I wanted to find a date night for my husband's birthday and I got bored of dinner and movies. So I had a classic bad idea: "Hey, we haven't danced since our wedding! I LOVE dancing! Let's try dancing again! OK, maybe dancing isn't HIS favorite activity, but I'm the one scheduling it, right? What choice does he have?"
This birthday outing was basically a bowling ball with the name Erin on it.
A did a quick web search and found that on Friday nights, the Dance Scene has an hour lesson on a short routine within a style followed by a dance party (they're separate admission fees but can be combined - we paid for both). On date night, we arrived about ten minutes late to find the group working on an International Rumba routine, meaning, we were desperately lost and unprepared*. Since we couldn't follow the routine steps and the other people there were having some success, my husband didn't feel comfortable or happy staying for the dance party afterward. This was HIS birthday outing, after all, so I buried my disappointment and we decided to leave and find another activity.
Anna the owner noticed we were having trouble keeping up and she was kind enough to offer us a free private lesson to make up for our bad experience (which, again, was totally our fault by virtue of arriving late!!). I didn't expect my husband to be interested, but we took her up on her offer and had a great time re-learning some basics of foxtrot and swing styles, and practicing our form. Our "frame" is pretty flimsy and our stride lengths probably never match, but I think we've improved! I'm personally excited to go back for another group lesson (though I might be going by myself... I'll just introduce myself to one of the silver foxes without a partner! Don't tell my husband).
In regards to the private lesson: as a professional classical musician and private teacher of same, I've experienced hundreds of lessons from both the teacher and student perspective. I've got many friends and colleagues who teach as well, and whose methods (and results) I've observed firsthand. I've taught and been taught enough to know that, for learning efficiency and depth of subject knowledge, instruction must be tailored to the student. This probably sounds trite; ALL teachers would say that they tailor instruction to the needs of each student.
MOST teachers, from my experience, don't tailor instruction. I wish I was better at it, myself. It's the hardest part of teaching.
From a lesson alongside my husband, I observed that Anna does that gear-switching with the best of them. I can't recommend her services highly enough - literally, I'm not an experienced enough dancer to give her an objective professional review on how good a dancer she is. But I CAN give this review as one teacher to another: Anna is champion of pedagogy.
*In regards to the group lessons being too advanced for us, Anna did assure us that they usually have two instructors in a group class and try to accommodate different dancing levels in the same evening to the extent possible. We came in too late and on the wrong night (her co-instructor had an outside commitment). read more