Recently, a friend and former co-teacher sent me a song asking if it would be good for a lindy routine. Ignoring the fact that I don’t do lindy, I replied it would be fun but I had a little too much on my plate right now with trying to put together three performance routines and no less than ten routines for certification. Still, it got me thinking. Routines can be a lot of fun but they’re an enormous investment in time, energy, and money. Are they really worth it?
The Benefits
I generally encourage people to learn routines. Aside from being fun to watch and perform, they afford one the opportunity to real delve deep into a dance. In my last post, I remarked that dancers who focus on specialty dances seem to make much faster progress than dancers who learn a plethora of social dances – an observation few will argue with, as it’s only natural to expect that concentrated effort will yield faster results than diffused efforts. Learning a routine gives ballroom dancers the chance to make the same sort of dedicated progress that specialty dancers do. A full bronze routine, for example, often includes silver steps which means it will also require silver technique. More practice will be required to learn not only the steps, but to dance them at a level suitable for performance. The end result is the dancer makes a great deal of progress in one dance, even as he or she continues to study other dances for social or competitive reasons.
Another benefit of routines isn’t just increased ability with a dance, but understanding of the dance. Very few performanc routines limit themselves to syllabus figures, nor should they, and the inclusion of open choreography gives many dancers a greater understanding of the timing, flow, and feel of the dance.
A third reason to do a routine is the chance to dance in a way that one can almost never dance socially. There are some steps, for example, that are too risky or too difficult for lead and follow or that take up too much space, and so it is not only rude to dance them on a social floor, but dangerous as well. Many of the traveling dances cannot be danced to their fullest extension on social floors, or even on crowded competition floors, and a performance gives one the entire dance floor to enjoy the dance with.
The Drawbacks
On the other hand, routines take an enormous investment. Expect at least a half-dozen lessons per minute of choreography, and it is not uncommon to go beyond that number as later lessons focus more and more on execution and performance. A two minute routine might require two-dozen lessons, which can easily come to $1800 or more.
We often urge people to save money by practicing more so that lessons can be spent on new material and further refinement of old material, rather than relearning the previous lesson’s material. Unfortunately, there are very few places to practice routines. Many studios lack sufficient space for a big, traveling waltz routine, and even Latin dances may suffer from insufficient area. All this means that you will have a great deal of trouble practicing at home, or even in the studio if there are other lessons going on at the time. If you’re doing a pro-am routine, opportunities to practice together will be even more limited and expensive when they do arise.
Next, consider the opportunity to use a routine. Routines are often learned with a single event in mind. What do you do with the routine after that event? When I take a lesson in tango, I know I’ll be able to use what I’ve learned anytime I go social dancing, but when I learn a paso doble routine, I will need an entire floor to myself and specific music playing. Moreover, I’ll only be able to dance it with one partner. What happens if you spend two grand learning a routine, then there’s a falling out, an injury, or a loss of interest? Will you have learned enough to make the lessons worthwhile?
Yay or Nay?
I can’t tell you whether routines are worth it or not. To me they are. I have a great deal of fun learning and performing them, and the increased opportunity to really get in there on a dance is an enormous motivation. On the other hand, of the thirteen routines I’m doing at the moment, ten are simply collections of syllabus figures for certification exams, one I am saving money by choreographing myself before we get a coach to polish it, one is a pro-am routine that is taking the place of my regular lessons with that teacher, and the last is being reused.
If you’re interested in doing a routine, or your teacher suggests one, ask him or her, and yourself the following questions:
- How will this help my dancing?
- Will I have the opportunity to use this material again?
- What dance should I do? Why X and not Y?
- How many additional lessons will I need to purchase?
- What other expenses (registration fees, ball tickets, costumes, etc.) will be attached?
Tags: Goals, Lessons, Money, Performance
