| dance |
| Transform your life with ballroom dancing classes! |
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| d a n c e |
| karen mills |
Copyright (c) 2018 Karen Mills
If you are
I provide a fun, systematic, easy to understand, results-oriented approach to learning ballroom dance in focused 1-on-1 instruction (privates) for students who want to accelerate their progress in dance. I have been teaching ballroom for 10+ years and successfully taught 400+ total beginners how to dance and have radically improved the way intermediate to advanced dancers look and feel with my technique intensives. In 1.5 months, my beginner students are able to dance 4 ballroom dances and in 6 months, 8 ballroom dances! It's my passion to share my joy and love for dancing. My students benefit from the many years of training I have taken from top professional dancers - some not so good, some great. My teaching methodology is different from others. The way I teach is focussed on fundamentals - starting with the elemental building blocks of partner dancing. Similar to learning a foreign language, you would start with the abc's instead of starting by learning how to sing a song. You will eventually sing that song well but you will not understand what you are singing, let alone use the words for conversation, writing, or to create another song. This would be similar to learning a dance by memorizing the steps or choreography, with no understanding of the elements of connection, movement, posture, frame, dance positions, footwork, alignment, timing, character of the dance, leading and following etc. I am able to condense, simplify and produce results so that absolute beginners learn to dance the proper way, without the bad habits that will hinder you as you progress and have a lot of fun along the way! I will help you become an outstanding and popular social dancer and if you wish to compete, you will be prepared with the right skills to give you a head start. I emphasise techniques in posture, frame, dancing from your center, lead and follow skills, quality of movement - important foundation fundamentals which are then applied across the board in all partner dances. As a leader you will be able to lead clearly with confidence and style and feel good to the ladies. As a follower, you will be light and responsive, look good and feel good to the man. I believe learning right from the start especially with beginners, is going to save you a lot of time and grief in the future. Everyone knows how difficult it is to break bad habits. The best and easiest way is to learn it correctly from the start. I definitely suffered from not having accurate instruction when I was learning as a beginner and I know from first hand experience how difficult and how long it took me to overcome the bad habits I had acquired through the years. I incorporate technique in my teaching methods but provide it in a fun, easy and supportive environment so beginners are not over-whelmed with too much technical information and get plenty of time to dance. For the experienced dancers, I am your breakthrough coach. if you find yourself stuck, at a plateau, unhappy with the way you look when you dance or the way you lead or follow, I will get to the root of your problems, I don't believe in just fixing symptoms. I will equip you with exercises which will help develop the necessary muscles, coordination, balance and musicality you will need to be a beautiful, fluid, graceful and exciting dancer. Private Dance Lessons at
1:1 instruction is good for you if you are a fast learner and are bored in group classes or if you are a slow learner and get too overwhelmed in group classes or if you want to learn both the steps/patterns and proper technique at the same time. Privates are also the only way to improve your technical and artistry skills effectively. Learning steps only does not make you a dancer. You have only learned the mechanics of dancing. You are still dancing in a robotic way and are not looking good to others yet. You also won't feel good to dance with. Dancing is a natural expression of the music. This is where technique comes in – you cannot learn this by watching other dancers and copying what you see. What you see is an illusion just like in magic. Unless you are trained properly, you will not feel good to dance with and you can injure yourself and damage/injure your partner by incorrectly executing flashy moves. When it comes to learning technique, your mind may comprehend the concept but our bodies do not cooperate as easily or as accurately as we would like. This is natural. Our bodies are lazy and prefer to execute the motion which it's most familiar with. So to break a habit or learn a new movement, your body will need to develop new muscle memory through repetition and calibration with an external eye. I will be there to show you where your body needs to be and how to help your mind correct the movement. Then at group classes, practise sessions or dance socials, you can do the repetition necessary to get the technique into muscle memory. Only when your body has absorbed the technique into muscle memory can you be free to dance spontaneously to music and in harmony with your partner. This is what partner dancing is all about! This is artistry in dance which is where everyone aspires to be! Contact Karen at 661-450 8842 or karen@ricepaperart.com |
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