About how I got into dancing, how I didn't enjoy it and then started enjoying it. About how my view of dance changed through experience and why I teach what I teach.
My first contact with dance was when I was 6 years old. One day, we were walking down the street home with my mother and sister, when my mother saw a poster of a dance school printed on the window, and my sister was immediately happy that she wanted to go. In order for her to have a partner, they signed me up there as well.
It was ballroom dancing and so I started learning the basics. As a 6-year-old, I did not enjoy it in any way. I was looking for various excuses for not having to dance at trainings, and it also happened that my sister had outgrown me and they wanted to split us up as a couple. It was an age when I couldn't imagine dancing with a stranger's girl, so at home I received an offer that I could go to a music class instead, but that I would do something.
Thus began my journey of playing the accordion (I didn't even know such a thing existed ☺) and my journey of dancing was interrupted for several years. As the years went by, I got to the age where girls didn't bother me so much anymore and I stopped enjoying the accordion.
When I was 14, my parents came to me to tell me that one of their colleagues had a daughter roughly my age and that she was looking for a dance partner for ballroom dancing. And again the offer came, if I go to dance with her, I don't have to play the accordion anymore. I was exactly one year short of finishing primary art school and having the accordion paper. I have never regretted this decision because it started something in my life that completely changed my thinking and taught me discipline and hard work. I learned that really everyone can learn to dance. It's just about what level a person wants to reach and what he is willing to do for that level.
Of course, I will not tell anyone that I was such a boy without talent. It went pretty fast for me. My partner and I literally flew through the first performance categories, in the "B" category we had to adapt for a while, as well as in "A", but in about 4 years we danced the "S" category in Latin American dances and we needed one competition for "S" in standard dances. I achieved that with my second partner.
Well, as is the case with the highest categories in everything in our life, you will suddenly find that talent is not so important anymore, and that you have to go back to the very beginning to the basic step. To the basic principles of movement, stability, weight transfer, communication in couple and the basic technique of individual dances. But my perception was completely different already. In the beginning, I didn't enjoy the basic step. It was just "simple walking, slow, boring". As soon as possible, I wanted to be in the "B" category, so that I could dance more complex and interesting figures, because there was only a limited repertoire in the categories before "B".
When I went back to basics after getting the top category, it was like discovering America. I found that I can devote a whole 90 minute training session to one step and still have work to do. But the best thing about the whole thing was the fact that I started to enjoy it. Analyzing the details and millimeters of movement and beginning to understand why and how a given movement occurs, being able to identify right away that my partner fell off her leg because of me and similar things, was something that could suddenly be worked with. During my competitive career, I met several teachers and each of them gave me a different perspective on dance. I learned to work with my body and I learned to provoke it to high performances. It was a beautiful 11 years of dancing at the performance level, as we call it today, and I have never regretted a single minute or a single cent that I invested in this period.
One day, as it happens, we quit. Frustration came, motivation disappeared, finances ran out, but most importantly, priorities changed. Together with my then-partner, we decided to take a month off. Well, after a month, we realized that we don't miss the competitive life that much, so we completely hung it up. After that, we devoted ourselves to dance for about two more years in the way that we went to trainings and performances, but it was just a form of entertainment. I started teaching dance at a dance school where I also had my dance teacher. That kept me going for another 3 years and then my dance vacuum came.
For a long time, I asked myself how I was able to do it, to get away from it like this, for such a long time. It's probably also about priorities and the life we're living right now. But today I think I just stopped enjoying dancing as a sport and was no longer interested in competing.
My life changed again in 2019 when my then wife (last dance partner) and I ended our 12 year relationship. Questions started running through my head, what am I going to do with my life. Suddenly I was left alone and it was necessary to move somewhere. Fortunately, I recovered quite quickly and realized that I had a lot of time that I could use for myself. The first thing that came to my mind was that I want to dance again. But I didn't feel like jumping back into the competitive carousel anymore. That era was behind me. I wanted to have fun. So I thought I'd give salsa a try. That was my first real contact with social dance. We had salsa and bachata classes in our town, and there was also the rueda de casino, so of course I signed up for everything, so that I could have fun and continue my education in dance and take it to the next level. I wasn't worried about not being able to do so much at once. I've done 10 dances in the past, so in fact, it wasn't enough for me.
