Dancing Through the Recession

Happy New Year, dancers!

I hope you all had as great a time New Year’s Eve as I did.  NYE is one of the best nights of the year for dancing.  In addition to all the great dances hosted by dance groups and studios, it’s also one of the best opportunities to take our dancing public and show our friends and family what we can do.  This year I spent NYE at a local ballroom club where a friend of mine was DJing, then New Year’s Day went to a beautiful studio down in Delaware for a dance where a new friend of mine re-introduced an old friend to dancing.  And what a perfect time, too.  The new year is a great time to reevaluate your dancing and decide how you want to approach it for the next three-hundred-odd days.

My challenge to every one of you this year is to expand your dancing to an area you’ve never tried before.  Some areas to consider include:

• Competition.
• Showcase dances.
• Teaching.
• Medal testing.
• Certification examinations.
• Going pro.

We’ll touch in on those points throughout the year, but now, let’s talk about how you can get started.

My first experience with dancing was back in high school, but I didn’t get serious until college.  In fact, I didn’t really get serious until after college, but I was enabled by a college ballroom club.  In fact, without the Beloit College Ballroom Dance Club and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Ballroom Dance Association, I probably wouldn’t even be dancing today.

One of the lesser known aspects of university dance groups is that they’re often open to non-students.  UWMBDA is a leader in the Madison-area ballroom dance community.  While other universities aren’t quite as prolific in their local communities as UWMBDA, I’ve attended dances by the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Rutgers, Princeton, and University of Maryland, all without being staff or student.  University clubs often offer social lessons and competition coaching, often at very low cost, to members of the community.  If you’re not taking advantage of these opportunities then I strongly urge you to reconsider.

One of the biggest impediments to getting involved with a university dance group is age.  Many prospective dancers consider themselves unsuitable because they’re not students or  no longer college-age.  Don’t let this stop you!  As previously stated, many dancers in these communities have no formal tie to the university.  Furthermore, because universities include students of all ages (especially in graduate programs) , your age may not be typical but it’s unlikely to be particularly noteworthy.

A typical university dance program works on a membership basis.  Typically, dancers pay a certain fee per year or semester.  In return, they gain access to dance classes and social dances, either for free or at significant discount.  In addition, if the university sponsors a competition team, the dancer gains access to those lessons and practices as well, and often discounts on private lessons with the team’s coach(es).  Competitions may also be subsidized to assist with travel, registration fees, hotels, etc.  Teams often maintain collections of costumes for use in competitions or performances.  Finally, they can provide a great feeling of camaraderie that can be lacking in studios if your interests don’t precisely align with that of the other students (i.e. being a competitive dancer in a social studio or vice-versa, dancing amateur in a pro-am studio, etc.).

Once you’ve decided to join a college team, a little internet research is often all that’s needed.  A Google search on “[name of college] ballroom dance” will often be all the research required.  E-mail the club president and ask how you can get involved.

Happy New Year and happy dancing!

This entry was posted on January 2, 2011 at 12:01 AM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.