Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Samantha: Welcome back to another episode of Ballroom Chat, the podcast dedicated to sharing the dance journey. I'm your host, Samantha with Love Live Dance. Today I'm joined by not one, but two guests. We have Enio Cordoba and Terryl Jones on the podcast. If you are somehow not already aware of who they are in the dance world, Enio, uh, was a US amateur Latin champion, he made the quarter finals at Blackpool as well, He was a US Pro Rising Star Latin champion Uh, Terryl made the quarter finals at Ohio Star Ball in the Professional Ballroom category. Together, they were the cabaret champions at a world swing championships. They choreographed for "Dance with Me", they starred as themselves in "God and Salsa", they've recently launched an online platform called Yoga 4 Long Life, and they also provide consulting to dance, studio, owners, and professionals through EXT consulting.
This conversation with Enio and Terryl, I found incredibly helpful. Um, we actually got so far deep into the weeds on a couple of different topics that I am having to split our conversation into not one but two episodes. So this is just part one of my conversation with Enio and Terryl we get into the nitty gritty about finding your dance community and what it takes to build a strong dance community. We talk a little bit about, uh, where studio owners tend to go, maybe not on the most advantageous path when it, when it comes to like structuring their classes and their lessons. Uh, we talk about the pros and cons of competitive dance and. Just a lot. we talk about a lot. Um, so please enjoy part one of my conversation with Enio and Terryl.
Well, thank you so much Terryl and Enio for joining me today on the podcast.
[00:02:08] Terryl: Well thank you for having us.
[00:02:10] Enio: Thank you. Hi. How are you?
[00:02:12] Samantha: Doing well. I'm so excited to get to talk to you both today. Um, I imagine for our listeners, at least from a name recognition standpoint, they probably know a little bit about you, but I like to start with all of my guests, um, just to give us a little bit of background and information on where your dance journey started and kind of the short version of how you got to where you are today.
So, um, Terryl, let's start with you kind of where, where did your dance journey start and, uh, where has it taken you so far?
[00:02:45] Terryl: Well, it started, my parents were swing dancers. They had grown up. My dad was a good Southern boy and had done cotillion, like all good Southern boys do. And so they danced. Um, my grandmother was actually a dance instructor back in the day. So I did grow up dancing with my dad. And then I lived in the Philippines when I was in high school. And, um, it Latin specifically Chacha is very popular just as a social dance there. And so that's where I started getting introduced into Latin dancing. It was just in the social aspect and it wasn't. Then when I, uh, came back stateside, I actually just went through a training class at a dance studio and started in that direction.
And I started competing in standard. That was my thing. And, um, I had trained under Bemil McGregor and. Along the way I'm shortening this a lot. But, um, I, I was doing very well and I got to know Gaynor Fairweather, and I took a really close look at her life. And while everybody was saying, oh, that's so great. You know, cause that was the pinnacle, right? That's the pinnacle of where you can go. And, um, she had a beautiful home that she hadn't been in in six months. You, you can't have a pet, you can't have even a plant. Um, you know, relationships are difficult when you're living on the road. And, and I thought if that's the best that this life has to offer, that's not what I want.
I love dancing, but competition is not going to be my thing. And so I retired from competition, which allowed me to even fathom dancing with somebody that was retired and did Latin, which wasn't wasn't, uh, my thing, I was a standard dancer and that's when I paired up with Enio, AKA captain chaos. And, um, you know, so from there, we've just kind of, uh, ricocheted into doing different things as, as opportunities came.
Um, but our biggest thing that we did and what I truly love and, and what I had come back to was I really, really loved teaching and I loved performing, and those were way more important to me than competing and teaching was my first love. And so that's where Enio and I built our huge studio in the Grenada. And, uh, so that everything else was kind of side to that they were sidebar something to do for fun. It was like, oh, let's do this show. Let's do this tour, let's do this, whatever it was really just, hey, you wanna do that this weekend? And, and so that's why so many of our accomplishments were done in weeks, amount of time, rather, you know, I hate to say, you know, some people work years to get for something we'd say, well, let's do this in a month and we would do it. And, or,
[00:05:56] Enio: oh, by the way, they want us to be in a movie and like, are you in? Yeah. Okay. Let's do.
[00:06:00] Terryl: Or like even our, our, you know, our, uh, the, uh, world swing championship was like, that's this afternoon, grab your dress. Let's go now. So nothing became a, um, a, a drive. It was just all sidebars. And that's, that's kind of where the short version, the short version.
And then Enio, There's no short version on his side. None
[00:06:28] Enio: well, um, my mom wanted me to meet Costa Rican girls. So she got me into a Costa Rican folklore group when I was 17. Basically it was our chance to get the car and get the hell out of the house. So I got to meet a bunch of college kids and high school kids my age. Started dating one of the girls, um, and we would just kind of do swing and not, well, you know, throw each other around swing to rock and salsa. It was late, uh, sorry, early seventies, excuse me. And, uh, in one of those cut, you know, seven years later, she got into a class at USC and one of the requirements was go to an outside event and see ballroom dancing.
And she took me along. They played a little, you know, a lot of swing. A little salsa. And we were able to kind of throw each other around and had fun. But part of that night was a show by Ron Montez and Carol Montez. And I was like, wow, this was, that was so cool to see. And they had not won the us championship. They were currently in like second or third. So, um, they were fantastic. And I saw them do Latin and Standard. That was actually Ron's strength in those days. Anyway, next week, come on back. We got da, da and I thought, oh, same thing next week we had fun lets go.
[00:07:47] Terryl: Because typically Enio only hears a quarter of what is said. All he heard was next week, blah, blah, blah.
[00:07:53] Enio: So I went and uh, turned out it was a dance class and this is my favorite part of it was, it was a Quickstep class and the English teacher, uh, the, um, owner, the owner's wife in studio, Jill Morton basically, you know, I try to sit out. She like, no, no, Mr. You're coming with me, drags me out on the floor.
So very simply. Okay, I'll do it. I'm an athlete. I, you know, and I, and I I'm terrible, but dance hold and frame. And it was like so precise and its Quickstep, first class, which was glorified, bronze Foxtrot. But anyway, I'm bad. Anyway, every time the teacher said rotate, the girls would rotate to me and this would be eye, sky, word, praying, you know, like, oh my God. And, and I just, you know, and I'm Joe college fraternity, and these are fraternity girls. The funny thing was they were having, no, they were enjoying dancing with the little Propellerhead, you know, Coke bottle glass, engineer types.
