It breaks my heart when dancers who register for Ultra Basics have to quit because of hearing loss, breathing difficulties, knees or hips hurting, or not being able to learn and remember easy steps and patterns. It’s really sad especially when that person really wants to learn to line dance. Please make a mental check list before calling to sign up i.e., “Can I really do this without making my body more uncomfortable with more pain?” I truly wish line dancing would take away all of these health reasons for not being able to dance. If it could, it would be called the “Miracle Dance Class.”
If you feel you can line dance by learning and not following, new students can register for Ultra Basics by calling 480-802-0201 after 10:00 a.m. This Ultra Basic class is on Mondays in the SunBird Ballroom at Noon for $2. If you didn’t make the October 15 date, you can still call the 480 number to register for classes starting January 9, 2017.
Some of our returning dancers have started to come back. It’s such a joy to see them walk in the door, ready to dance again. Even though they haven’t danced with us for a while, it’s almost like they never left. Line dancers usually feel like they’ve lost everything they knew until we start to put a new dance together. I demonstrate patterns, teach them, teach a dance in phrases of eight, repeating steps if needed, give the counts, go over the sequence, call out all the words (which is a word for every foot movement in a dance), cue sequences when the dance gets going, dance with no music or words and hear the dance on the floor. Now the fun really begins. It’s easier with the music and even more fun!
I go through this process for every dance taught for all three classes: Ultra Basics/easiest, Basics/easy, Beyond Basics/more difficult. The dancers in Beyond Basics have learned from me and have gone through all levels to get to where they are with my style of teaching. Every once in a while I ask them if I should change and I get a firm, supportive response of “No” because they know it works to learn line dances. Good exercise for the body but mostly for the mind. God bless line dancing!