How comfortable are you with your dancing? I’m not speaking in terms of reviewing your competition footage and feeling good about yourself; I’m asking about your experience within your own body as you dance. Are you complacent? In ballroom, and in life more generally, there are two types of mistakes: passive and active. We want …
After two and a half months in Kenya, I’m back! That also means I’ve had a two-and-a-half-month break from dancing. Uh-oh. That’s bad, right? Nope! 5 Reasons to Take a Break: 5. Passion for Partnership The work is long, bent over the 1.5-million-year-old soils all day in the equatorial heat. Sometimes, as today, I like …
I just lost. Like they tell you to do all through middle school, I’m going to try to get something positive out of the experience. I’m going to write about it, and if you read it, fine. I’m going to think away all the negative emotions, right? I’m going to come out the other side …
After my recent trip to Thailand, where I studied tiger conservation and related issues, I became interested in conservation as it relates to ballroom. Global overcrowding and demand for resources increasingly push people into marginal land areas, while poachers and poor hunters continue to over-exploit the few resources tigers have left. Though seemingly far removed …
Thailand. The land of the elephant. My destination this winter break. A whirlwind of conservation and ecology. Here are my thoughts. What does it mean for me, as an American kid, to come over and play Indiana Jones for three weeks in the Western Forest Complex? What If I’d just sent my $5,000 USD (~160,000 …
Is ballroom dancing inherently sexist? If so, can anything be done? Few questions trouble me more as a person who thinks of himself as a feminist and an anthropologist. It truly is an elephant in the ballroom; it can be hard to get people to discuss it frankly. My real question here, the one I …
I couldn’t be more proud of my team. Sure, we did a fabulous job at the USA Dance National Collegiate DanceSport Championship, despite the facts that: Over a third of our team are new to the team Over a quarter have never danced competitively Exactly half of our leads are new But that’s not what …
“What do you miss most about it—about ballroom?” I asked. “I don’t miss competing,” she said immediately. “And I guess I don’t really miss teaching, either.” She glanced at the pool, full of elementary-schoolers strengthening their swimming skills, to see how her daughter was doing. “I do miss the practice, though. It was nice to …