[00:08:58] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:08:58] Enio: but the athlete, they, they were, you know, looking Skyward. So I made this, vow. I am not giving this up. I, I will out dance every one of them, gimme six weeks. Well, it didn't quite happen. It was a little six week, summer course. I got to where my, maybe by the second or third week I can actually do it, but I still suck. And my vow was, I'm not giving this up until I can out dance every one of those, I didn't, I don't wanna repeat that word here, but anyway, um,
[00:09:29] Terryl: there was a problem.
[00:09:30] Enio: There was one little problem.
[00:09:31] Terryl: Well, there were several problems,
[00:09:33] Enio: so
[00:09:33] Samantha: mm-hmm,
[00:09:34] Enio: come fall. I decide. Okay. I'm gonna sign up for a ballroom class just cuz for it was fun. The only problem was I kept chasing the girls in this class level wise. And unfortunately one of 'em in the class happened to be Liz Curtis,
[00:09:52] Samantha: you know, not, not a bad benchmark to, to chase after I guess.
[00:09:57] Enio: Well had I had, I caught everybody else and had left her out of the mix. I probably wouldn't be in this business, cuz at that time I was pre-med. But anyway, so I stayed with it. I end up on the dance team. Uh, Liz. Um, graduates she's one year ahead of me and I become team captain on the team. We win us nationals in New York. Um, at the time USBC, the following year, I'm ready to graduate and we get invited to Blackpool and I go to Blackpool instead of graduating. I had enough money for one, I thought, well, I'll never get to Europe.
You know, I'll just, I'll push back. My graduation didn't matter at that point. So now I'm thinking I'm just gonna go to Blackpool dance once. And in that moment, when we did our final pose, I look up, you know, 5,000 people are really cheering and applauding. And I said, this is what I wanna do the rest of my life at that instant. Only to hear Ron Montez on the last day of Blackpool, which is where they say, you know, they invite one person from each country to say what Blackpool means to them.
And to hear Ron say the first time he danced at Blackpool, and I think it was with the BYU team. He looks up and he sees the people cheering and he says, this is what I'm gonna do the rest of my life. And to hear that, you know, so jump forward now, I'm, I'm like, I'm gonna compete. So I gear up three years later, I win the US Amateur. Um, next year I turned pro or basically the end of that year. I turned pro after the worlds. And, um, Ron hooks me up with a partner from San Diego. So I now have had a partner from Houston. Now I have a partner in San Diego. I mean, living in LA. I like these long distance partnerships, I guess, and commuting on weekends and win the California rising star.
Um, that lasted a few months. I met my first wife. We competed, uh, took her to Blackpool. We make the 24 at Blackpool in our first year. 24 in the open and 24 in the rising star was like nuts. Um, and. We decided, you know, that we would, we really wanted to push it. So what we did was we went on a cruise ship and on the cruise ship, we performed like four times a week.
And that performance was what got us that Quarterfinal at Blackpool, because that all that performance is so Mo much more important than just technique I had.
[00:12:32] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:12:33] Enio: really good technique. I will say I had Nina Hunt and Ron Montez as my coaches, but it's the performance aspect that most people don't understand. It allows you to connect with the audience and the judges and stuff, so improvise, and you really are grounded when the floor is moving. So that was part of, um, that was what kind of got me to that pro level. And, um, then we decided to have kids and we kind of stopped and started, stopped and started until she gave up.
And I really wanted like one more chance. And so I got one more partner, one the California, sorry, the US Rising Star after one year of training her. And, um, then I said, okay, I'm done, I'm retired. I'm gonna open a studio and do that. And along comes this one trouble, you know, um, riding a broomstick and, uh, that's our, that's our little story.
Anyway. Um, we become friends and eventually we, um, the story, how we met is hysterical, but I'll leave that out. Um, we become just performers and running the studio and we always sat and, and finished a class and we'd sit there and analyze, what did we do? What can we do better? What, you know, just analyzing our teaching to sharpen it and refine it and, and make it
[00:13:59] Terryl: very critiquing of ourselves,
[00:14:02] Enio: right.
[00:14:02] Terryl: Every single plus, because, um, there was always more to learn. And as far as teachers, we felt that there was always room for improvement. And just because we were taught a certain way, doesn't mean that that's the best way for something to be taught
[00:14:17] Samantha: mm-hmm
[00:14:17] Terryl: and because I had other things that I was training in and studying, I was bringing in those facets of my knowledge and challenging what we were doing.
[00:14:30] Enio: Right. And then I was getting into the psychology of the, um, of, of the teaching of dance
[00:14:38] Terryl: and, and that also tied in with him working with the Olympic skaters because he was working in those places.
[00:14:46] Samantha: Mm-hmm .
[00:14:46] Enio: So that kind of took us to, you know, quick the amateur pro career. And then we were never gonna compete. Then, like I said, one day, somebody. Challenged us and kind of, it was stupid, you know, but I, you know, my,
[00:15:06] Terryl: it was the wrong person that got under his skin, little bit of ego
[00:15:11] Enio: and the world swing championships are that day. Uh, I just looked at her and said, grab your dress. We're dancing today. We had just come off the boat. So we were pretty, we were tight, but we didn't have, you know, we didn't have specific, um, intent on doing this thing. Well, we enter it and it turns out we win and come back the following year, cuz that was, we won the cabaret division. We come back the following year and we dance in the classic division and it turns out we come in second, I think in that one second or third and fortunately my brother didn't dance that year.
So, uh we can, we, you know, so that's like, boom, that just happened. We never.
[00:15:57] Terryl: And then we didn't do it again.
[00:15:58] Enio: Right.
[00:15:58] Terryl: We moved on something else. I did that check the box. So, you know, we're not one of those people that is that the competition is what drives us.
[00:16:11] Enio: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Samantha: Yeah. So that's, that's interesting. So I, I kind of wanna circle back to that because, um, Terryl, it it's in the way that you're describing it, it's very obvious that competition was something nice to do when the opportunity was right. And when the partnership was right, but it wasn't a driving force for you because you didn't wanna be on the road constantly, but Enio, you had that drive to do competitions for where it seems like several years in a row.
So was it just at the point where you were like, all right, I can calm things down. I wanna shift my focus and then did that competition drive ever come back? Or at the moment that you shifted to, I wanna be a studio owner. I wanna teach classes. I wanna put my energy into this, did did that lure of competition kind of go away for you?
[00:17:01] Terryl: Can I say A nothing ever calmed down. B, he just redirected that competitive from actually competing on the floor to competing other places. That's my opinion. I'll shut up.
[00:17:16] Enio: Oh God tough, tough, tough question. Um, I had kids at that point and I,
[00:17:21] Terryl: and they were young
[00:17:21] Enio: and they were very young and being on the road with a different partner and she was in Denver. See this, I went from San Diego to, or Houston to San Diego to Denver, but I'm still living in Pasadena, California. Um, it was hard. We would be a week there and a week here, a week there and a week here. And so it was, I, I really wanted to be around my kids and they were only like a year old and had one on the way, which is when my, my ex retired. She said I don't wanna do anymore.
