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.
.
Be sure to scroll down to load more (pause to allow more to load)
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!
I wanna talk about a trap I see many intermediate and advanced dancers falling into with their musicality and expression: their flow-focused dancing actually backfires.Over the past decade, West Coast Swing trends leaned heavily toward smooth, flowy dancing.And that style is beautiful. I enjoy dancing in “flow mode” myself, and I regularly train students to
Recognize this scenario?In starting to lead a whip or Under Arm Turn, the leader steps forward instead of back on count 1. Most of us know this is a mistake. But why? And how do we fix it?It’s not as obvious as you thinkI posed this question in the Train WCS Smarter Facebook group (by accident,
Since there is no universal criteria for judging West Coast Swing competitions, if you’re like most competitors, you’re in the dark about what actual skills the judges are judging in Jack & Jills.Musicality as an art is subjective, but as a skill it’s quite easily defined. The question we get asked about it most often