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!
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,
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,
If you haven’t heard about this psychological concept, you need to. Understanding it can have a profound effect on your dancing, but also other areas of your life you may be self-sabotaging. Let me give you a little definition first, then I’ll discuss how this could be… the most important thing you ever learn
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
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 Lessons Why you should bother
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
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