Thanks everyone for your suggestions and support.

One of my teachers once told us that you can tell the difference between an amatuer and a professional dancer because a professional can maintain perfect posture for 3 minutes, most of the time. You are in good company if you are constantly thinking about your posture. The fact that you have noticed improvement in three months is wonderful!



I'm a firm believer in "that's good enough for now", and I try not to point out everything my students are doing poorly all at one time. I'll start by correcting the one or two biggest problems, as your instructor does, but then ignore the rest.

It is perfectly normal to get tense when someone points out your "flaws", it is a natural response. I would hope that your instructor would pick up on your discomfort, but since he hasn't, you might want to overcome your shyness and mention it to him.

Next time you have a lesson, ask your instructor to dance with you (without instruction) for the first couple of songs. That way you might be able to relax before you start.



If you are doing American Smooth, or International Standard you shouldn't look him in the eyes anyway, but A. Rhythm or I. Latin will include eye contact.

Again, if you take another private lesson start with dancing without instruction to see if you are more relaxed once the instruction starts.



Nobody can think about everything at once. Even the apparently perfect competitors are concentrating on specific aspects of each step and pattern they dance. They just do it very quickly, and only concentrate on specific aspects of each step.

If I were your teacher, I would suggest trying to get the patterns "correct" before worrying about too much technique. Dancing is supposed to be fun, not work! Once you've got a good base for being able to move on the dancefloor you can focus more on perfecting your technique.

(My advice is based on being a social dance instructor, not a competitive instructor. In my experience instructors who train students for competitions spend incredibly more time on technique for very simple patterns before moving to slightly more complex patterns. I think focusing to much on technique when you first start can be frustrating, but if you are training for competitions it is probably the right way to train.)



I think most people involved in dancing would agree that their desire to dance well far exceeds their abilities! We are always our own worst critics, after all.

Good luck, and talk to your teacher about being tense, I'm sure he's dealt with it previously.

Kevin

Don't worry about the technical stuff right now... after a number of private lessons with my instructor, not thinking about what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing, just dancing and talking I learned to relax... it makes it alot easier!!

Easiest thing to do is to sleep with him/her (or them both), get rid of all that sexual tension. Or, you should imagine them in their underwear - like public speakers are advised - as a consequence of which the former might result, if you are lucky. :o)

GT.

I'm usually quite nervous dancing with people who I think are substantially better than me. It can be really inhibiting - eventually I get over it, but it may take a long time. Getting comfortable dancing with some of my initial instructors took months. In other cases, if I came into the first lesson with a decent amount of confidence, it wasn't too bad.

But it's never constant. Not too long ago I danced for the first time with someone I'd known for quite a while but somehow never gotten a dance with, and was a real nervous wreck. Around the same time I danced some stuff with a visiting world-class pro - and realized only afterwords that I'd completely forgotten to be nervous.

I think maybe the key is to think about what you can learn, and not worry about what the other person thinks of you. Especially in a teaching situation, what will most please the other person is that you project a real desire to learn - even if you are having incessant difficulties with the material.

It does get better - on average - but there can always be frustrating relapses.

I'm going to chime in here: it's very common to be nervous. Heck, I was terrified of my teacher for the first six months that I was taking lessons from him, but I kept at it because he was the best teacher available to me. I've been taking lessons from him for nearly 7 years now, mostly studying Standard, but also a tiny amount of Latin, and now Smooth. What really helped me was getting it through my head that he was there to help me. I knew it intellectually, but really *getting* that made a difference. Try to listen for the compliments and not just the criticisms, and you'll start to get it too.

Good luck! What you're going through is completely normal!

I hate to hear this,
Your instructor should not be pushing you so hard right now regarding your technique, Once you get the steps you will then be able to focus on the rest.

Don't give up because you have seen nothing yet!
Dancing feet are happy feet :)

Enjoy

I think you have to concider what you want. Do you want to dance or do you want to have fun?
Once you figured that out you should take a close look at how your school works, do they focus on techique or on the fun side of dancing? (Here where I live that differs per school)

About your shyness, I think I know what you mean. I'm a pretty shy dude myself, always the quite one in the back, you probably know what I mean.
What you have to realise is that you are "just" (don't get that wrong please^_^) a student. And students make mistakes, it's as simple as that so don't feel bad about it.

The fact that your teacher corrects you often is in my opinion a good thing, that proves he wants some quality in his school. So if you hate to be corrected stay polite and say it to him, I'd bet he will leave you alone.

Now, I can't take away your shyness but I can tell you something what happened to me, very peculiar if you ask me but it's true^_^
Usually I'm nervous just before exams and tend to "freeze", same thing with my dance exams last year, but... Once I stood on the dancefloor to take the exam I realised that it was not that bad standing there and that nothing could go wrong because I knew what to do. I actually enjoyed standing there in the spotlights. And I danced like never before, got one of the best scores in my class and was selected to enter the bronze contest and got the second place.

What I'm trying to say is that you will do fine if you know your steps.
Hope I've been of help in some way^_^

You must fancy him if you feel like that. if so just go for it and enjoy You will become a better dancer with passion feelings ect

If you sont fancy him just forget it And dance he probably wont even notice your top heavy
ebjoy

I can see the sexual tension between the two of you. One way to fix that is to just sleep with him and get it over with already.