Along with our competitive careers, we tried a lot of related things that complemented our dancing. There was ballet training, some workshops on disco, hip hop, contemporary, but there was also salsa, bachata, meregue, but not in the sense of social dance. That was a completely new experience for me. From the beginning, I started to have doubts. I entered a well-established community that went on with its own life, and it was not so easy for me to adapt to this community. I am quite an introvert. But I learned a few steps at the courses, I expanded my repertoire a bit, and I think to myself that I can dance, so why do I feel so strange?
The problem was what I like most about it today. IMPROVISATION. The whole social dance consists in the fact that the leader leads and the follower follows. Of course, this also applies to ballroom dances. The difference is that in the social dance follower does not know what will follow. A choreography was built in ballroom dances. It was possible to work with music and rhythm, but the choreography did not change much during the competition. And suddenly I had freedom. I could go whatever I wanted. But of course my past caught up with me and questions started popping up. How to lead a partner? How should I step? How to transfer the weight to get it where I need it? Does this have different lead and follow rules than ballroom dances?
I wanted as much information as possible and as quickly as possible. I knew that I could process them quickly, because my body worked in this, you could say automatically. I tried different cities, different instructors, but it wasn't enough. It didn't fit in with me, nor with my concept and perception of dance. When I first received the information that I had to drag my partner into the figure and then push her with my hand, ugh, as my current partner Erika says, it stung my ass :D
I started trying abroad and big festivals. World-renowned, really top dance couples in social dance came there. Back then, bachata was more accessible to me than salsa, as I kind of broke into one of the smaller groups in the community that wanted to learn more about bachata. At that time I didn't really care, the main thing was that there would be information. In a way, it's a great experience. A festival where around 1000 people come, everyone wants to dance and get new and new information, huge parties, the best dancing couples in the world. Really great experience and great fun. I had more and more festivals planned and then March 2020 came and our "friend" corona came to us. Everything was canceled and nothing happened. Only local dances when the rules have been relaxed a bit. Suddenly, there was a lot of time to think again, and there was a sense of awareness again...
How can couples and individuals really improve their dancing? Everywhere only figures and combinations and other combinations and more complex combinations and a minimum of technique. I tell myself that if I hadn't danced what I have, I wouldn't be able to dance anything at the festival. Because at the open class, which should actually be for everyone, there was such a combination that without the principles of movement and some habits that I had, it was simply not possible to dance it in a way that was pleasant for both in a couple. And in my opinion, dancing should be mainly pleasant. In my understanding, I began to see festivals as advertising for teachers. Yes, of course they will give you some information there, but what will you learn from a teacher who you meet twice a year at a festival, where he teaches 3 classes and each for a different level? Given that I live in Slovakia, corona actually gave us access to information and exactly what I needed. Online classes have started.
In 2021, I got together with Erika, with whom I "discovered" a new dimension of dance. Some parts new and some parts just confirmed that it really could work the way I felt it could. So we started training together (among other things :D) and we started to devote ourselves intensively to kizomba and a little bit of Brazilian zouk. Bachata and salsa went a bit sideways for me. Because I enjoyed kizomba more due to the connection that is there and how you can dance to different musical styles and how much freedom there can be in this dance. I got a few looks at this dance and it won me over even more.
Thanks to all these experiences and discoveries, I gained a completely new perspective on dance, which actually complements everything I saw in it before.
Precisely because I stopped enjoying the competitive level and then I didn't see the point of training if I wasn't going to take it further competitively.
Today I know that I can move on even without competition. But now more in terms of feelings, partnering and musicality. Of course, I'm still working on technique (after all, it's something I've enjoyed the most at times), but nowadays I don't give it such a high priority. If social dancing has taught me anything, it's that it should be enjoyable for both of you as a couple, and when I'm dancing somewhere at a party, I focus much more on the music and my partner than on myself.
