Confessions of a Dance Teacher

By Phil Seyer

As a small child I loved dancing. I remember at age 4 being taken to a ballet class. "That's only for girls," I was told when I asked about joining the class. My next memory about dancing is at age 7: I was dancing in my little brown cowboy boots in front of my parents.

"Where did you learn that?" my Mom asked.

"They are teaching us to dance at school," I said sheepishly. (Actually, I had made up the steps myself, but I was too embarrassed to admit it.) Clearly I loved dancing.

My next memory about dancing is not so pleasant. At age 11, I was very shy with girls; it was an awkward age for me and girls weren't attracted to me — unlike now :). Suddenly I was forced to take dance lessons by some well-meaning teachers.

"If you don't dance, you won't be allowed to play baseball," they told me.

The feeling was awful. I loved baseball, but was terrified of dancing and looking stupid in front of the girls.

Later, in 7th and 8th grade, I was again forced to take dance lessons. I remember struggling with waltz and not getting it. I also remember looking at the cool kids who could dance, but noticed they weren't doing waltz at all as we had been taught, but some kind of cool swaying step where they barely moved their feet. Often I would cut PE class when a dance lesson was scheduled. One time the gym teacher caught me and friend, who also hated the dance class.

"OK, Phil, you've got an 'F' for the day for cutting the dance class!" he bellowed at me.

A similar thing happened to me in college, believe it or not! As a music major, my instrument was piano and I was focusing on musical composition. I did see that dancing was a requirement of the music program. But the band director had other ideas. He approached me and insisted I dance in a Mozart opera he was directing. I was still terrified of dancing and consistently refused in spite of his veiled threats.

Despite my great fear of dancing, I knew that dancing was a social skill I needed to learn and wanted to learn. And after all, as a child I loved dancing. So why did I come to hate dancing? I guess it was all that pressure — especially when I wasn't ready to take the lessons myself. Actually, I didn't hate dancing, just those forced group lessons. I searched for a solution and a guy named Jerry provided it.

Jerry was a close friend of mine in college and a very good dancer. He was actually very smart generally, but Jerry had goofed around so much in high school that he was behind the rest of his class in college. I began helping Jim with his studies and he helped me in other ways. Jim and I would meet secretly in the study room late at night when everyone else was asleep and he would give me private dance lessons. Gradually I started to get it. Eventually I could enjoy shaking my body to the music.

I enjoyed going to singles parties for many years and enjoyed a lot of free style dancing that was popular at those parties. Then one day I was invited to a ballroom and became excited about learning more structured "partner dancing."

Later when I finally learned to dance well and was enjoying a better social life, Maria, a lady friend of mine said, "You know Phil, by learning to dance you are really showing a lot of respect for women. Women love a guy who is a great dancer." That encouraged me and I took many group and private lessons and later studied formally to be a dance teacher with Diane Jarmolow of the Dance Teachers College.

Today I teach dancing professionally and really enjoy helping beginners. Often at a dance party a lady will say, "I don't know how to do that dance."

"No problem," I say with a smile, I will teach you."

"I can't dance, but when I dance with you, suddenly I can dance!" she will say later. It's a good feeling to help others experience the joy of dancing.

What's the lesson in all this? I think it is this: if you want to help some one learn to dance, don't force him or her to take group dance lessons. Instead, consider giving them a gift certificate for private dance lessons.

Who knows. It could change their life! "It changed my life," Fred told me with a wink and a smile. Fred is now a very good dancer who got started when his girlfriend gave him private lessons as a birthday present.