So, but we had an agreement. That that we said if either one of us wants to keep competing, it's cool. So we did, but at that point it was real, really hard on her and carrying the load with a baby and one on the way. I said, no, that's not fair. So I packed it in. So that's when I said no more competing. And then a couple years later, Terryl and I get together and, um, actually probably, uh, no, like seven years later we get together and we, you know, at first it was, she was just helping me because I had gotten injured. I had broken my foot, uh, in a performance and I needed somebody to, to be my dance dummy. And, uh,
[00:18:32] Terryl: unfortunately the dummy didn't keep her mouth shut.
[00:18:34] Enio: Oh God, I should have known should have used duct tape but anyway,
[00:18:38] Terryl: He was teaching a standard class with like technique that was making my skin crawl, but
[00:18:44] Enio: she was a standard dancer and me the Latin dancer.
Right. But anyway, I was like, so there, there, so anyway, we were going, you know, out dancing here I am in a cast and we're dancing for like, it was actually almost six, seven months where that foot was healing. And so we'd go out dancing, but I'd be on one foot spinning around whatever. And it was, it was great. It was wonderful, but no, um, we started to compete right after we won the, the World, uh, Swing, but the thing was that her Latin was very, uh, American. Uh, so, uh, let's say Fred Astaire and my Latin was very international. So it, there was so much kind of, I don't wanna say stress, but.
[00:19:34] Terryl: Uh, let's just say he didn't like my Latin, I didn't like his standard, so salsa and swing was neutral territory.
[00:19:41] Enio: Yeah. Good point. Yeah, that works. Let's let's we'll agree that doubley, doubley that. Okay. Anyway,
[00:19:49] Terryl: so yeah, we had, we fought less.
[00:19:52] Enio: Yeah. But that's true. So in a new relationship, you know, you go, uh, it's not worth it. And, uh, we were having fun. And my studio at the, in the early days was, um, hitting right about when the swing was the, you know, the gap commercials, the Lindy hop was hitting and we rode that wave.
We just happened to get the world boogie woogie champions in our studio. And I mean, it just took off and the studio started to grow and then we, then salsa hits and. We're we had jumped from swing the salsa so that we weren't competing with my brother. I didn't didn't wanna compete against my brother.
And, um, we got into the salsa and right then Dance with Me, hits, and we get into the movie. And then that opened all kinds of doors in Europe. So now we're traveling back and forth like six trips to London in one year. It was just crazy. Um, that it, there was no time for competition at that point.
[00:20:57] Samantha: Right.
[00:20:57] Enio: You know, we didn't wanna do the, the salsa thing. Plus at that point, I think I was now, uh, actually at that point I was 40 and you know, the kids were out there throwing themselves on the floor. And I was like, no, not interested. Don't, you know, don't wanna do that. I can, I can do it. I don't want to.
[00:21:18] Samantha: Right.
[00:21:18] Enio: It's just not worth it. You know, there's no,
[00:21:20] Terryl: it wasn't a quality of dancing that he appreciated because at that point in the salsa community, any lift, no matter how badly it was executed was considered fantastic because they hadn't really seen lifts yet. So coming from a trained background, we would look at these lifts and we'd think. Oh my.
And there were people that were impressed by it because it, they just hadn't, it wasn't part of the community. It wasn't part of the dance scene yet.
[00:21:49] Samantha: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:50] Terryl: And so, um, when you were seeing people that were doing high quality dancing, being beaten by people that were doing poor quality lifts and poor quality dancing in between, and the judges didn't know enough at that time, either, that they were impressed by the bad list, it was like, no, no, no, no. That's just not the, not where we're
[00:22:10] Enio: let's go somewhere else.
[00:22:11] Terryl: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Samantha: Right, right. So I wanna circle back to, um, the, the topic of kind of co-teaching and reflecting on how your lessons were going and having that ongoing dialogue about, okay, I, I have this training outside of dance, or that's along with dance or, or I'm looking into the psychology of how we're teaching what we're teaching and why we're teaching what we're teaching. How important, um, is it in your mind to have a co-teaching partner that you can bounce off of and work with within a studio setting?
And also, I kind of wanna take that conversation into more of a, as we develop and grow our dance syllabus and our teaching knowledge. How important do you believe it is to be cross trained in other modalities so that you can bring some of that information in?
[00:23:06] Enio: Okay, let me take the first part of that. Um, absolutely, in my business, consulting my studio business consulting. I stress that if you're gonna teach a group class, absolutely 100%, you should always have two people. You have beginners, they get confused. You're switching back roles, leader, follower, leader, follower, you know, it, you got to have one teacher, not a, not a teacher and a dance dummy. You know, we've, we've found out that people can listen to two people teaching, talking at once because they're keen on what they're trying to learn. And so, um, that was critically important to our success to have two teachers. That was one thing, the cross, uh, training, because I mean, I had, I had taken ballet.
I had studied jazz in the top studio in LA for a couple of years, uh, besides the early training, um, I had a ballet coach and I went, I said, teach me to do a double tour. You know, I was taking private lessons to, to learn how to spin. Um, and so I brought that in, um, the jazz, the ballet. Um, and then I had the authenticity of bringing in Cuban masters when we got into salsa. I brought in two guys that had been trained in, um, Cuba in the, uh, the, the national folkloric Institute. And then when we had boogie, when we had swing, we brought in the top swing dancer, couple in the, in the world from Germany. And then, uh, we brought in a Puerto Rican guy and suddenly we realized there's all these different styles. Even in, in swing there wasn't there wasn't one thing. When I learned to swing, I learned it not from a manual. I learned it from the people that were doing it in the fifties, forties in the movies, actually in the movies, the best of the best. So I've been very, very lucky that I had, you know, Ron Montez is my first teacher, Nina Hunt as my second, you know, for the Fletchers and all the people that Nina sent me to then Wally Laird, then Espen, and then Peter Maxwell.
So champion, champion, champion, I never had, tell everybody, never had a bad lesson. Then when it came to swing, the guy that first gave me my first total, uh, blanket version of swing was the guy that had won the first guy, the first white guy that had won the harvest, the Harvest Moon Ball. Cuz up till then it was all African, African American. He was phenomenal. And then people that were in the movies that were doing the swing in the, in the forties and the fifties, so okay. That I get that, you know, so all along the way I'm learning, there's not one style of swing there's seven or more. Salsa, seven or Latin, there's seven or more styles just of the Salsa-Mambo and you know, so having all of that, when we would get together, Terryl is the best student I've ever had. She just would just totally soak all of this up. And I give her credit because she would also challenge me. She would also say, well, wait a minute, I'm seeing this in what they're doing and you're not doing that. And I, oh yeah, you're right. So we really, um, worked off of each other. That was that's part of it that the students, you know, you, you create two things when you teach as a couple.
