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.

I was working on a tango showcase before my fallingout with my instructor.
Yes my other dances started to suffer as the date was drawing near. At least a couple of steps that I had only recently learned I forgot completly which means a few hours turned out as a complete waste of time.

But it did help me.
Yes many steps I couldn't dance with other ladies. But since before we fought my instructor had done a wodnerful job she had insisted on me learning to properly lead her into these steps and always tried to show me where it was possible which part of our syllabus these steps were based on/adapted from so I would also learn something useful for later.
But the showcase training was also a great confidence boost. Mostly because suddenly all the ladies decided I must be pretty decent at tango if I am working on a showcase and started trusting me. And it is far easier to lead a lady that believes you can lead her than one who believes that no student can ever lead her as well as her instructor etc. And since one dance goes well the rest will follow. I noticed that in that group, once it was accepted that I was quite good at tango everyone deduced that I'd also be good at waltz and foxtrot which in turn I became better at more rapidly...