How to Host your own set of Country Swing Dance Lessons with Little to No Knowledge of Dancing

How to Host your own set of Country Dance Lessons with no knowledge of Country Swing Dancing

Are you interested in teaching Country Swing Dancing to your students in school or are you looking to teach a group of people in your area to get people interested? Well I want to say that anyone who has a desire to teach and puts the effort in, can do it.  My father always said you can be anyone you want to be, as long as you put the effort in.  And so I’m going to give you a run down on what you need to know, how to learn better by getting someone to practice with, and what are some good teaching tips to do a good job at teaching dance.  One thing that you need to know first before anything else is that you need to know how to do the lead part (Guys part) in order to teach more than you need to know the follow.  So we are going to teach from a leader’s perspective.

So here’s a list of things you need to know:

1. Timing

There are a few things about learning timing in dance that we are going to state that you need to know in order to teach it dance to someone.  You need to know how to find the beat in the music, how to land on the beat, and how to mix your timing.

First is to find the beat in the music.  The beat in the music that you need to hear is the bass beat.  If you know the drums you have your snare, you have your cymbals, and you have your bass drum on the floor with the kick peddle.  The beat you are listening to in every song is the bass drum.  If you can’t hear the bass drum, then it might not be in the song.  What you need to do then is identify if there is a bass sound in the song at all.  So if there is another bass tune, like a bass guitar, or some other bass instrument then where you hear the bass beat is where your timing is.  If there is no bass sound in the sound, which is rare, then you might need sometime to develop a skill of listening to songs and finding out where that omitted bass beat is in the song.  You don’t need to worry about whether the bass is there or not, it’s a very rare thing but we said it for your information.

Second thing is to learn to land your feet on the beat.  A simple way to learn is to just step on the same spot you are in and just lift your left foot first if you are a leader and right foot if you are a follower.  Guys are leaders in general, and Girls are followers in general.  So start by raising one foot then step on it to the beat and then do the same for the other foot.  Do what I call “Single Step,” which is one step per beat.  Play some songs while doing it, I would see if you can play 10 different songs, for about 30 seconds each and just try seeing if you can keep up to the beat each time.  Now if you notice that some songs are really fast and feel very awkward then you might want to hold down for two beats each time you step.  If it’s too slow then you might want to speed up to do two steps to every beat.  In general though you want to teach people to songs that are one step per beat, and we have created a playlist of songs on our website that you can use in your lessons that will make things a lot easier.

So basically when you are dancing with someone you are doing in essence something similar to a slow dance.  It’s just a simple rock back and forth on each foot, for the most basic footwork in this style of Dancing.

2. Now when you are learning there are 3 traits of a good learner that I want to point out:

First is thing to learn is to be smooth.  When you move with a consistent smoothness your follower or leader will be able to feel your connection easier.  This means that your communication is clearer to your partner and they will start to mirror your feeling.  So keep your movements consistent with no hesitations and do it just really smooth.

Second thing to learn is to be gentle.  When you are learning, and you are teaching people who are learning you will notice that everyone turns differently.  Some are hard to turn, and some are easier but feel odd and some know how to turn really good.  The key to teaching though is that when you turn a girl, you don’t want to force or speed up someone’s speed of the turn to a really fast speed.  It doesn’t help.  The key is just to be gentle and smooth when you take your hand and draw a halo around her head with it.  If you feel like they are not moving just keep gentle consistent pressure on their hand and wait for them to step on their tippy toes to turn more.    And if they stop again just say you need to stay on the balls of your feet and keep stepping to get around.  In general a turn is two steps.  So as a leader be consistently smooth and gentle.