You, you know, you may have all your pictures up on the walls and took metals and all that. That doesn't mean anything with a student. They see you do it. They're like, oh, now you have credibility. Now they're gonna believe what you, you know, you show that you can do it. Then you take a student from the audience and you can do it with them. They go, oh yeah, yeah, he really can lead what he's saying, not some move that only works as a couple. So we would do that a lot. We would, we would dance with different people in class in addition to co-teaching.
[00:27:11] Terryl: So my comment on that, starting with a co-teaching from a student's standpoint, because for me, I try to run things through the student's eye. As a teacher, as a human, we have good days. We have bad days. We have days where we feel great. We have days where we feel like work is the last thing I wanna do. No matter how much you love your job, there's days you hate it. And so from a student's standpoint, if you have a single teacher, the energy of a class goes up and down based on the humanness of the instructor.
[00:27:47] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:27:47] Terryl: and, and it has nothing to do with the qualifications of the instructor because the instructor is human. Whereas if you have two people, the odds of the energy of both having a bad day on the same day is much less. So you have consistency of energy across the classes. The other thing you have is the ability if one of you has to leave, if, if somebody's sick and you have to get a sub, I don't care how great the sub is. You can bring in the world championship for a sub and there's gonna be people that don't like that person. It has nothing to do with the quality of the instructor, because they're used to the way a class runs. They go to that class regularly because they want that format, that energy, that whatever. So if I was sick or if Enio was sick or one of us had to go something, we tried to make it where only one of us would go and then we would sub in.
And so there was still one of us to carry the energy across, to carry the consistency for the students. And when you're running a business and you're wanting to build classes, what the students want and need is consistency, and it can be more guaranteed with two. and that's, that's the first and fine primary reason. There's hundreds of other reasons, but I'll just say right off the bat with that one, if, if you're trying to build classes, that's there.
As far as the modalities and the cross training for me, it's not necessarily just about dance. Because I was an athlete before I was a dancer and different sports and different skills, I mean, you can, you can study tiddly winks, and there's gonna be an expert on that. That's gonna have a way of teaching a skill. And so if you are taking from lots of different instructors and it can be completely unrelated to dancing. I learned a lot about from a guy that used to juggle parrots because I had this stupid bird that was biting me.
I wanted to know how to train it. He guided me on how to train the stupid bird. So it wouldn't train me, bite me anymore. And I realized what I was getting from learning how to teach the stupid bird not to bite me was brilliant for applying to my students and to myself as far as discipline. So where you get the knowledge to be a better instructor, isn't necessarily based on being a teacher. So I brought in things that I was learning and teaching skills, ways of thinking and communicating and breaking down skills.
And just as a sidebar to that, I had a young man from Russia that had come to our studio, right when we were building up and I had no time to do anything. And he says, I'm looking for a partner. And I said, well, just dance with me for a minute. Let me see, you know, where you're at. And I haven't, well, as soon as he danced with me, he said, I wanna compete with you. And I was like, no, that's not gonna happen. But I tell you what I'll do. I'll dance with you for a while because it's really nice to be dancing standard. And you know, maybe we can do some shows while you get to know the neighbor, the, the community. And I can help you get seen, and I can help you find a partner. And meanwhile, I'm getting to dance some standard with a high quality dancer.
What was interesting about that format is because we had no plan, no future, nothing to, no goals. We weren't gonna compete. When we actually got together to work, it was like, so what are we gonna work on? And what we ended up doing, which was something really interesting is we started analyzing techniques and things that we had been taught. Now, he had been taught in the Russian system. I was obviously taught here. We were taught the same thing, barring the, the language translation. We were taught the same basic skills, the same basic way. And yet both of us had reached the point where we both knew that that's not really what we're doing. That's still what teachers are saying. Those are the words that people use to communicate something.
And, um, and that's what we tended to use, but those weren't their best words to describe it. And so we just went in and explored, how can we change the verbiage? And how can we improve the verbiage to communicate better what is actually happening? And when I went and got my Pilates certification from Maria Jose, who was an brilliant instructor in breaking down anatomy, her verbiage was so particular about breaking things down, explaining it really drove down to me where it's like, we have to analyze every single word we say.
Is that word the best word? Because if I say that word, what do most people mean? What most people visualize in that word? And that's not necessarily what I want them to visualize. So how can I change what verbiage I'm using to communicate that to those people more effectively, more cleanly so that they don't do what happens to so many in instruc, uh, students is. They're taught one way as a beginner. They're taught beginner technique. Oh, that's all the beginners need to do. And then if they stay with it long enough, they wanna become intermediate, somewhere along the line. Well, don't do it that way. That's not what we really meant.
[00:33:49] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:33:50] Terryl: I swore because it happened to me that I would never do that to my students, that I wanted to tell them the truth, as best as I could explain it, even if it was over their head. And I would tell 'em, you're not gonna do this now, but at least know that this is what your goal is. I'm not gonna insult you by giving you beginner description. And I think that's where Enio and I balanced because I came from that mindset and because he had never been taught beginner technique, cuz his very first teacher was, was Ron Montez. He was never taught that way.
[00:34:26] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:34:27] Terryl: we completely agreed in the mindset that I may be teaching a brand spanking new beginner, but I'm not gonna give them and be the lazy instructor and give them the LA LA LA beginner technique. I'm gonna tell 'em the truth. And the way I always explained it is there's a train going from Los Angeles to Chicago. And some people are gonna get off right outside of town. Some people are gonna ride it to the next state. Some people are gonna get it halfway and some people are gonna ride it all the way. That's not my choice, how far they get on. I'm gonna give 'em the right information on the beginning of that trip and where they choose to get off the train, that's their choice because very often the ones you think are gonna ride it to the end they get off right now and the ones you never thought were gonna pursue it, they take it all the way to the end and then get on a plane and keep on going. So it's not a beginner teacher's job to make that decision.
[00:35:28] Enio: Let me add just a little bit, because she's so spot on. Because of the way she just reads voraciously. She's very, very literal. And so her words were, I mean, we would argue over the words, but, uh, I was the opposite. I was, the idea was to make it so simple that people could do this, because we were not doing rocket science.
[00:35:55] Samantha: Mm.
[00:35:55] Enio: And so many teachers are all it's, you know, I hate to say it, it is ego based.
[00:35:59] Terryl: You can teach advanced technique simply
[00:36:02] Enio: simply.
[00:36:02] Samantha: Yes.
