I love to dance. I've been dancing since I was six, and I just recently discovered ballroom dancing when my dad took a salsa class and relayed what he learned to me. I immediatly fell in love with it and wanted to find out more, so you can imagine how siked I was when I found out that it was a competitive sport. Dance is the only thing that I've ever been really good at and I want to persue it farther, but I've never taken any professional classes and I have no idea where to start or what to look for in an instructor or even if anyone would want to coach a beginner with absolutely no skill...yet. I eventually would like compete professionally but everyone has to start somewhere and right now I've no clue where, so if anyone has any advice I'd really appreciate it.

Hey! Dance is an awesome sport and I'm sure that you'll love it! It's very easy to start. I'd recommend looking in the yellow pages for some dance studios, or asking around to see if anyone has some recommendations. The majority of dance teachers are extremely nice and friendly (I have yet to meet a mean one) and teaching is theyre job so they have no trouble instructing a newcomer. I hope this helps and I hope you have luck finding a good teacher and studio! If you need any more help post a message or email me at saleenstar1312@yahoo.com.

There's a directory of partner dance professionals on this site. Take a look and see if there is someone near where you live.

You absolutely do need lessons. Find a good teacher. And shop around for studios to see what their deals are. Some of the chains require that you sign up for a whole bunch of lessons before you know whether the teacher is any good; this is clearly to be avoided. OTOH, my best teacher used to teach in a chain. If he were local now (Tom! move down here!) I'd sign up with him no matter what.

There are a lot of dances. Smooth, Latin, new dances like Salsa, unusual ones like Paso Doble. Try to work on a few of these at first, not all at once. Since you've started Salsa, continue that, and add the other Latins like ChaCha, Rhumba, and Bolero. Then add the smooths like waltz and foxtrot.

My 2cents.