Award-winning quilt made by Becci Dusenberry. Photo by Jim Dusenberry.
It takes a village
Anne Romeo and Dorothy Wood
On the dance floor, it’s not unusual for us to hear “Wow, we love the variety of dances in the club,” “It’s so fun to have different songs for every dance,” and “We are lucky to have so many great teachers.” Of course, we’re always happy to hear members appreciating the club volunteers and activities, so we decided to share a bit of what goes on behind the scenes to keep our club humming, and in our case, dancing.
Let’s start with our amazing dance committee—a team of experienced dancers who combs the Internet and attends outside workshops to find fun and popular dances. They strive to ensure that every level of the club has a mix of country, Latin, pop, and ballroom options. After finding a new dance, their efforts shift to the workshop floor where they assist each other to develop effective teaching tactics for the dance patterns and select appropriate cue words. Over the years, the club has developed a solid “building block” teaching model, using the “demo-cue-count-repeat” method, that keeps our instructions clean, consistent, and thorough. This model is adopted by our leadership committee for one-on-one mentoring of future leaders and instructors. The result we see is a steady flow of fresh dances taught by a pool of well-trained instructors. We also encourage our more proficient dancers to attend workshops and serve as co-leaders and row captains. They provide helpful “eyes in the back of the head” to our instructors. This rotation of personalities and leadership styles prevents instructor burnout and helps ensure that our sessions stay high energy.
Working in conjunction with these committees is our music committee. These talented members use their musical ears to find alternative songs for our 80-plus active dances. New music prevents the “same-ole-song” monotony and kicks up the fun factor another notch. New songs also provide reinforcement and extra “payback” for a dancer’s investment in learning a given dance. The music committee works along side of the data management expert who deploys her skills to generate a 150-plus song list that is formulated into rotating playlists for weekly level 1, 2, and 3 dance programs. Like a village co-op, our hard-working program committees take these playlists and recruit rotational walk-though leaders for our weekly programs. You may have noticed a key word here: In the real estate jargon of line dance, “rotation, rotation, rotation” is the gospel of our club.
As you can see, it truly “takes a village” to make all of these dance opportunities happen. If you would like to join the SaddleBrooke Line Dance Club, check out our website at sbldc.weebly.com or contact Anne Romeo at [email protected]. Our members enjoy a flexible choice of workshops and sessions, with no pre-bookings required. Line dance lessons and social events are available for a membership fee of only $10 per year! We will be starting up new year’s introductory classes in 2020 and look forward to seeing you on the dance floor in the very near future!