[00:36:02] Enio: And that's the thing. So I use a tremendous amount of analogies. Why? Because if you, if you can view the analogy in your head, you can do it. In other words, I always say everything that you need to know about dancing you did before you walked in the door. And I go through all the analogies of turning around in the shower, you know, and I everything's a joke with me, but the way I teach it, it's fun. And I keep it relaxed so that people go, oh, this is easy. And that was the one thing. If it was difficult, I was doing something wrong.
[00:36:34] Terryl: Exactly. It was, it wasn't that they were learning slow it's that we hadn't made it simple enough yet. And that we had to now look at ourselves and it's like, how can we break this technique into smaller steps? And this is where every time I worked as a, as a co-teacher with Ron Montez, I would bow down at his brilliance at his ability to break it down into those minute steps. Because every time I thought I know how to break this one down, he would show me a way to break it down in 10 more steps.
[00:37:06] Enio: Yeah. And, and so, like I say, the analogy part for me was key because once I did that and I got, I, I understood two things, the simpler I made it, and the more fun I made it, the bigger our classes got. So the ego, you have to put it on the shelf and say they are not here because they wanna be on dancing with the stars. Or they are not here because they wanna be like me.
[00:37:33] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:37:33] Enio: they want to, and, and I tell everybody, and I've gotten, uh, I do a whole part of my teaching on this is they're here because they wanna meet somebody. They wanna have fun. It's not because they wanna be dancers. And we did, but I can't put that on them. And when we do that, we, we end up with a few students instead of teaching the masses to have fun, because a lot of people don't know how to have fun. So we taught them how to have fun.
[00:38:02] Terryl: Or they're afraid to have fun.
[00:38:02] Enio: Right. We taught them how to have fun while dancing, and that dancing was fun, but not
[00:38:09] Terryl: and safe.
[00:38:10] Enio: Yeah. That's
[00:38:11] Terryl: safe. Safe for women. Safe is huge
[00:38:13] Enio: very important
[00:38:13] Samantha: right.
[00:38:14] Enio: So because we made it easy and fun
[00:38:17] Terryl: and safe,
[00:38:18] Enio: right. And safe. Yes. Um, The classic just grew exponentially
[00:38:22] Samantha: mm-hmm
[00:38:23] Enio: and the problem, as I see it is the, the studios. Um, don't understand that. They want to turn
[00:38:33] Terryl: everybody into dancers,
[00:38:34] Enio: competitors, instead of what we've we've learned was it was all about lead and follow. It was all about connection with the music and basically, uh, facilitating relationships and a relationship doesn't mean dating. It means your ability
[00:38:54] Terryl: community
[00:38:55] Enio: ability to join the community and be part of it.
[00:38:59] Terryl: And those people will dance for decades.
[00:39:02] Enio: Right.
[00:39:03] Terryl: Whereas a competitive student they'll tend to dance till they run out of money.
[00:39:07] Enio: Or burnout, you know, they get tired of getting
[00:39:10] Terryl: and, and, and then as soon as they quit that, because they haven't built the community, they're out.
[00:39:15] Samantha: Yeah,
[00:39:15] Terryl: they're done. Whereas we have students that long since we're gone, the community's still there. Those people still go out and do things together. And because we, it wasn't about us. We, we never thought it was about us. It was us about them.
[00:39:34] Samantha: So, so I wanna, I wanna point something out, which is that Terryl, um, you mentioned at some point when you were going through this amazing description about your philosophy as an instructor and the tools in your toolbox and how you approach teaching, you said, and that has nothing to do with the fact that I'm a teacher.
And, and I wanna, I wanna take an opportunity to say, I think that has everything to do with the fact that you are a teacher of dance, not a dance teacher. And I, I try to make that separation in, in my own teaching. And, and in the way that I interact in the world, I, from, from hearing both of your philosophies on, on how you're approaching dance education, and building the community and scaffolding and having the, the, the truth to your best ability given to your students at whatever level they are, I think that's the definition of a, a teacher and an instructor, not someone who dances that also teaches. Right.
[00:40:39] Terryl: It is. And I I'll just say, it's interesting that you said that because when I went through, I had been doing yoga for a number of years. And when I went and got my yoga certification, the, the, the, the man that gave me my certification, he says, you are a student who teaches. And, and that's, and, and I said, yes, that's, that's how I constantly view myself as I am a forever student. I will always keep learning every day. I'm trying to learn more. And then I teach. Whereas I'm not thinking of myself as a teacher who has a student. I think of myself as a student who teaches
[00:41:20] Samantha: well. And I think that that kind of goes to Enio your point about taking the ego out of what we do as instructors, right? If, and I am not to, I'm not gonna say that this is the wrong approach, but this is not my personal approach. I'm not going to say, well, I'm the best because of these of these are all of my accolades. Therefore I know the truth absolutely. And you will do exactly the way that I do it because this is how I was taught by the person that has all of the accolades behind them. And that's how they were taught. And they were taught this by the person with all of the accolades.
You lose the ability to factor in humanity. And that maybe the way that I was taught, isn't the golden rule. And maybe there is a better way. So you do have to balance, you know, what, your programming, your instruction, your history, with having an open mind and learning as many different opinions and perspectives as possible, and then guiding your own path, but also telling your students, Hey, this is what I have found to be successful. This is what I am teaching you, but, go out and explore and figure out what's best for you at the end of the day.
[00:42:39] Terryl: Well, I think that ties in to a couple of things. Um, number one is, as a teacher, instead of saying, this is the way I teach it, to look at the student and say, this person has a different life experience. They have different assets and deficits. So what does this person need to learn it? So I have to look at them and through their filter of, of viewing. And so once you start getting into trying to look through other people's filters, it affects both your teaching, but it also affects your overall view of dance.
When you start talking about like we were at Blackpool and, and you could put on a song and there's some there, all the ballroom dancers will say, well, that is a Quickstep. And all the swing dancers will say, no, that's a swing.
That's a Balboa or something. Who's right. They're both right. It's through the, the filters that they're looking at. And I think so many people in this business tend to view that the filters that they are wearing are the, and I hate the word, "The" right filter, the filter.
[00:43:51] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:43:51] Terryl: the, the way it is the way and disregarding that people have a whole bunch of other filters and those filters affect how they view the dances, what the dances even are and how they are going to learn them.
[00:44:09] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:44:10] Terryl: and I think that's, that's crucial.
[00:44:11] Enio: Let, let me take a little back, uh, just back up here. Something that I think is so important is the necessity for mentors. Um, Ron Montez was my first mentor. Um, I then ran into, um, a, a gentleman at a club who complimented me on my dancing and I'm thinking nice, you know, thank you. Thank you. And he said, do you mind if I dance with your partner? And I thought, oh God, good luck. You know, like good luck mate, wasn't her. But he takes her out and my jaw hit the floor. And all of a sudden I realized this guy was a genius in the dance world. Only to find out that he had once choreographed for Nere of, he had been Anne Margaret's first partner in her Vegas show.