Third thing you need to learn is to be slow.  When learning moves, doing them really slow helps you learn them faster.  I know that slowing down seems like you will learn slower, but it actually helps you realize different techniques and movements in the body that you need to adjust to do the move better.  When adjusting you need to look at foot placement, whether the foot landed on the balls or the heel, whether their elbows or shoulders are stiff, whether they kept their hands cupped or relaxed, or whether their elbows were straightened.  All these things can be seen easier when doing movements really slow.  Now how fast is slow? Well if I could compare speeds, I would say that it’s very close to the way they move in the Movie “The Matrix” where the bullets are flying, and they slowed down the speed where they are moving really slowly.  Encourage your students who are followers to not move if they are unsure.  They should always feel a lead from their partner to do something.  Sometimes you will see them start to guess and they will turn too soon because they don’t know what the feel is and so that’s where you need to teach connection so they can learn how a lead feels.  So remember that you need to move slow like the way they move in the movie “The Matrix.”

3. Learn this technique to help your students – Connection

Connection is the way you connect with your partner in the dance.  You connect in general at the hands but if you look at how the connection is improved you have to follow it from the finger tips, to the knuckles, to the wrist, to the elbow, to the shoulder, through the body, and down to the feet.  If you watch the video here, you will get a good idea of how to find good connection with your partner which is essential to developing your dance skills.

With the improvement of your connection with your partner you also improve the communication you make with your partner.  You see in dance you don’t want to be telling your partner verbally what move you are going to do next.  So instead you need to tell them through your touch(connection) with them.  And the better the connection improves the quicker the response rate.   So if you have someone who is not doing what you want to do, like a turn, then they probably haven’t learned connection yet and once they know it, they then can do the turns better.  So learn a little bit about connection before you teach.

4. Next thing you need to have is a list of dance moves

When teaching your class you need to have a good list of dance moves.  I have created a list of dance moves where you can go down the list in a sequential order teaching your students one move at a time.  You can click on each move and there is a video for each one.  So if you are looking for some guidance, we have some videos for you, so you don’t have to worry about remembering how it’s done.  Having video of these dance moves is essential when you are learning with little knowledge so make sure you have them available through an internet connection, so you don’t have to worry.  I would also recommend that you print out the list, so you know the names of the move.

One of the key things to note, is not on how well your students do the move, as much as how many moves they learn.  I would recommend try to teach them 5 to 15 moves in a lesson.  The more moves they can learn the better because if you focus on just doing one move to perfection, it’s really like an impossible thing to do.  No one can perfect a move there is always room for improvement.  The key is just to stay on one move for a period of 3 to 5 minutes and then move to the next move.  Do some dancing after they have learned 3 moves and just repeat the process till your lesson is over.

5. Safety is another thing that I want to point out.

You really need to keep an eye out for potential safety hazards. When doing things like dips or drops or even simple things like jerking the arms you need to study these things and the safety hazards associated with those moves.

I’ll start by pointing out the jerking arm movements first since that’s probably the first thing you will see when they are learning.  When your students learn the transition moves (Filler moves) of country swing one of the first things you will notice among those that don’t know about jerking movements is that it’s very apparent.  They will flail themselves around each other and at the end of movement they will stretch their arms out and pull on their partner jerking their arms really hard at the end.  This movement is very hazardous to your students because they will get sore shoulders and joints all up and down their body.  So in order to correct this tell them to keep the elbows at their sides and not straightened out when pulling.  Another note is to tell them to keep their backs vertical and not leaning out at their shoulders when they pull.

The next thing to watch out for is dips.  Now I’ve seen this happen a few times and thank God no one has got hurt but what I’m going to point out when teaching a dip is to remember to tell all the guys and girls first before you demonstrate the move, to not touch their partners at all while you demonstrate!  Sometimes what can happen is the guy and girl will be connected but one will be unprepared with how to do the move and what can happen is the girl can be dropped on her head! So to prevent her from being dropped you have to tell them not to do any move with their partner until you say so.

There are a few key techniques with how to do the dip that you need to teach first before it can be done safely.  I would recommend that you tell both guy and girl to connect by holding on to each other first before doing anything else.  Meaning they almost need to be hugging each other.  The next thing is making sure the guy knows where to place his feet to keep balanced when they do the dip.  Usually if a girl goes backward the guy wants to land his left foot or whatever foot is going behind her back approximately underneath her neck.

