Being fairly new to ballroom, I am asking the question before I get too upset. Have been taking private lessons with my partner, who has about 16 years of ballroom. Is it normal for the instructor to spend about 80% of the instruction on the male, and 20% (maybe) on the female? Incidentally, I pay for half the lesson.

It depends on the level of the guy. If he is just beginning or an intermediate, it will take more work for him to develop a frame and do the things required to make you look good. It should balance out over time.

However, this is one of the problems of amateur dancing, whereas, the guy-- unless he is very experienced, always has a steep learning curve. This is probably one of the reasons that lots of women gyrate towards Pro-Am. An amateur partnership take more time and patience.

It is common for instructors to pay more attention to the male partner, for some good reasons, like leaders' slower learning curve and the fact that there are lots of things the leader can do that will make it either easy or impossible for the follower to do what she's supposed to do.

There could be other factors at work here:

--if your partner was badly trained (in your instructor's opinion), there may be 16 years worth of bad habits to correct.

--since you are relatively new, he may be focusing on your partner to get him as perfect as possible for your sake--so you can learn your part easily without your partner messing you up and so you won't have to develop bad habits to compensate for your partner's mistakes.

On the other hand, there are some less than great reasons this may be happening:

--there are some teachers who believe that 80% of dancing is the leader's responsibility, that the woman "just follows." Personally, I wouldn't want to take lessons from someone who felt that. It's much more rewarding as a follower to study with someone who believes the follower should be an active dancer.

--Is your instructor male? Most male instructors know the man's part much better and more thoroughly than they do the woman's part (and vice versa for female instructors). That's not to say they don't know the other part well, just that they know more nuances of the part they dance all the time. So he may see more problems with your partner because he knows that part more intimiately. Or he may be focusing on the male part because that's what he's most comfortable with.

In any case, communication is key to a successful partnership and a successful student/teacher relationship. Before you get upset, talk this over with your instructor and partner to see why this is happening. Then when you know, you can decide if you need to do anything about it.

One possibility (which I would recommend anyway) is for you and your partner to also take some coaching from a female instructor, so you can both get the benefit of the follower's perspective and the deeper knowlege of the follower's role.

I had this problem when I first started dancing. In the beginning my male teacher always spent much needed time with me while my partner watched. I even started taking privates solo with a male teacher. I got tired of dancing with another guy, but it really helped me.

Recently, a new talented male teacher appeared and I started taking lessons from him with my female partner. She was very rusty with Int. Latin and he spent most of the lesson on her. She chose to take a few privates solo to help get all of her kinks out. I chose to take some solo lessons on technique and leading details. After a month or so we might take some privates together.
I still take privates with my female teacher and partner and don't want to include a partner much with her--I just enjoy and like what we do together.

I have a practice partner that I dance with some and have thought about getting her to share (lessons are $70 per hour), after thinking about it she would probably get most or all of the lesson time since I am much more advanced than her with technique.

Overall, it is not an easy task to balance out costs and equal time spent on each partner. It is nice to share expenses, but how do you get your moneys worth for your dancing? Most parterships are not equal.


I have a male friend that has taught ballroom for 20 years and is really dated with every dance. He is taking lots of lessons now with a new partner to get up to speed. He is really being transformed. So, just because someone has been dancing for a long time doesn't mean much if he isn't up to date and hasn't had very good teachers to help him along the way. I am constantly amazed at the people masquerading as dance teachers. If one ever experiences high level quality instruction it is very hard to settle for less.

For us it's pretty even. If one of us is struggling more with something new or a technique, than they get more attention during that lesson. We had one teacher, who we dropped quickly, that focused on me all the time. We would go home and I had to teach my wife her part, since the teacher did not.

Other than 2 lemons, our teacher have been very good at focusing on what we need and making sure both of us are learning.

My choice is to pay the total and dance with the instructor.
My x-coach said , the top dancer only teach couples. His words stopped me and wasted my time for 18 months.
Pick up the phone and talk directly to the coach selected. Good luck.
ylchen

thank you for the good advice. It has been discussed with the male instructor, but he tends to forget after that. One solution my partner and I discussed just yesterday was that for the first 20 minutes, he would watch. However, the idea of taking lessons from a female holds some appeal.