I am doing a 2 minute Int. Latin Rumba showcase with my dance teacher partner in 4 months at a local event. We had a another teacher do our choreography. He did my part solo and her part solo, we taped it and started from there. I have never learned partnership dancing like this before. It's usually done or initially presented with a couple dancing. We have selected the music and are into 5 lessons now. It is very slow going. Looking back at the tape, leaving out something or whatever. Most of it is not syllabus work and I really couldn't dance it with anyone else. We plan to use this as part of our competition routine. At the rate we are going it will probably take about 12 to 15 lessons.

This is taking a chunk out my lessons. We dance Smooth, Latin and others--or a total of about 13 dances. Our next competition is next May. I had hoped to redo most of our choreography, but there are so many dances.

I am beginning to wonder what I am doing this showcase for? I didn't realize that it was going to take this much time on this one dance. I take about 2 lessons per week and would like to work on other dances too. My main goal is to be a better competitor.

How much have showcases helped your dancing? Are they as time consuming for you?

My experience with "showcases" was with fanchise studios (AM). The event was really used to drive their sales more than it was to improve our dancing. I generally felt disatisfied after the event, in that it took up too much time and too many lessons; as well, we were not able to focus on the other dances that we needed to.

If you have concerns that this showcase doesn't fit with what your goals are, talk to your teacher - you are the customer. If she is truly interested in your progress, she will understand.

Hope this helps. Regards,

I really think your instructor has the responsibility to learn the choreography on his own time and teach it to you during lessons. I've never heard of a situation where a pro takes lesson time to learn his part of the choreography.