Thursday, November 12, 2009

Dancing With The Stars: Part Deux

From myFoxDetroit.com (Detroit, MI):

By MONICA GAYLE

It has been roughly seven weeks since my husband and I started dance lessons at Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Bloomfield Hills. It's all in preparation for the Detroit Historical Society's annual fundraiser in December. Along with several other couples, we'll be participating in a friendly "Dancing With The Stars" type competition. Only one problem... based on our lessons so far, we bear no resemblance to the couples you see twirling around on the real deal DWTS! When we started our lessons in September, we felt pretty confident we could maneuver our way around the dance floor. Boy, were we wrong! Slowly but surely we are getting our routine down but it's still a bit of a tug of war. You see it's tough to let your husband/partner lead, when you secretly believe he has no idea what step comes next! There are days when I feel completely wiped out after a lesson and I will admit there is the slightest hint of panic creeping in. We keep telling each other..."this is supposed to be fun." I already have my dancing shoes. In fact, I've been practicing in them and they're pretty comfortable. Now it's time for my costume. Do you think if I get a really flashy outfit, the audience won't pay attention to my feet? Hmmmmm....just a thought. We've started videotaping our instructors and then watching it at home while we practice. That has helped a bit, and this last week we finally finished learning the last component of our routine, so at least I know how our dance will end! We have just four weeks until our big night. Between now and then, you can bet we'll be practicing day and night. Wish us luck... we're going to need it!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

how can one take lessons for a few weeks and expect to compete? What a silly story. I took lessons for at least a year two to three times a week here in Ohio before I dared to compete.

This makes no sense to put a student and her husband out there to compete. This is a good deterrent to taking lessons and competing.

Lesson taking should be a happy time and only become stressful when one is competent to go out and try to compete not expecting to win at first.

I went to a comp and only came in
sixth in one dance the first time and then a few months later, I competed with my teacher and won 5 out of 9 dance awards. I had been learning and practicing for over a year before I went out to compete.

That is the proper way to learn, enjoy and compete.

Elita Clayman in her many articles on the Fred Astaire site encourages us to dance, to love dance and to do well.She never once ever said go out and compete after a few weeks or months.

Frank and Janet of Ohio

Anonymous said...

Competing and taking lessons in a few months is ridiculous. it is nice to do something for charity but to compete after not many lessons is stupid.

Elita Clayman writes on both her online sites and inspires ev one to dance, no competing is ever mentioned until after at least a year or more. By the way where are Elita's articles this week? We need her to praise our desire to go out and dance and in this economic period of our lives, dancing is really a big thing to pay for. It should be fun, happiness and most of all fulfillment not stress.Keep on Dancing as she says and Do not keep on becoming stressed by it.

Lucille and Andy of Penna.