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Last week, I saw a beautiful story of how a mother explained the concept of Santa Claus to her young son. It was about the idea of becoming a Santa, rather than not believing in him. It’s about learning to…
Are you someone who constantly feels like you’re ‘taking one for the team’ when you go dancing or get involved in the community? You might be a dance martyr. Dance martyrs are characterized by feeling like they’re sacrificing their own joy,…
For most experienced dancers, there are a few things that are known to be ‘common sense’ courtesy. I’m not talking about complex etiquette systems found in some dances (ex: the Cabeco in Tango), but rather things that are the base of…
I’ve been in several dance classes where students are told to make eye contact with each other. I’ve also had some creepy dances where my partner stared into my eyes for the entire dance. Where is the line between ‘not enough’…
We all have our favourite partners. Usually, these are partners where we could spend a long time dancing with them, and still enjoy our time. Sometimes, we’re more than happy to ask and re-ask for dances throughout the night. A…
A couple days ago, I wrote an article about how teaching on the floor is almost always inappropriate. Out of many conversations, there were a couple common threads that kept appearing: What if I feel I’m in danger, or something is…
If we’ve been social dancing for any length of time, we know that one of the golden rules is to ‘never teach on the dancefloor’. It’s irritating, it’s rude, and it makes your partner feel really crappy. I’m not talking…
Social dancing is a language. We have our own set of cues and responses that people understand and respond to with various degrees of efficiency. There’s people who speak fluently, people who speak basic, conversational dance, and those who only…
There are very few reasonable reasons to leave a dance before the end of a song. Generally speaking, agreeing to a dance means you are agreeing to spend a minimum of 1 song with that person. It does not mean…
We all know that teaching on the dance floor is not a nice thing to do. But, what about asking your partner to change a particular thing when they do something you don’t like during a social dance?
Dear Beginner, I’m so happy you decided to social dance. I’m so happy that you’ve decided that this magnificent world has caught your interest – and I hope it holds it. You’re going to meet many, many amazing people, have…
A Note from Laura Riva: I don’t normally post guest articles on my blog, but for Trevor Copp I make an exception. For those who don’t know, Trevor is one of the people behind the Liquid Lead Dancing Tedx Talk…
I wrote an article a few days ago on being a generous dancer, and there was a question that came out of that post from several people: does being a generous dancer mean I have to dance with everyone? No,…
At around 4 a.m. after a Saturday full of dancing, I had quite a memorable conversation with a dancer who had experienced a dance that they were hoping would go very right, but ended up leaving a negatively-tinged aftertaste because…