The other thing to note for the girl is that when she is directed backwards, she needs to be holding onto her partner.  If she is not holding properly then she will be in a state of freefall when she goes backwards which is not good because the ‘G’ force of catching her increases about 2 times, meaning her weight is double.  So in order to prevent this tell her to make sure she is holding onto her partner as she goes backwards all the way down.  Next you want to tell her that her supporting leg is usually the right leg or inside leg closest to the guy.  And that when she goes backwards that she should aim to send her supporting knee over top of her toes.  Meaning she will need to not be stiff in the knee and also need to slide her knee forward and down so that the knee is directly above her toes.  Another note is watch that the ankle is not 90 degrees where the knee is straight above the ankle or behind it.  Also another point is that the waist of the girl needs to be straightened.  One tip is to tell them that there should be a straight line between the shoulder to the knee on the girl when she is dipping.  If her butt is lowered it will cause the guy to carry a lot more of her weight.  So tell the girls to squeeze their butt muscles to keep the butt straightened and not bent like it’s sitting.  Lastly tell the girls to push at the feet when in a dip.  If they don’t then the guy ends up carrying most of their weight because basically what is happening is, they are just hanging on to the guy to prevent themselves from falling.  Which is also not a good thing.  So I hope this helps with doing dips safely.

Now onto to teaching guys and girls how to drop.  The same thing is applied regarding the guys and girls leg work regarding drops as compared to dips.  When learning both dips and drops have someone spot for safety reasons and this will prevent a lot of safety problems.  I would put two pairs together so that they can learn how to do it quicker and safer.  Now what you need to know about drops is how to connect and how to fall.  Generally there are two main ways to connect but one is more prominent than the other.  The two main ways to hold each other in a drop are to connect in the fingers and to connect at the wrists.  Most people connect at the fingers, in a cupped hand position.

Now when you do a drop, the key to doing it nicely in the drop part of the movement without losing your balance as a guy is to have your partner leaning back with her elbows at her side, hands in front of her and feeling some pull on her hands to keep her balanced but not hold her whole weight.  She should be leaning, not dangling! So what that means is that she should be supporting her weight from her legs and also be squeezing the butt muscles to keep a straight line between her knee to her shoulder, which keeps her from dropping her weight lower.  Now the guy has elbows at his side, his hands at shoulder height in front of him and the direction of his hands should go straight down not on a diagonal downward toward one side of his hip or the other.  If it’s at a diagonal, then the balance of the guy could be thrown off and he could drop the girl.  If he’s started the move but downward at a diagonal, then it might be that he didn’t place his feet in the right position and or it could be that her knees didn’t bend enough so that they were directly above the toes.  He needs to have his feet shoulder width apart or a little more and also have the girl’s shoulders lined up in the middle of his feet when she is at the bottom of the drop move.  She should not ever straighten her arms when dropping.  And that also goes for the guys as well they should not be straightening their arms, or it will be much more dangerous and encourage a fall.  That’s why I’m emphasizing that the guys and girls’ elbows should be kept at their sides and bent, when doing this move. And that’s how you teach a drop safely.

So those are some of the safety hazards when teaching dance.  I hope you read and study carefully those points I’ve made before teaching some of those moves and I’m sure you will have no worries if you follow them.

6. Practice with someone whenever you can

One of the key things you need to do is to try to find someone to practice with.  I have a few places I would recommend you try in order to find someone who can practice with you.

First, if you have the money and time, I would recommend a dance instructor.  Now I would say that most dance instructors don’t know Country Swing, but you can tell them that you are looking to do a list of moves that are listed on this website and have them go over them with you.  The type of dance instructors you can choose from and my recommendation from first to last would be: Country Swing Instructors, Young Latin Dance Instructors, Country Dance Instructors, Classic Swing Dance Instructor, West Coast Swing Instructor.

