Welcome All Dancers
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Thank you for joining us on this exciting journey on exploring how you communicate in social dancing.
For All Dancing Backgrounds
Whatever your experience,
How To Dance With a Partner
helps you dance more safely, easily, comfortably, and naturally, with more freedom to express yourself.
Communicate Unambiguously
Communication is the most crucial element to your dancing well with a partner.
How To Dance With a Partner is the first and only method of communicating unambiguously in social dancing.
How To Dance With a Partner gives you the tools to communicate
every step in every dance in the same way with every partner
using a few simple rules and signals.
Dancing With People That Use the ABCDs℠
For you to communicate every step unambiguously,
both you and your partner need to know the ABCDs℠ of How To Dance With a Partner.
You will be able to communicate every step accurately
the very first time you dance together depending on your skill level.
All the signals work the same for every partner in every dance.
With Other Dancers
The ABCDs℠ work even if your partner does not know them.
You learn the fundamental principles of communicating.
You can apply these principles with everyone.
Your dancing will be gentler.
Your communication will be more precise.
However, you will not be able to communicate every step unambiguously
since your partners will be limited by their experience.
The Three Laws
Communicating every step in every dance is simple.
The main ideas you need to remember are the Three Laws%sm%
of balance, connection, and direction.
You will learn why they work and how to use them.
You Must Train Your Body
Understanding is not doing.
Once you understand what to do, you must practice to be able to perform consistently in time to music.
How to Get Started
The first thing to do is to print the rules.
Take that with you.
Allow yourself to memorize everything on that page.
The rules apply to every dance.
Start reading the book How To Dance With a Partner.
The first part A for Attitude should be easy reading and make sense to you.
The parts B for Balance, C for Connection, and D for Direction are succeedingly more technical.
Plan to read the book all the way through to understand the entire method.
If there are things you do not understand, do not worry about them now.
When you have more experience, more things will make sense.
Use the book for reference.
After you go to class, when you are thinking about what to do, go back to the book.
Answers are there.
Go through the Quick Start Presentations whenever you like, before, after, or while reading the book.
They will reinforce the most important ideas.
Social Dancing
How To Dance With a Partner works for every social dance that we know.
However, there is a limit on what you can safely communicate unambiguously.
The main limiting factor is balance.
Any move in which you share your weight with your partner is not part of social dancing by our definition.
Sharing weight is dangerous.
Sharing weight cannot be communicated using a simple set of rules.
Sharing weight cannot be led unambiguously without a special signal to your partner.
You must practice shared balance moves with your partner beforehand so you can do them safely together.
Take Dance Classes
How To Dance With a Partner will help you with every kind of social dance.
However, to dance, you must know some specific type of dance.
You will need to take lessons somewhere.
Caution
How To Dance With a Partner is so simple that you may be tempted to brush off the ideas without taking them seriously.
Do not make that mistake.
Violating any of the Three Laws℠ of How To Dance With a Partner has consequences.
Following the Three Laws lets you communicate every step in every social dance.
Try to understand the Three Laws.
Once you understand the Three Laws, you will feel like you have a magic pair of glasses that lets you see things that other people cannot see.
You will understand more about how to communicate than the best dancers in your group including your instructors.
Questions and Requests
Send us your questions.
If you find some step for which
How To Dance With a Partner
does not work,
or you want to know how to communicate some step, or you have other questions, write to us.
Our purpose is to help you get the most out of your dancing.
Let us know what else we can do to help you.
Welcome to
How To Dance With a Partner.
I look forward to dancing with you.
Happy dancing,
Andrew Weitzen
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