People all around the world love ballroom dancing because of its competitive and social nature. Anyone can enjoy these dances with their partner, irrespective of age. Here, we’ll list ballroom dances that are famous worldwide. You would have seen them in many films, television shows, dance competitions, and on renowned stages. Let’s get started!
Waltz
Waltz is one of the most thought-of dances anytime someone mentions ballroom dancing. It’s also one of the smoothest dance forms and is exquisite and graceful. Waltz involves 28 bars every minute, performed in 3/4 time. If you watch from a distance, you’ll feel that the dancers appear to glide around the floor effortlessly. Waltz is not just a romantic dance form but also a progressive dance type marked by flowing, long movement, rise and fall, and continuous turns.
Tango
This dance form originated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been around since the 19th Century. It involves sharp, cat-like moves. There are two types of Tango: Ballroom Tango and Argentine Tango. As our goal is to list ballroom dances in this article, we’ll focus on the former. Ballroom tango is sensual and romantic, and people love the fascination associated with it. The dance form involves 32 bars every minute, performed in 2/4 time. Tango has evolved over the years, and today, the style used in most competitions is not the same as the Argentinian Tango.
Rumba
Rumba is characterized by sophisticated yet straightforward movements. Nevertheless, it’s a romantic dance form. Rumba is famous because it totally revamped ballroom dancing with its complex and pacy moves.
Cha-Cha
Cha-Cha is a flirtatious dance form. It can be considered a slower version of Mamba, but with more hip movement. In this lively ballroom dance full of energy and passion, partners dance together to synchronize their every move and make it fall in perfect alignment.
Foxtrot
This is another simple ballroom dance, which is a lot of fun. It was named after Harry Fox, the actor believed to have popularized the dance form in the early 1900s. Foxtrot is excellent for learning, especially for beginners. In this dance form, couples make smooth, long, and flowy movements across the floor to swing.
Jive
Jive is a spicy swing dance set to big band music. In this form, the man leads, and women encourage more men to persuade them for a dance. These days, another dance form called Modern Jive has emerged, which is a more simplified version.
When you start ballroom dancing for the first time, you’re bound to make mistakes. This is why we need a lot of practice. But trust us when we say this, ballroom dancing benefits are totally worth the hard work. Even the most award-winning, impressive, and accomplished dancers made (and still make) mistakes. But what are the most common ballroom dance errors? Here, we list some of them.
Looking at your feet while dancing
When you start ballroom dancing, you’re uncertain and underconfident of your moves. So, you tend to avoid eye contact and look more at your feet. It’s also because you have a fear of stepping onto your partner’s toes. In all honesty, this can be a difficult habit to overcome. But there’s no way out. If you keep looking down at your feet, it will directly hamper your posture, bend your shoulders forward, and weaken your frame.
The objective of social dancing is to utilize your whole body to communicate with your partner. You have to feel your partner’s movements; if you can feel it, you won’t have to look down to know where you should place your feet. To practice looking up, you can fixate a focal point at your eye length anytime you start dancing, say a window, a clock, or even your partner’s smile. This will make your dancing smoother and improve your posture.
Taking wide steps
As a beginner, you may take wide steps at times. Sadly, the broad steps can put you off-balance and make it challenging to focus on the beat. And when you go off-beat, your partner finds it hard to keep up with you. This can lead to a whole lot of other errors as well. So try to take smaller steps until you gain more confidence.
Dancing in only one style
If we list ballroom dances one by one, we might run out of time. There are so many of them! Hence, most people focus on one dance form and get better at it. There’s no problem with it if you’re trying to get perfect for a specific event or aspire to learn only a single dance form. However, if you wish to be a well-rounded ballroom dancer, it’s always good to perfect multiple dance styles.
Learning numerous forms can get you out of your comfort zone and make you a more eased-out dancer. More so, when you know multiple dance forms, you can dance with more people socially because not everyone will know ballroom dancing, right?
Do you love ballroom dancing? If yes, you know the kind of dedication and hard work this dance form requires. It’s elegant, beautiful, and fun. Now, if we list ballroom dances, we’ll run out of time. There are so many of them: Waltz, Jive, Cha-Cha, Foxtrot, and many many more! But regardless of the dance form you pick, you should be able to ace it. So, here are some tips that can help you improve your ballroom dancing game.
Perfect the closed dance hold
If you’ve seen the closed dance hold, you might know that the woman is slightly tilted towards the man’s right in this position. More so, in this move, the couple’s feet are a bit offset so that one partner’s right foot can step between the other’s feet. This posture is vital because you may step on your partner’s toes if you do it wrong.
Practice makes perfect
We’ll not list ballroom dances here, but pick any, and you’ll know that two things are common with all forms. One, they require timed movements, and two, there’s a particular posture that you’ve to follow. To get hold of these two prerequisites, you need to practice a lot. Besides, practice will help you understand your body’s movement and make it easy for you to sync it with your partner.
Take ballroom dance lessons consistently
Be it private, group, or online sessions, you need to continue sharpening your dance knowledge. Getting certain things wrong time after time can be frustrating. But continue to learn. Plus, only a professional can teach you the proper technique. So don’t miss your lessons.
Maintain the posture
For a man to check his posture, he needs to stand with his back against a wall and then take this straight alignment onto the dance floor. If you’ve ever been to a ballroom dance class, you’ll know that teachers usually talk about the front line, top line, and Medline. When your posture is correct, your dance will look regal and majestic on the dance floor.
Wear comfortable shoes
If your heels feel pressured or your toes are pinched, you won’t dance well. Thus, when you go dancing, pick out the shoes that you’re most comfortable in. Only after you dance in a couple of pairs will you see the difference and find the best footwear for you.
Go out dancing regularly
For perfecting ballroom dancing, you need that real-world experience. So, go out to ballroom dance parties, a nightclub, or any studio for social dancing. Also, when you look at other dancers better than you, you improve.