You can tell Instructors that don’t know Country Swing that there is information on how to do country swing on GoCountryDancing.com and there are plenty of videos on YouTube to watch and see how it looks.  I would say if you want to get the best bang for your buck that you want to do lessons twice a week and do lessons on back to back days.  Your retention is 75% within 48 hours and it drops off rapidly after that.  So your best to learn by getting lessons within a 24-hour period of each other.

Before you go for lessons have them check out our list of dance moves and ask them if they can teach that.  Now you can also read our other page on how long it takes to learn Country Swing as well.  This will give you an idea of how much time and money it will be for you to learn and teach it well.  I would say even if you are learning just ahead of your students that you will be fine because you learn and then reinforce what you learn by teaching it.  I have done that myself and I had to do it the hard way and you have all this information that I didn’t have at your finger tips so it should be very easy and less time consuming compared to what I went through.

Secondly, if you don’t have the money to afford a dance instructor then ask a co-worker if you are a teacher, I’m sure there should be one other teacher who might even have some dance experience and may want to help you learn.  If you are not a teacher, then you may want to choose from some other places then.

Thirdly, if you have no luck finding a dance partner at work then next try going to dance events where people really know how to dance.  What I would recommend is if you have a Country Dancing Bar where they do a lot of partner dancing (Not line Dancing) then you can learn there.  Also if you don’t have that ability then you can also try Salsa Dances, West Coast Swing Dance, Classic Swing Dances, Country Dances, Ballroom Dances, etc.  There are lots of good dancers at these dances and all it takes is for you to go there and tell them your plans and practice your dance moves there.  Maybe you can get a person you feel would be a good partner’s contact information and ask them to see if they would help you practice and teach even.  So, see where that can go for you.

Lastly, if you have absolutely no luck with finding a dance partner then you can try learning by these ideas here:

1. Practice learning your connection. If you have something like a pole or any kind of door way with an edge where you can grip with your finger tips and just turn your body near the pole within reach of your hand and after you turn all the way around facing the pole kind of use it to pull on and somewhat support you.  Get used to turning and connecting to the pole.  After you get that feel in the hand and through the arm where you feel comfortable that’s your connection and that’s similar to the way it will feel with a partner.  You may need to lighten up your pull, but it gives you an idea.  And like I said before this connection will improve your communication with your partner and improve response time.

2. Develop your timing technique. I think as mentioned above you can easily develop your timing technique by stepping back and forth to the bass beat.  Learn to move around and do different turns while stepping to the bass beat and try using something like a poll or something to grab onto at the end of your turns while keeping your rhythm.  Now a key note is when you learn with a partner it’s a little different and what you will notice is that your partner will be off on their timing and it might throw you off your timing because you feel the resistance and what you need to do is not focus on them too much and keep focused on the movement and keep on time! If you keep your timing, and they are off, within a few steps of them feeling your timing, they will usually, and I mean like about 75% of the time find that beat that you are landing on and follow you.  So learn to keep that timing by doing things like distracting yourself and see if you keep it.

3. Develop your turning technique. Turns are usually two steps to each whole turn.  Guys turn girls by taking their left hand and by raising and turning her to either her left or right by drawing their hand around the girl’s head like a halo and at the end dropping the hand back down to their side.  Some of the technique in turning the girl to her left is to raise your hand up in front of your face like you are checking your watch and then continue the movement in one smooth motion around her head finishing with your hand dropping to your side.  The girl needs to know some key elements to turn good and here are few techniques you can teach them:

   1. Her elbow needs to stay at shoulder height in the turn

   2. Her hand should stay at 2 inches away and no more from her forehead in the turn

   3. Her elbow should be pointed at the 2 O’clock position in the turn and not at the 3 O’clock Position!

   4. She needs to continue stepping in the turn doing two smooth consistent steps

   5. She needs to stay on the balls (Front) part of her feet when turning

This technique takes some time to learn because there is a lot to learn. What I usually do is focus on the arm and hand first before telling them to step.  If they end up stopping mid-way through the turn its usually because they didn’t step.