He had done TV shows for years, been a ballet trained dancer. And it was an incredible, incredible Mambo dancer, like rhythmically on the level that we never, that I never understood or never would've. And so he becomes my mentor. We become great friends. And they never treated me like a student. Ron didn't treat me like a student. He was my buddy, but I was always learning, uh, with Joe Casini. I was
[00:45:27] Terryl: Who's who's the man he met
[00:45:27] Enio: Who was the, the gentleman, the choreographer. Um, I never stopped. So when Ron was teaching at USC, he was teaching something like 150 college kids in a class. And I am watching this guy entertain 150 kids. Now of those 150 kids, they were taking it cuz it was an easy two units of credit.
[00:45:49] Samantha: Right.
[00:45:49] Enio: But they were having a great time. And I, and here I go, when I build my studio and I'm teaching, you know, like a hundred people in a class and my room is bursting and I'm thinking I'm hot stuff. And then I become friends with another gentleman who was teaching in LA and I find out his classes were like 225. okay. And I'm going, okay. I think I'm hot stuff. We go to Germany and we teach a class with 600 people in it and I'm all over myself, you know? And I'm thinking how wonderful I am. And we're staying with a friend in London who is a big art, uh, interior design artist. And, and I'm telling him I'm kind of not bragging, but I'm, I'm proud of it.
And he and I go, it's an amazing thing to be teaching 600 people at once. And he goes, I know, um, you know, I know that feeling and I go really? And he goes, yeah, I'm in the Guinness book of world rec, Guinness book for teaching the world's biggest aerobics class. I had 20,000 people at Wembley stadium.
[00:46:53] Samantha: Oh my God,
[00:46:55] Enio: God. I mean, really?
[00:46:57] Terryl: So, so you got, you can think you're great.
[00:47:00] Enio: but my point is you don't know what you don't know and you need mentors to kind of you put 'em up and when you run out of mentors, cuz they've passed on you go, okay. I still don't know what I don't know, but at least if I'm willing to pass that knowledge down,
[00:47:20] Terryl: if you're willing to be a student, you'll find them new mentor.
[00:47:23] Enio: Right. So, um, it, it's not to say, okay, we're the greatest thing ever. But the point is that we've learned so much that we can teach and we're willing to share, but so many people don't want to, um, that they don't wanna take advantage of it
[00:47:38] Terryl: and they don't wanna admit they don't want to admit they don't know
[00:47:40] Enio: their ego, that's it. They don't wanna know.
[00:47:42] Terryl: And I, for me, I was like, I need my, okay, this mentor's gone now I need my next mentor. You know, it's like, cuz I still need to learn.
[00:47:50] Samantha: Yep.
[00:47:51] Terryl: Because there's still more to be passed on because I am just a conduit from these other people
[00:47:56] Enio: one of the best, um, mentors that I use now is John Taffer the guy from Bar Rescue and he's a screamer and he's a jerk in, in many ways. And yet he teaches you so much about the business of dance. And I, and I said, we watch that show like six, seven episodes, you know, we'll binge watch and we're sitting there going God, how did we not understand this then? You know, wish we had known this then, but you still keep learning and I'll go to convention to hear him speak.
And some people will go to, you know, um, Wesley Gu or some of the, you know, the big names in, uh, uh, you know, that are known. I, I can't think of 'em at the moment, but you need mentors and we go to dance teachers, competitors, as dance mentors, but what do they know? Like the first front page of my website, you know, um, Dance ten looks three.
Well, unfortunately, um, it's the same thing in, in our business of teaching. We may be great dancers, but we're not great teachers. You had to study with a master
[00:49:04] Terryl: on how to teach
[00:49:05] Enio: on how to teach. And you have to study with a master on how to run a successful studio that's not one dimension, unless that's what you want.
[00:49:14] Terryl: And, and what happens is people that they don't always think about it. But then when you think about sports, you take football. There are phenomenal athletes that suck as coaches
[00:49:23] Samantha: mm-hmm
[00:49:23] Terryl: and some of the best coaches were never great athletes in their day. They're completely different skills.
[00:49:30] Samantha: Yes.
[00:49:30] Terryl: And assuming that every great player is automatically gonna be a great coach. Is is ludicrous. So therefore every great dancer is not necessarily gonna be a great teacher and vice versa. Some of the best teachers I've had were not people that were known. That weren't famous, but they were brilliant.
[00:49:51] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:49:52] Terryl: and I think, um, when we are, when we're trophy hunting and we're only judging a, an instructor by how many trophies they have, we are limiting ourself to possibly missing the best teacher that we could actually find.
[00:50:09] Samantha: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think. Yeah. Um, I think the, one of the reasons why we kind of end up in this trophy hunting situation, or, or we don't necessarily have access to great teachers, but we might have access to great dancers who happen to teach is because there's not really, uh, a suggested or an encouraged income path for high level competitive dancers outside of you can also teach lessons at the studio and we will, we will teach you how to teach the beginner lessons or the intermediates, or you'll teach a workshop. There's not really something for competitive dancers that want to be on the road every weekend and, and kind of have this crazy lifestyle that also helps pay the bills and pays the rent other than teaching at studios and workshops. Um, so you kind of get into this weird situation where you, you are a dancer, so you're told great, you can teach now. Uh, can I take four years of college to know how I'm supposed to teach? Can I, can I, can I, uh, can I intern with somebody that maybe doesn't have the greatest resume, but definitely is the greatest teacher in the room?
I wanna kind of circle back to this idea of building a successful dance community. You were mentioning, um, Enio about, you know, your 100, 200 person group classes, and the fact that, um, you were able to build such a, a fantastic social community and group class community at your studio. Um, where do you see the, um, where do you see the, the, the balance point between social dancing, competitive dance in the US is studios? And how can we really build a more successful social community if you are in a studio that has a very competitive drive?
[00:52:12] Enio: Okay. Uh, I think one of the tenants of my training has to do with usability. Okay. If you're being taught something that you can only use in competitive. Okay. That's like buying a, a dragster. Great. You wanna go fast? You can have a dragster, you can go 300 miles an hour, but you can't drive it down the street. And unfortunately, too many students are taken from bronze two competitive, you know, uh,
[00:52:46] Terryl: well from introductory to competitive,
[00:52:48] Enio: right. To competitive. Right. And they, they can't lead or follow. I mean, that's the saddest part for me is the inability of people to follow
[00:52:59] Terryl: or lead
[00:52:59] Enio: or lead. Uh, and, and I hate to say, I always look at it from the point of following, because like you teach a group class and somebody's gonna teach a step. And I think interesting, how good is this for the ladies? They're never gonna lead that step. Now, assuming that everybody in the world knows my step, right? Unless I'm being taught syllabus, but they, the girls are taught to do the step. The guys are taught to do the step, but the lead part is something that, uh, well, you're gonna have to take private lesson to do that.
