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For three years, I have been in China teaching Swing Dancing. Now I'm wandering yet again...
2005-01-03
Today's dance
Today was a new dance class. This was one of the more satisfying nights. Many good things came together at once.
Over the last week I have organized the music. Most dance CD's have a few good danceable songs but many you cannot dance to. So I took the entire music collection, listened to every track on every CD, and classified them. Type of swing music, the speed of the beat, and a rating one to five stars, name of musician, and name of song (if I could figure it out). Of some 500 songs total, 130 were just right for dancing. Now we can play four hours of swing music in a night. This process literally took three full days, but I think the quality of music really showed in the mood tonight.
We had very good attendance today. A group of referrals, a group from my own contacts, a group which has heard of us from the Web, and some people who just were walking by and saw the sign outside.
The class flowed smoothly. I've bought a headset wireless microphone for teaching large classes like the one we had today. Any crowd of more than 10 will make small conversations and get distracted. It's hard to get their attention back again without giving a shout, and shouting is really exhausting. Plus it's no fun for anyone. With the headset I can be heard, and I'm not nearly as tired after teaching.
And we have to be thankful for the venue itself. The fact now that we have a large dance hall which we can use every Sunday is a major accomplishment. We've struggled for a very, very long time to have an acceptable, stable place to hold our dances, and now we finally have.
Our Shanghai Swings dance night looked like a dance night from back home. The beginners flowed in, the classes were held and everyone laughed a bit and had a good time. The class proceeded for an hour, and then the people mulled around a bit and socialized. The more experienced dancers took to the floor, and many of the beginners got their coats and took off, some saying they'd come back. The other beginners stayed and watched the good dancers take the floor. People danced for two and a half hours after class.
I remember the first time I went to a swing dance night. I was a beginner to a brand new scene, watching people doing moves that left me saying, 'uh, wow'. And I think we're finally getting that feeling here.
-J
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