There is also something called the “prep” in a turn.  There are different ways to prep a girl to turn but in Country Swing I don’t focus on it because many who are learning won’t feel it until they develop some other skills first.  But you can learn it for yourself by looking online.  There are tons of videos on how to prep a girl to turn.

5. The Last idea I have is to memorize your moves. This in my opinion is the most important thing to do before you teach if you have no partner.  What I would say is watch a move on video and then do it very slow and pay attention to what the guy is doing and what the girl is doing.  You should be able to do the first 5 to 10 moves in our list with little to no problems.  Then you will have to decide what you can and can not learn.  There are another 20 or 30 moves you might be able to do without a partner you will just have to look and see.  We are adding moves monthly and I’m hoping within a month I’ll have double to triple the amount of moves available for people to learn. So memorize your movements in the moves you plan to teach and have like 8 memorized and teach 5.  If you end up messing one up, you have 3 backups.

So that’s a list of things you need to know before you teach someone.  Now here is a list of teaching tips:

1. Have a list of Dance Moves you are going to teach (We have a list on the website)

Have yourself a comfortable list of dance moves to teach for every lesson you are teaching.  This will make the lesson flow smoothly and you find your students will enjoy the lesson more when they are constantly being challenged.

2. Demonstrate then observe

Demonstrate the move with someone so your students can see how to do the move.  If they can see how it looks then they will be able to do it better.  Another innovative idea is to have some laptops on the perimeter where students can see videos of the move if you are focused on some other couple so they can figure it out by video instead of waiting for you to finish with someone else.

3. Teach 3 moves then have them do it to music. (Use our suggested songs)

We recommend not to do more then 3 moves at a time before you finally put on some music and have your students dance.  The key to having fun in the lesson is to keep the music playing throughout the lesson.  And if you have the right music as suggested in our playlist for Country Swing Dancing it will be more fun and easier to dance.

4. Talk less and Dance More

One of things you have to watch out for is talking lots and not having them do the dance moves.  I’ve been guilty of this and I’ve been corrected many times and so I’m passing this off to you.  You can easily kill 15 to 30 minutes by talking in a 1-hour lesson.  That could have consumed up to about 5 dance moves that could have been taught if the talking had not happened.  So be careful not to get too talkative.

5. Don’t take a long time teaching one move. 5 minutes maximum!  Is all you need.

Try to have your moves done and demonstrated in the first 30 seconds.  Then repeat it with your students.  Moves that have a higher safety factor or technical skill will need more time but I think 5 minutes is a safe time frame to get any move in move.

6. Don’t stress if you mess up, every dance instructor makes similar mistakes, roll with the punches.

If you have a problem with the move in demonstrating it then I recommend that you not spend any time teaching it and just say, “we will have to come back to that move another time,” and just move on.  There is nothing wrong if you mess up.  Just have something else up your sleeve to teach in its place.  That’s why you need to have a list of moves to do and make sure you have more than you can teach in your lessons.

7. Don’t focus too much on trying to get the students falling behind to catch up.

What I’ve noticed is if you slow down the lesson for those falling behind everyone falls behind.  Your lesson can go from learning 10 moves to learning 2 moves if you focus on the ones who are struggling.  What you want to do is just keep going through the moves at a normal pace and tell the students who are struggling if they are falling behind that “we will be doing another move in a minute so don’t worry there’s lots to learn.”  You can also position the ones who are ahead to move beside the ones falling behind so they can follow the one who is learning fast and get tips and some help from their peers who are doing well.  The reason you don’t want to focus on those that are falling behind so much is because if you only get 2 moves in during the lesson then the students won’t benefit from it.  Dancers in general need variety and when they only have 2 moves at a dance that they know it can get boring fast.  But if you have someone who learned all 10 moves you taught, and they are doing them at the dance and everyone else sees those moves then those that fell behind can have a chance at picking them up at the dance instead.

So I hope this article helps inspire you to go and teach kids, students, and whoever else how-to Country Swing Dance.  And I hope you enjoy teaching them.

Take Care,

Corey