Hi, Tessa here. Since 2002, I've been writing advice articles for West Coast Swing from my perspective as a WCS Champion and 30 years as a professional teacher and coach. My mission is to help teachers #teachWCSsmarter and dancers #trainWCSsmarter, which we do thoroughly in our Swing Literacy training programs.
But these articles are my way of contributing some free, bite-sized education to the community to help inspire and motivate with practical, actionable advice.
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I highly encourage everyone to leverage these free resources by sharing them in your community groups and with friends you know who could use them. Enjoy!
It’s great to see students all over the world taking the initiative to practice on their own. Practice of personal movement skills is part of a balanced diet of partner dance learning and skill development, regardless of your ambition level. We are strong advocates of “homework”: once you learn your skills in your lesson, you need
As an educator, I spend most of my time trying to make learning enticing: convincing kids to want to learn more. They want to freeplay, but there are so many life skills that they need to learn that are mundane or challenging. As a dance teacher, most of the time I get to teach people who
I love that while our dance evolves as fast as technology, we use technology to evolve our dance. YouTube is a great source of inspiration, but for the most part, a horrible teacher:YouTube doesn’t know what you need to improveYou have to force yourself filter out the entertainment aspectIt doesn’t provide the irreplaceable hands-on learningBut since this
Private lessons are a mystery to many dancers, not just the newbies. Veteran dancers tend to forget this valuable resource that can help guide them through the tough phases in their dance development and achieve their goals. Let’s demystify and help you understand exactly:Who can benefit from Private LessonsWhy you should bother considering themWhere you should
The longer you dance, the more embedded your habits become. You may have inadvertently adopted a style that is not only not what you intended, but is actually contrary to your personality and is holding you back. Your friends are too nice to tell you or aren’t able to explain it accurately enough to make
Once your dancing stabilizes in one role (leader/follower), you might consider learning the opposite role. West Coast Swing is increasingly encouraging of ambi-dance-terity, channeling the teamwork aspect of the partnership rather than the relationship aspect.People venture here for a variety of reasons;There’s a gender/role imbalance at their local dance scene and they are tired of