Hello all you B-E-A-UTIFUL people. First off, thanks for joining me on this whole blog thing today and thanks for being a part of our little family that we have here at Arthur Murray West Chester. Today’s blog is all about you. How do you get the most value from your dance lessons?!?! There are a ton of ways to use your dance program and no one way is wrong. How do you decide what’s the best thing to do?! Lucky for you, I’m here with some tips to help you along your way. A quick disclaimer that these are just general tips. We certainly understand that everyone is different and there is no one size fits all. These are not things that you MUST do, but things that we highly recommend to help progress your dancing as quickly as possible.
- Help Me, Help You (Communication) – I don’t know if you know this about your Arthur Murray Staff, but we talk about your dancing and your goals… a lot… like a lot, a lot. We talk about what we might think is the best way to teach you, we talk about who it might be beneficial for you to have a lesson with next, we talk about what technique/pattern/style is going to help get you to where you want to be as a dancer. We do this during meetings, throughout the day when something strikes us, heck we do it even after work if we’re hanging out somewhere. This is not a side job for us. This is our career and your dancing and learning is really that important to us. That’s why those Benefits of Dance Sheets that we had you fill out initially are so important to us; they let us know what you want from this whole dance journey. Now, the one thing which we can always do better on is checking on if those benefits change or your goals change. If you ever feel like the goals we have for you and the goals that you have for you aren’t aligned, please let us know. Our goal is to get you to where you want to be, wherever that may be. Sometimes that may include doing some things that scare you (local events, routines, Dance-O-Rama’s), but everything we recommend is intended to make your dancing better.
- Team Work Really Does Make the Dream Work (Team Teaching) – We have an awesome team here at Arthur Murray West Chester and we strongly believe in Team Teaching for a NUMBER of different reasons. For a quick definition, Team Teaching is where you’re learning from a multitude of different people, not just one. It’s one of the unique things about Arthur Murray and it’s a TREMENDOUS tool that works extremely well. For one, every one of us has our strengths (Brandon: Singing, Christy: Kicking, Krista: Loves Country Music, Monica: Smiling, Kristen: Everything… her strength is everything). We each also have different ways of saying things that may resonate more with one person than another. It keeps things fresh from lesson to lesson working with a variety of teachers. Not to mention, most people can’t put up with Brandon for more than a few lessons in a row. Lastly, if you’re learning for yourself, learning from a multitude of different people helps develop your lead and/or follow more quickly.
- If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It (Frequency) – We certainly understand that people sometimes have insanely busy schedules nowadays, which is why we try to be as flexible as possible in our ability to schedule things for you. With that being said, it’s important to try to schedule your lessons/classes/practice parties as close together as humanly possible. The more you do something, the quicker you’ll get good at it, and the better you’ll feel doing it (That’s also why we’re sometimes so insistent about rescheduling canceled lessons). Now I’m not saying that you have to be at the studio every day (although we would absolutely love it if you were), but the closer you can keep them together, the more progress you’ll make. We’ll roll with whatever you’re able to do, but don’t be put off if we’re trying to schedule you right away. We not only really enjoy seeing you, but we want you to get as much value from your dance investment as possible.
- Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends (Coaching Lessons) – I’m not sure if you know this, but we occasionally bring in dance consultants. A dance consultant is like a Dance Jedi. They are extremely knowledgeable in the force (dance) and use their powers for good to help make sure we’re current with everything going on in the galaxy (dance world). They’re the crème de la crème of dance teachers and travel the world imparting their knowledge and love of dance with others. If you have a lesson with one, their goal is to give you a ton of information that we’ll use to speed up your progression in whatever you want to get better at.
- Push It, Push it Real Good (Events) – We have a TON of events going on at Arthur Murray. Not only do we have in studio events where you can show off in front of your friends and family, but we have slightly bigger regional events, and even bigger national events. Now, we don’t expect everyone to do every event. What we will try to do is get you to a number of different events. If an event is just not for you, no worries, we won’t have hurt feelings. But what happens a lot of times with events is that it makes you a bit more focused on your lessons than you typically would be. You’ll find yourself not dozing off as much when Brandon goes off on one of his tangents. You might find yourself coming into the studio to practice a little bit before and after the lesson. Speaking from personal experience, Kristen and I decided to start competing, not because we wanted to become dance champions, but we wanted to have a reason to push ourselves to get better quicker. Events are a great way to push yourself to get better.
- The Early Bird Gets the Worm (Start Early) – This one will not apply to those of who have already started on your journey of learning to dance (give yourselves a nice little pat on the back). Typically, the more you can use something, the more value you get out of it. A very smart man once said (don’t worry, it’s not me), “you’ll never have more time to use your dancing than you do right now”. If you’re looking to use your dancing as much as possible, you should start as soon as you possibly can.
- Smile for the Camera! (Video Recaps) – You probably didn’t know this, but your highly and constantly trained dance teachers are also highly trained videographers (just kidding, but most people nowadays know how to use a smart phone). We have a handy dandy app that is called FloatingRain. It allows us to do short recaps of our lessons so that you don’t have to rely on your memory! It currently only runs on iPhones, but they’ll soon be coming out with the app for all smart phones. Some cool things about the app: First, it’s FREE! Second, the videos are in the cloud so it doesn’t take up a ton of space! That way if you get a new phone, or your current phone breaks, you don’t lose all that information. Third, the calendar on the app shows your future scheduled personal lessons. Now, sometimes the app acts up and we can’t always record things. If that’s the case we can always record a synopsis on your phone, or even put it up on an unlisted YouTube link for you.
Thank you so much for bearing with me through this blog. There are tons of different ways not mentioned above to get more value from your dance investment. If you ever have any question about how we do things or why we do things, please let us know. We try to be an open book and truly want you to get as much from your dancing as possible.
