improvement, by either reading Margaret Mead's "Coming of Age in Samoa", which is a pretty good description of Fanning Island, or, participating in the Martini Tasting Tour.

 

Smooth, yes, we'll have unlimited digital photo capacity, so I'll make it a point to "shoot" the ship especially the dance floors. It is interesting that the cruise lines seem to use the same ship designs in so many of their vessels.

 

Zajdie, have a great cruise to South America.

[tropicalsunset]

She's a special woman that lady of yours!!! ENJOY!!!

[Lisa141]

For those that dance on board ship, did you wear your dancing shoes or just regular shoes? I'm trying to decide if I want t take my dancing shoes for all my evening wear or regular soled shoes. Does it make any difference? Thanks!

[smoothdancer]

Just my opinion... But because the dance floors are not large you are neither taking large strides or multiple spins where a suede sole dance shoe would help. Having said that however I usually do bring a latin dance shoe, flesh color that I could wear with multiple outfits. I have noticed others in dance shoes as well, mostly the tee strap kind. I have had no problems dancing in regualr street shoes on a cruise.

 

By the way, welcome!

[GCurry]

We are taking shoes we can dance in, but not "dance shoes". The Grand Princess had good floors but they could not be called large, HAL also had some good ones.

We went to a 50's sock hop birthday party last night and had a lot of fun, music was an old Geezer who with a keyboard did a great job singing late 50's, 60's rock and roll. A DJ put on Latin and polkas during the breaks, so everyone was happy. One interesting aside, there were at least 5 dance instructors there, so things got pretty intertaining.

 

One more day of packing, and then a 9:20 flight to Honolulu!!

[smoothdancer]

Have great vacation!!! See ya in a few weeks.

[seadancer]

Hi Lisa

 

My wife and I use capezio dance sneakers .That way we're real comfi and not tearing up our nice dance shoes. Nobody but dancers would even have a clue.

 

Hope this helps

Jeff

[mummsie]

I always take my old latin sandals so it doesn't matter if they get wrecked. I have tried dancing in street shoes and it just doesn't work for me. I feel totally unstable and very slippery. I even tried a pair of flat ballet slipper type shoes and its impossible to dance in them even though they aren't slippery. I need a bit of a heel or it hurts to dance all night. Mummsie

[Lisa141]

Thanks for all the replies! Lots of food for thought. Now that I think about it, I really don't have shoes that are good for dancing except my danceshoes. Most of the shoes I would normally wear with my evening clothes are completely backless or slingbacks. I would probably step out of them on the dance floor and hurt myself! I have a great pair of Capezio danceshoes I have been using in my lessons. They are broke in and really comfy. The are a flesh/platinum, great neutral shoe I can wear with pretty much anything. I've been thinking of getting a black pair as well so I have some options. They certainly are not inexpensive and I would hate to ruin them but most of the cruise I will be indoors and hopefully they will be fine. We are cruising on Mariner of the Seas which has a latin dance club I am really excited about.:D

[tropicalsunset]

I wish I brought my dance shoes on my last cruise... there was a great dance band... and one night the strap slipped off the back of my heel and I nearly fell.. ( it definitely wasn't the martinis I had!!! :rolleyes: )

 

Mummsie: I can't wait until I've been dancing long enough to have "old" dancing shoes!!!!! :)

 

Lisa: how many more days ???

 

Lorraine

[tropicalsunset]

We had a dance class last night after being away for 5 weeks....:eek: :eek: My right leg is still a little stiff and it was difficult to balance and turn... but it felt good to be back...

 

Smooth: we had some great dancers doing some tricks, spins and lifts all around us... turns out they are training for a showcase that will be late April at our studio.. !!!

[clofty]

Hey everyone,

 

We went to a social dance held by Arthur Murray. It was tons of fun. We haven't danced since our cruise at Xmas. In fact cruises are the only time we get to dance and no we don't get to go on them very often! :(

 

However, my DH complained about keeping his arm up and his shoulder was aching. We had very tired feet after dancing for the majority of the 3 hours (but I wanted to make the most of it).

 

I had forgotten how to cross my feet in the natural turn for Viennese Waltz and so Ian (my husband and dance partner) was not getting around. :mad: We haven't had lessons for over 6 months and had forgotten our Tango routine except the first dozen steps.

