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 dancers #trainWCSsmarter and teachers #teachWCSsmarter, which we do thoroughly in our Swing Literacy training programs.
These articles are my way of contributing some free, bite-sized education to the community to help inspire and motivate with practical, actionable advice for your dancing & teaching.
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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 hard to see the forest for the trees. Beyond your local classes, what else is out there? And how do you know if it’s for you? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a diagram or flowchart showing all the components of this West Coast Swing world and how they fit together? Showing all the
MEN! You have questions, maybe you’re too shy to ask, or maybe you’re afraid of being judged for asking. Myles has heard it all, and is here to provide the answers! Champion leader Myles Munroe answers 21 probing questions from men who dance West Coast Swing, including 5 questions that everyone wonders about but avoids asking. There’s something
Every once in a while you experience something that shifts your perspective, and your world becomes more colourful, more vibrant, higher-definition. Suddenly the preconceptions you had are shattered like pieces of Lego, and you have a glorious opportunity to reconstruct them from scratch, with newfound wisdom. Emotionally, it could be the result of meaningful conversation,
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
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 improve You have to force yourself filter out the entertainment aspect It doesn’t provide
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 being ambi-dance-trous; channeling the teamwork aspect of the partnership rather than the relationship aspect. People venture here for a variety of reasons; There’s a role imbalance at their local dance scene and they
Enter your text here… Wanna improve your West Coast Swing? Social dancing isn’t enough. You need to actually practice. But practicing is actually a skill unto itself, one that most partner dancers never actually learn explicitly, so it ends up being resented, inefficient, or neglected completely. But you neeeeeed it and there are so many