[00:53:35] Terryl: So now I'm gonna jump in right here, cuz I'm gonna pause Enio. So as an example, how it's like we say like, well, you don't teach steps. Well, this is an example of what you would do. We would teach a step and we, everybody do it. But the thing is, is I want it to blow up. I want them to screw up. See, most teachers want them to everybody finish and it, and feel like they got it
[00:53:57] Enio: walk outta the room and, and it went perfect.
[00:53:59] Terryl: Right? I wanted to blow up in my class. So what does he do? He will now turn around and teach three variations of that step,
[00:54:07] Enio: which require a minor adjustment.
[00:54:08] Terryl: So now the men have got four steps that are similar, but different. And similar, but different is where everything blows black and white is easy.
[00:54:16] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:54:17] Terryl: right. I teach this and I teach that those easy, but if I teach four things that are close, now they have to fine tune their lead and women have to fine tune their following skills to be able to tell the difference. And that's,
[00:54:34] Enio: That creates the awareness for the lady or follower follower now, um, to. Be more aware instead of, oh, I'm gonna do my step.
[00:54:43] Terryl: I, I recognize the step, he knows that I was taught by my teacher. I know that syllabus step too, because now they have four versions of the step. And every class we taught, that was just one thing that we would do in the course of teaching is that we never made them comfortable knowing one step, because by doing that, we're doing them the disservice of thinking that they actually lead it and that they actually follow it, when I know they all just memorize something.
[00:55:15] Enio: Right. They don't know what they don't know.
[00:55:17] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:55:17] Terryl: You know, so I make it blow up. So they find out they don't know. And now they're ready for me to listen or for them to listen for Enio and I to break down the details of this is how you lead A versus B versus C when they're right next to each other and similar, sorry to interrupt.
[00:55:35] Enio: No, that's great. Good point.
[00:55:37] Samantha: Yeah. I, I love that along those same lines, when I'm teaching, um, like a couple's east coast swing class, I tend to put the sweetheart cuddle, the right side pass, and the peek-a-boo, or stop and go as a sequence that I teach all in the same hour block or the same lesson for that exact same reason. Like, okay. It's every single time the gentleman's checking his watch, but do I have both hands connected? Do I have one hand connected? Am I catching the lady halfway through and changing the rhythm?
Okay, ladies, what are you expecting to happen? We know that the left hand is getting brought in front of the face. So we're turning to our left and we're going forward, but are you going all the way through or are you stopping halfway through, how does that dynamic work? So I love the idea of making sure that the leaders can lead and the followers can follow. Or, the initiators know how to initiate the reactors, know how to react and making things a little bit tricky and murky and confusing so we have to think through it,
[00:56:39] Terryl: honest.
[00:56:39] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:56:40] Terryl: It's honest.
[00:56:41] Enio: And see, here's the thing where I love where the west coast swing world goes, because the concept of Jack and Jill does two things that are absolutely nonexistent in the ballroom world. The ability to improvise. Okay. You're, you're given a, a basic syllabus, but instead of making it so difficult, you're allowing the student to improvise and you're teaching the one thing that we're here for before anything else, music, musical connection, and the musicality. You're encouraged, I mean, obviously your, your points are given on how well you interpret the music. There was a point where somebody started teaching stops and hits and all of a sudden, everybody freezed, you know, on a hit on a stop, but it, it grew beyond that. And then people became much more aware of the mu of the musical. You know, they, you never hear in a ballroom class about phrasing about, um, you know, about, um, two beat components. You're you're you never hear that. And in the swing world
[00:57:52] Terryl: or improvisation, it's usually about how to do the steps the right way, right?
[00:57:57] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:57:58] Terryl: the single only God given right way to do this step. So I'm sorry. I danced that same step with Enio. He's got 15 versions of that step. So, which is the right one from captain chaos? They're all right.
[00:58:13] Enio: And so, you know, they've gone through their own transitions. Sometimes they tend to go off the rails as well, but at least they've got to me, they've got the best way. Then the second aspect of that is because the swing world does Jack and Jill people can get a taste of competing without A, having to spend 8,000 bucks for a dress, without having to.
[00:58:38] Terryl: Pay for getting memorizing routine.
[00:58:40] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:58:40] Enio: and they're not, they're not dancing with the teacher. They can't there's pro as well, but the fact that they can get in and compete and have fun
[00:58:49] Terryl: without a huge financial commitment
[00:58:51] Enio: right now they're those people are spending money and they're taking lessons and whatever. And when they get to the top level, they will spend a lot of money for,
[00:59:00] Terryl: they start spending costumes and routines. They start, you know,
[00:59:03] Enio: but I think we get it backwards. We, in the ballroom world, we want, you know, we want to give them the fantasy. As Sharon Savoy said, it's all about the fantasy, the
[00:59:12] Terryl: rhinestones with the make-up, the princess thing
[00:59:16] Enio: yeah, except for one thing. So many people will never get there when the thousands of people that come into a studio that start, but never get beyond because they've, you know, they hit the, the wall of money we believe,
[00:59:31] Terryl: or, or comfort level. I know a lot of women, when we start putting that much makeup on them, Just the makeup issue. They're uncomfortable with that much makeup.
[00:59:40] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:59:40] Terryl: You know, you have to grow into
[00:59:42] Enio: yeah.
[00:59:43] Terryl: Wearing what we wear for competion,
[00:59:45] Samantha: Absolutely
[00:59:45] Enio: you know, and our, our teachers tell us that, that this is what looks good. And I'll give you a, an example. We had a room full of say, 60 to a hundred people in a beginning class, we would then demonstrate and not make fun of it. Or a, we would demonstrate competitive Chacha versus social Chacha. We wouldn't tell, we would say, we're gonna show you two different versions. Now we want you to choose which one you wanna learn. 100% chose the social version versus the competitive version guaranteed. And we did this constantly.
When people said, well, what are we gonna be learning? Well, you have a choice I can teach both. Which one do you wanna. And, and I would then say, well, this is the difference. This one you're doing for, to impress a judge. And this one you're doing for fun and whatever, we would just show this Chacha crossover, new Yorkers and do it so relaxed with, you know, much more body action than with add the arms and the, you know, and the straight legs and the, I don't care if it was American or international.
[01:00:50] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:00:51] Enio: It didn't matter. People looked at that, but when they're told this is what, you're
[01:00:57] Terryl: the way
[01:00:57] Enio: this is, no, this is what looks good. Student says, you know, everything. I don't okay. I believe you. So we're telling 'em it looks good.
