Open Thread, July 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.

I want to be able to dance at weddings and parties, but I don't know how to break this down into a sequence of learnable subskills. To pick just one step that's not obvious to non-musical me: how do I tell what kind of dance fits the music that is playing? Do any of you have advice on how to quickly achieve a minimum viable level of competence?

how do I tell what kind of dance fits the music that is playing?

Lowest hanging fruit: You need to learn the difference between "1, 2, 3" and "everything else".

As an example, find "Hijo de la Luna" on YouTube and listen to the song. This is an example of the "1, 2, 3" rhythm -- I hope you hear it, because I can't describe it well in text. Often in this type of music, the "1" is accompanied with a drum, or is otherwise louder. On this music, you can only dance some variant of Waltz, nothing else. You shoul... (read more)

10iDante14y

I'd recommend beginner swing lessons. You'll learn all the basic turns, the basics of leading, how to fit moves in to a basic step, how to time the dance to the music. Many places have an hour lesson followed by several hours of social dance for cheap. Once you have these basic skills it's not too tough to learn new dances. Look up nightclub two step, that one works well with lots of types of music. I second blues dance lessons, though I don't really like blues. Learn basic jazz steps by looking up solo jazz routines and copying them.

1Alicorn14y

I'm pretty uncoordinated, and I found that I learned a lot in one well-executed blues dance lesson. According to the teacher, "going limp" is an acceptable strategy for a follow out of eir depth. If you're female (or willing to issue a short explanation to prospective dance partners), you could pick up a few ballroom dances for different numbered beats with a couple lessons per, as a follow, and then let partners pick what's going to happen.