Dancing the Night Away

The following is a repost of blog from Aug. 20, 2009:

I did something recently that I never thought I’d do. I took dance lessons. But not just any kind of dance- it was ballroom dancing. This is something that I have always wanted to do, but just never thought I would. And I enjoyed every minute of it, too. My husband came with me, and we started by meeting Ryan Knight, who owns Let’s Dance! Carolinas, LLC and is an instructor, as well as to Samantha Parker, who is a fellow dance instructor. We then got to choose which style of ballroom dance we wanted to learn. Ryan first asked what kind of music we like to get a feel of what kind of dance we might prefer. Being as that David, my husband, loves Country music, the first dance we learned was the Texas Two-Step. Ryan started by explaining the counts for the dance, and then demonstrated for us what it was supposed to look like. Then it was our turn to try. And try we did. We started off okay, but then Ryan added steps to teach us how to turn while dancing. This was quite amusing as David and I tried to count steps while remembering which way to turn, but after a few tries we were able to successfully make the turn. By now, the class had been going on for about 20-25 minutes. I never thought it would take such a short time to learn how to dance. I thought we’d learn the fundamentals and review them during the first class and that we wouldn’t actually start dancing until at least the second class. But Ryan said, before we started, that he could have anyone dancing within 10 minutes- and he was right. After a few more successful attempts of turning, we put our steps to music. Though it was very basic (being as that it was only our first class), it felt good to be dancing to music with something other than the slow dance you do in high school. When the music stopped, it was time to move on to the second dance we were going to learn- East Coast Swing. This dance was much simpler to learn. Even the turns came easier. Within just a few short minutes, we were dancing our second dance to music. By the end of the lesson, we had learned two dances in just 45 minutes. And the good part was, our class was scheduled right before the 8 p.m. practice session, so we were able to review the steps we learned while watching other couples who had learned other dance styles. This is definitely an experience that I would like to try again, and with the lessons located at the Academy of Dance studio in Locust, it is feasible for me and anyone around the area to do.