[01:01:03] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:01:04] Enio: But to the human eye, the, the naturalness of social dancing
[01:01:08] Terryl: the regular folks
[01:01:09] Enio: its missing. Because we're not doing that in definitely not in salsa. Jive, jive doesn't exist in the swing world.
[01:01:16] Samantha: No,
[01:01:16] Enio: it's, it's a dance that people look at it, go, what the hell are they doing?
[01:01:20] Samantha: Right.
[01:01:20] Enio: You know, stand there side by side kicks
[01:01:21] Terryl: and people forget because you know, our dance community, and there's so many people that dance. It's like, oh, when you put all the dances together, even swing salsa. There's so many outside, it's so big, but there's more people that don't dance than there's people that dance. And most of the people that learn to dance, don't go to competitions. They go to the local club, the, you know, not the dance club, you know, the Italian restaurant that happens to have a little band on there or the country restaurant, you know, honky tonk. They're dancing there and they don't wanna look weird.
[01:01:56] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[01:01:57] Terryl: they're not gonna do the big fancy stuff,. Cuz it's too much. It's like wearing an evening gown at the beach. It doesn't fit where they, they don't visualize themselves using that in their lives.
[01:02:10] Enio: Right. And we'll see people
[01:02:11] Terryl: It goes back to their filter again.
[01:02:13] Enio: We'll we'll see people on Facebook, post. Yeah, we went to this, you know, nightclub and we did our routine and you know, and they're so proud of themselves and everybody in the audience going get a load of these aliens. I mean, what planet are they from?
[01:02:26] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:02:27] Enio: And they think they're fantastic. You know, and most people are looking at, 'em like, oh my God, these people are strange. You know, we, we, we say that a good dancer can kill a club because a good dancer goes in there and starts doing their whole thing. They intimidate the social dancer. In the forties, people did not go to dance schools. Yes, Arthur Murrays existed, but you learned it to swing dance from your aunt, your mom, your sister, your cousin, your brother,
[01:02:52] Terryl: basically the way I did from my Dad
[01:02:53] Enio: everybody learned it from somebody and you got, you know, you did it and there were clubs everywhere and everybody danced it and the music was popular and the majority was dancing, right. Now, we're a minority because we've become kind of like the strange people that dance on on so you think you can dance or on, on, you know, dancing with the stars.
[01:03:16] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:03:16] Terryl: Dancing with the stars and you know, and there's a lot of regular guys in this country that look at dancing with the stars and don't look at that and say, I want to do that.
[01:03:28] Samantha: Yep. Absolutely.
[01:03:30] Terryl: I mean, there's girls that say, I wanna do that, but it doesn't appeal to the average person just wanting to, for the husband and wife wanting to do something together or date night, it it's, it doesn't
[01:03:42] Enio: It's not to them important.
[01:03:42] Terryl: It doesn't relate
[01:03:43] Enio: virtually anywhere you go, there's gonna be more followers. I'll say women. No. In this case, I'll say women, there are more women in the, in the studio than men. Would you agree?
[01:03:55] Samantha: Absolutely. A hundred percent.
[01:03:56] Enio: For 15 years, we had more men than women.
[01:03:59] Terryl: Every class.
[01:04:00] Enio: Now that's one reason our classes got so big was the more guys we had, the more women came. And so,
[01:04:08] Terryl: and we can go in for a long other story, why we had more men, but
[01:04:12] Enio: that's part of our training,
[01:04:13] Terryl: but that's another story.
[01:04:14] Enio: Right.
[01:04:15] Terryl: But basically is we made sure that the men felt like they were progressing.
[01:04:21] Samantha: Yep.
[01:04:21] Terryl: And at no point did we, and it wasn't focused on just the men and oh, women just followed because it goes back to what I was saying before, we challenged the men, but we, we gave them tangible skills because if it do, if it blows up in their face, they don't stay.
[01:04:38] Enio: Yeah. No, I'm, I'm going to go back.
[01:04:41] Terryl: Okay.
[01:04:42] Enio: I think we did it differently. We basically made the men not feel like dancing was something that you put Tutu and a tight and tights on.
[01:04:51] Samantha: Right.
[01:04:52] Enio: We, I say I masculinized it and that's one of the reason. The, the two teachers, when I say I masculinized it, you know, you know, we, we know the guys are in there comfortable. Think about this. The first thing you do in a studio, you go in and they put you in hold, right? You hand a guy, a girl, his brain just short circuited. He can't function.
[01:05:13] Terryl: Guy's biggest fear is looking stupid in front of a woman.
[01:05:15] Enio: Absolutely.
[01:05:16] Terryl: Number one.
[01:05:16] Enio: So the biggest thing we did was we wouldn't let him touch a girl. Our classes were 90 minutes. They wouldn't touch a girl for the first 40, 45. And people go, you're not having him dance? No, because the minute I hand him, the he can't function. Now he's moving parts instead of just learning how to have basic rhythm.
[01:05:35] Terryl: So we, we came up with a hundred different ways, depending on the dance, what we were teaching and whatever is for the brand spanking new ones to delay how soon they could blow up. We wanted to build a little bit of confidence.
[01:05:49] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[01:05:50] Terryl: right. First.
[01:05:52] Enio: Once I know what I'm doing now. I can hand, hand me a girl and yes, I'm still gonna struggle. But again, I won't feel as stupid as if and, and if a guy feels stupid in front of a woman, he will not come back. Okay. And that's the biggest deficit in most dance teaching?
[01:06:11] Samantha: Absolutely
[01:06:11] Enio: because you know, it, it doesn't,
[01:06:13] Terryl: they don't keep that as their priority. They,
[01:06:16] Samantha: like I said, in the intro, I thoroughly enjoyed talking with and learning from Enio and Terryl. If you also enjoyed part one don't fear, part two is coming up soon where we continue this conversation and talk about their online platform, Yoga 4 Long Life, as well as more topics concerning the dance world. So please tune in for part two. If you are interested in any of the information regarding EXT Consulting, or if you wanna just learn more about Enio and Terryl links are in the description box below.
As always I'm Samantha, I'm your host with Love Live Dance. You can follow Ballroom Chat on Facebook and Instagram at Ballroom Chat. You can also become a patron and support the podcast over at patreon.com, just search for Ballroom Chat. If you've not already done. So make sure that you give us a thumbs up, uh, like subscribe, follow so that you are alerted anytime we drop a new video, including part two. Um, post something in the comments that you found, um, interesting, or that you have follow up questions on, or maybe you disagreed with and you think we got wrong. We'd love to hear from you in the comments, uh, down below.
As always stay safe, stay positive, and we hope to see you dancing very soon.