I'm getting ready to do a showcase (my first) in April and my teacher asked me what I'd like to dance and what music. I said I think I'd like to do a Viennese Waltz to Show Me The Way by Styx and she loves the idea.

Now, the problem. We just started working on Viennese Waltz last night and it's my first time. Though the steps are a little more complicated than I thought they'd be, I can see that I won't have any problem learning them. My problem is the spinning. We make one trip down the side of the floor and I'm ready to reach out for the wall to steady myself. Elen (my teacher) says, in her Estonian way, "we'll just do a change and spin the other way at the end of the floor."

Yeah right. I don't think it works that way. I'm not a watch that's being wound up and just needs to be unwound. How on God's green earth do I keep from getting dizzy? I'd like to do this dance, but I don't want to fall on my butt about halfway through the song.

Three things:

1) practice it

2) keep the motion as linear as possible, don't think rotation, think changing places with your partner. A travelling dance that happens to rotate, not a rotating dance that travels.

3) Change direction of rotation actually does help, or at least it's customary to think it will. Many who can last a whole song alternating will get dizzy if they go only one way, of course how much is phisiological and how in their heads... well, balance is all in your head anyway