5 Benefits of At-Home Dance Lessons
Over the last year, we’ve all learned to adapt and adjust to new experiences - and the dance world has been no different. And we’ve come out the other side with some new tricks up our sleeve, to make you a better dancer, faster. A big one of those is the tried and tested at-home lesson, through FaceTime or Zoom, to gear up your progress in a whole new way. Here’s why:
1. Know Your Stuff
When we think of dancing, we imagine flying around a dance floor without a care in the world. What we don’t see is the practice and repetition it takes to get to that point. When you’ve done a move enough times to trust that your muscle memory will take it on, you feel more free and can allow your focus to move to finer points, rather than worrying about which foot you’re on. By using at-home learning to practice the moves solo, you build that muscle memory and awareness much faster and will get to that free and easy feeling of dance all the sooner for it.
2. Practice Is More Fun with Company
We all know we should practice. You’ve sworn to your teacher time and time again, you will do that hip action every time you brush your teeth. But life gets busy, we get distracted and let’s face it, its just not as much fun when there’s no one around. But when you pair your practice with a guide that can make sure you’re doing it correctly, have a chat and a laugh, and help you through any dodgy bits - the whole experience becomes a lot more enjoyable. The thing that works is the thing that you’ll do, so when you have a time booked to take a break from work, pop in your headphones and dance for 40 mins with a few chuckles along the way, you are going to get a tonne more practice and level up your game significantly.
3. It’s Easy
I’m sure we’d all love to be at the studio every day, but that pesky thing called life (or more often work) gets in the way sometimes and we must find a balance. This is where the flexibility of at-home learning can simply be more practical. Say you can make it into the studio once or twice a week but you could probably sneak in an online practice between each one - how much more productive and enjoyable will your lessons be from having had that check in between? We’ve been doing this over the last year, and we can say for certain, it makes a BIG difference.
4. Balance
Dancing with an instructor feels great but it can mask balance issues. To build up your balance, just like any skill, it takes challenge and practice. The way to build up balance is to dance solo and work through the wobbles along the way - every time you’ll be a little better at it. You’ll feel the difference at the next social, and so will every partner you dance with as both leading and following is always levelled up by better balance.
5. Technique
Working on Cuban Motion? Posture? Footwork? The techniques that make dancing look and feel amazing, all take a little extra time and effort to develop. Trying to develop these skills while also thinking about everything else in dancing is like playing a video game for the first time on the hard level. You’ll master skills much faster with some focused attention through teaching aids and practice drills that you can work on by yourself but with a teacher to guide you through it. This also means that on your in-person lessons you can actually dance more, rather than spending that time developing technique, and who doesn’t want to dance more?!
Final Thought
At-home learning can be an adjustment but it also provides huge opportunities and flexibility to your learning. You can dance in your pyjamas, at home, ditch the traffic and sip on a glass of wine while knowing you’re doing something great for your dancing progress. Of course the perfect scenario would be supplementing your learning with a combo of at-home and in-studio but if you’re travelling or maybe don’t live anywhere near a dance studio - you can still learn to dance and have an awesome time in the process. We hope you’ll give it a go and let us know about your experiences learning dance at-home in the comments below!