 

We are desperate for new routines as the ones we are dancing are the basics we learned over 10 years ago. We have forgotten our 'twinkles' 'weave' and 'wing' in the Waltz. And we have forgotten most of our advanced steps in latin. We never really got the hang of Foxtrot all those years ago either!:rolleyes: But at least we can get out there and have some fun trying to remember.

 

Mummsie: I have a DVD here but it is New Vogue (sequence dancing) and I watched it on my kid's DVD player which plays PAL but it doesn't really help my steps. Boy do I miss the sequence dancing as the steps came back to me very quickly and I could do a Swing Waltz and Twilight Waltz in no time (don't know that the technique and footwork were spot on, but at least I was dancing some new steps:D ).

 

Got home and my kids had been fighting as we couldn't get a good sitter and just got a kid a couple of years older than my son and his sister. (It didn't work that well as my kids just fought with each other.) Next time I think I will hire a new 'you beaut' video game and leave them to it.

 

I am determined to try and get to the monthly dance now at least once every 2-3 months!:eek:

 

Meanwhile, think I will learn my steps from DVDs. Does anyone know of any good US ones? I have ordered some from Australia but have to play them on the portable DVD player and it may clap out any day.

 

With regard to shoes, since a lot of regular shoes have rubber soles, I get my bootmaker to add seude to the soles and that helps a lot.

[smoothdancer]

Now that makes more sense Tropical!. A little bit fimiliar with your dance studio I was suprised that they did not do showcases... Our performances went well... The "tricks" went fine, and then go figure we lost our footing on a basic step!.... I dont think anyone really noticed. The whole night was fun.

 

Clofty, I wonder if you have any tapes of you and your husband dancing. When we stop dancing certain steps for whatever reason we will look at our tapes and after a few tries we can pick the steps up again. If not, Dancevision.com has very good instructional DVD's.

 

It is really amazing just how much of your body you use in ballroom dancing...It takes work to hold up that frame!! As we approach our comp, we are taking lessons and dancing a lot.. We usually go about 4 or 5 days without a break. Well last night neither myself or my husband could muster up the strength to go out to practice again... We just both laid in bed and moaned about our acking bodies!! We are absolutley in shape, yet it still hurts!!

 

I dont have any old dancing shoes either.. I hate to break in new shoes and when I finally buy a new pair the old ones go into the trash!

[mummsie]

Hi Smooth, Sounds about how I feel. We had a good lesson last night. We have been having some problems with body position so we worked for quite a bit of our lesson on getting it right. It was such hard work though - you just get into bad habits. Will be interesting to see if we can carry it through for our practice tomorrow.

I usually have about 4 pair of shoes on the go at any one time. I keep 1 pair of court shoes and 1 pair of latin shoes just for comp work and another pair of older ones for training. At the moment I also have a pair of the lower training shoes as its the only thing I can wear with my achilles tendon problem. I don't find breaking in Supadance shoes that bad - usually only takes 1 or 2 wears. :)

My daughter has about the same amount - even though she's not doing latin at the moment - she usually wears her latin shoes when she is helping teach the kids class on a Saturday morning.

 

Clofty - we have Twilight coming up in our next comp in the open so have been doing some work on it. Would have to be one of my favourite New Vogue dances. We also have our least favourite in our graded event - The Tracy Lee.!!:eek: Next time I go to one of the bigger comps where they have stalls I will ask if you can get the New Vogue training dvd's in NTSC for you. mummsie

[Lisa141]

We just our docs today for the cruise! 30 days and counting! Now we really have to step up the lessons so we know more than just basic steps. Learning to dance has been very fun. Can't wait til we get really good at it.

[smoothdancer]

Lisa,

How exciting with just 30 days to go and new dance lessons under your belt! This was how we started dancing too. When we were getting ready to go on our first cruise (some 12 yrs ago) and I somehow talked my husband into dance lessons! I can still remember how much fun we had dancing on that first cruise, with not much more then some basic dance steps. It is always a learning in process no matter how many years you have been dancing. Have a great time, and where are you going, by the way?

 

I am asking everybody I can.... We host a non profit travel website and are in the process of doing a section on ballroom dancing on cruises. If you are bringing a camera coluld you bring back some pictures of dance floors for me? I am very interested in pictures of dancing at the captians party.

 

Thanks,

Smooth