Get better, get going
When I was just a novice in the dancing scene, I thought as soon as I lapped up a few more moves and took a few more classes, I would be a pretty good dancer. I tried to go to every class possible, thinking that I was just a few classes away from being the best dancer.
Well here’s the good, bad and ugly side of things. You can have fun dancing in the first four to 12 weeks, plus or minus 6-18 months, depending on your personality and previous dance experience. In order to be an elite dancer, any average person takes three to five years to achieve the first level and then another 3-5 years to reach into the top few percent. By the way with my personal experience these are exact time lines, with no room for variations.
It has taken me almost 15 years to be recognised as a good dancer. When I was new I thought dancing was easy and in a few months I will achieve stardom. I would watch hundreds of dancers and simply wonder. They all were so diverse in their body constitution as well as their approach to their dance. Some were on the heavier side, while some were lean. It looked like if they could do it, so could I, and today I know the new dancers look at me that way.
If you can already dance to anything, including Munni, Shiela, Macarena, a little Michael Jackson moon-walking, jazz, ballet and/or pole, river or country line dancing, you could perform in front of an audience and you’ll realise the fun you’ve having. If you did gymnastics, martial arts, cheerleading or other sports requiring balance and body control, your time line will be significantly shorter than some others.
Here’s the funny thing: Nobody except you will be aware of your dancing. Nobody looks at me and says, “What a loser, he took two years to do things while others were doing it in six months.” In some areas I started much slower than others, but I’ve also blown past many of my peers, who started with me because I worked on fundamentals longer then most, which allowed me to accelerate my learning after a certain tipping point. But there is always a bunch of new people starting to dance and they don’t know I was a slow starter.
Today, most of the time I have a great time, but I always look forward to constant development. You never truly master dancing, you simply learn how to enjoy the ride and look forward to the next step in the journey.
If you are wondering when you’ll be good, you’ll need to realise that “good” is a sliding scale that changes as you become more mature. You could consider getting better regularly, every week or month. What is fascinating is if you don’t stop, and you continue to learn, you’ll look back and be amazed at your progress.
Keep taking lessons and classes, dance as much as you can, find a few other people at your level, and keep refining what you know. You may do it faster or slower than me, but don’t stop learning. Enjoy your ride and stick your head out the window, enjoying the music blowing by: it’s worth the effort. If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing slowly... very slowly.
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