Instructors
ABD is fortunate to have two excellent instructors, Don McCollum and Richard Fowler who teach at the Hancock Recreation Center at 811 E 41st Street.

Don McCollum
Who is a data processing capacity planner by day and a dance instructor by night? Why, Austin Ballroom Dancers' own Don McCollum.

Ballroom dance has been a recurring element in Don's life. When he was eleven years old, his mother sent him to take dance lessons at a local studio. The teacher decided to train him to give demonstrations. For a year, Don received free lessons in exchange for showing off examples of the studio's offerings.

For about fifteen years after that, Don put ballroom dancing aside. Now in college, he found that teaching dance classes was a great way to pick up some extra money. Don taught at a studio for a year.

Another ten years went by and Don joined Austin Ballroom Dancers and began brushing up his dancing skills. Don was enjoying taking classes when Austin Ballroom Dancers lost one of their instructors. Fortunately, then ABD-president Stella Morrison had been one of Don's dance students when he was in college. She asked him to teach.

Don's been teaching all of the eight or nine years since then, and now teaches several classes a week. He says that he likes to teach in general, likes to dance, and so teaching at ABD is the perfect match.

Richard Fowler

Sound Bites from Richard
An important and frequently forgotten aspect of partnership dancing is the partnership.

If I ask my students to trust what I tell them, I should be willing and able to support my assertions about movement and partnership with a strong theory and explanation. If a teacher can't justify the method they teach and their teaching method, the methods could be flawed and they would never know it.

Despite what my students might tell you, I really do have more simple answers than complex ones (although I have plenty of those, too) and so appreciate a simple question. Asking questions in class is very helpful to me as a teacher, since it tells me where the individuals in the class are in their learning, and so helps me adjust the flow of the class to better suit their needs.

Perfect practice makes perfect; imperfect practice makes bad habits. This doesn't mean "don't practice." It means to practice with vigilance to details; if in doubt about what you're practicing, stop.

Routines of dance are like routines in life: repetition breeds confidence. In dance as in life, there are others who invariably mess up your routine. If you have one routine that's three minutes long, you're in trouble; if you have 8 routines that are one step long, it's no big deal. The price you pay for this flexibility is the effort of learning to lead or follow.

If 8 routines seems like a little or a lot, consider the possible combinations of the following "routines":

    (1) step forward,
    (2) step backward,
    (3) step left,
    (4) step right,
    (5&6) step 1 rotating left & right,
    (7&8) step 2 rotating left & right.

All the rest of it is characteristic styling, and changing dance and arm positions, which boils down to the relative body positions.

How I teach and why I teach that way [Return To Top]
I endeavor to teach how to lead and follow within an integrated system of movement I call positive-pressure interdependence, in which the interdependent structure of the two bodies will connect the two partners' centers of balance so that even subtle changes in balance can be felt while allowing for movement as a couple that cannot be achieved individually. The result will be that you will dance with your partner, not just in front of them.

Some people say that that is all well enough, but they really just want to learn the pattern so they can go out; they don't need all that fancy technical stuff. My point is that the only way to really dance in partnership is to dance with your body so the partner has a clue about where to be. The movement of the feet can be treated as a happy consequence of doing the "right" thing with the body. If the desired goal is a step forward, move the body forward and the walking skill you've been practicing all your life will make your foot move into place (rather than allow you to fall on your face). If you just move your foot and neglect the body, you kick your partner and go nowhere. Many people in the U.S. learn to dance by replicating a series of footprints in a particular pattern to get their body to move; but that particular method of instruction reverses the cause and effect of what's happening. Instead of thinking about the feet to get the body somewhere, I encourage concentrating on moving the body to get the feet somewhere. This focus on the body makes other elements (turning, leading/following, rise & fall) much more intuitive since the kinesthetic awareness of the body's position is already being developed and utilized.

All that being said, I also understand that some people feel silly (or even stupid) when learning to dance because they're just not used to the apparent lack of body control. Some men even feel they should already know this stuff, and so have trouble getting around feelings of inadequacy (sorry guys, the secret's out). Geez, my Dad never even taught me how to hold a woman, much less hold her and move around to music. It's not an inborn talent; it's a skill that can be developed just like any other complex task. You're not a freak; you're just untrained. I'll work on your skills, you work on your inhibitions about movement. Maybe start by doing the twist with your towel after a shower (like Chubby Checker taught it, way back when). This might eventually progress to dancing around the house in the buff, but I'm not making any promises and it's not my fault if it happens.

Have I mentioned that my classes tend to slide between the serious and the silly? I think one way of making others feel less silly about what they're doing is to be the silliest person in the room. "You messed up and ended the step with your foot behind her knee? Whew, it could've been worse; you could've done this *dance with partner and end up with foot behind own knee, fall down, trip once or twice getting back up*. Hey, could you show me how you did it? I can't seem to mess up that well." It also helps that I was a very slow learner when I first started. I've made most of the mistakes that can be made, and seen most of the others. I appreciate it when someone manages to err in a novel way — those days everybody learns a thing or three.

Oh, and I babble, but usually within a realm of relevance to the topic.

About learning (excerpt from my book) [Return To Top]
Common problems to expect in all dances include: the loss of frame as dancers concentrate on their patterns; leg leading, or moving the feet and legs prior to moving the body; and anticipatory following, or the psychic follow. I encourage every dancer to make a quick mental check of their frame (balance, posture, position) at the end of each pattern. This can be slow in the beginning, but will quickly improve the ability to maintain a body position while doing something else. Leg leaders are simply trying to dance with their feet instead of their body; they frequently say they are afraid of stepping on their partner, so try to get the feet in position before moving. The result is usually an uncanny ability to step on the partner's feet, which is logical since they are moving without giving their partner any indication of movement. I say "get your partner out of your way by moving their body, then move your feet." Anticipatory followers are dealing with one of the most difficult aspects of following for beginning dancers: they know the pattern and this makes it difficult to wait for the partner to lead the movement. It sometimes helps to remember that following, by definition, means being a little behind; it can be frustrating, especially when the leader is distracted by other things (navigation, leading, feelings of inadequacy), but "helping" by just doing the pattern will not help the leader develop the skills that will make the next dance more enjoyable.

About Richard [Return To Top]
I have been teaching ballroom dancing since 1988. I've been doing it well since 1990, when my bosses at The Collage (Dallas, TX) let me have the resident guru, Jesse Verdin, for several hours each week. When I moved to Austin to pursue a degree in Linguistics in 1992, I started coaching the UT Ballroom Dance Club. During my four-and-half-year association with the club, we won 12 firsts at USABDA's US Collegiate Nationals and, more importantly, produced many fine social dancers. I now teach for Austin Ballroom Dancers, as well as coaching students in a small studio in south Austin.

If you're curious and a little brave, you can find out more about me by visiting my corner of WebSpace.

© 1997, Richard Fowler
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