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, we are jumping right back into the second part of our conversation with Enio Cordoba and Terryl Jones. If you have not yet listened to part one of our conversation, I'm gonna have you pause your podcast right here. Go back to episode 59, listen to part one, digest all of the wonderful information that we covered and then come back here. Okay, great. I've got you all back. Um, so part two of our conversation picks up where we left off. We dive a little bit deeper into the topics of gatekeeping, the pendulum swing of time and how the gap between competitive dance and social dance seems to be widening the more that we think of ballroom dancing as a competitive sport. We also talk about the fact that being mobile, especially with yoga or Pilates or ballroom dance is shown many health benefits when it comes to aging. And Terryl talks a little bit about how she has taken all of her wonderful teaching, learning experiences from ballroom dance and is now applying them to her program, Yoga 4 Long Life and making sure to bridge the gap between beginner level courses and intermediate level courses in a more user friendly and, um, individual friendly way.
So I hope you enjoy part two of my conversation with Enio and Terryl.
[00:01:45] Terryl: But basically is we made sure that the men felt like they were progressing.
[00:01:51] Samantha: Yep.
[00:01:51] 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.
[00:02:08] Enio: Yeah, no, I'm, I'm going to go back.
[00:02:11] Terryl: Okay.
[00:02:12] 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.
[00:02:21] Samantha: Right.
[00:02:22] Enio: We, I say I masculinize it. And that's one of the reasons that 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 into a studio, you go in and they put you in hold. You hand a guy a girl, his brain just short circuited. He can't function.
[00:02:43] Terryl: Guys' biggest fear is looking stupid in front of a woman.
[00:02:45] Enio: Absolutely.
[00:02:46] Terryl: Number one.
[00:02:47] Enio: So the biggest thing we did was we wouldn't let them 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 them 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.
[00:03:05] 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 one to delay how soon they could blow up. We wanted to build a little bit of confidence.
[00:03:19] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:03:20] Terryl: right, first
[00:03:22] 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. And, and if a guy feels stupid in front, in front of a woman, he will not come back. And that's the biggest deficit in most dance teaching.
[00:03:41] Samantha: Absolutely.
[00:03:41] Enio: Because you know, it, it doesn't matter.
[00:03:44] Terryl: They don't keep that as their priority. They they're focusing on teaching the guy to dance and I'm trying to make sure his ego doesn't get bruised.
[00:03:50] Samantha: Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you, you can only push beginner students so far. And especially with gentlemen, cuz I, I mostly work with couples who are wanting something to do as a fun hobby night or wedding couples that are wanting to do a first dance or a daddy daughter dance, or what have you.
You have to remember that you have to avoid frustration. A little frustration is good as long as they can work through it, but you have to be able to judge with students, especially male students, what is too far too fast. And I need to make sure that you've, that, that my students feel like they are equipped with the tools, that with enough time in practice, they can become masters of the tools that they've been given. And it
[00:04:35] Enio: exactly,
[00:04:35] Samantha: and I wanted to circle back just for a second, um, about the, the distance between formalized dance instruction and social dance. And when we're talking about competitive dance, you know, these aren't things that we do in our, in our day to day lives. You aren't going to go out on a competition for, or, or you aren't gonna go out to your honky tonk bar and do a full Cha-cha crossover with all of the posture and Piza that you would at Blackpool. Um, do, do we see the worlds of dance that we are currently in as a little bit of gatekeepers about what partner dancing should look like and how do we change that, if it is the case?
[00:05:24] Enio: Well, You know, money talks and the, the studios that I have consulted their group classes are huge. They still have their competitive aspect, but I, and I, and I say to 'em look, understand this, you teach, let's just, I'm gonna use two, 2000, year 2000, dollars. Okay. Let's say you charge a hundred bucks.
You teach six, seven lessons. You made six or 700 bucks. I walked out there and taught a class with 120 people paying then $10. Okay. Some more. Okay. I made twice as much money in 90 minutes and my people had a hell of a lot more fun than the one that came the one hour. And, and then it's like, okay, leave.
[00:06:14] Samantha: Yeah,
[00:06:15] Enio: mine were encouraged to stay and, and have fun. So there's the first thing I made more money in a shorter period of time. And to the point where I almost didn't even take privates. Why? Because I felt like when I'd come out there, it was like, like performing a Latin show and that rockstar feeling when you're coming out, when you're coming out and you got a hundred people waiting to hear you waiting to hear you tell the same joke, you know, you're going to see, you know, Enrique or, uh, Fluffy, Iglesias. You're gonna hear him.
[00:06:49] Terryl: Did you just equate yourself to Fluffy?
[00:06:50] Enio: Yeah. Fluffy, you know, you're, you're going out there and you know, there's 5,000 people in the, in the arena or whatever that are here to hear you. And they're gonna hear the same joke, but they wanna hear it again. Our people kept retaking and retaking the same classes because the entertainment value was equal to, or greater than the dance. They, they were good dancers. They didn't mind retaking a class. But so many of the things that we have been told in the ballroom teaching methodology. If you think about a box step, everybody starts with a box step, right?
[00:07:30] Samantha: Yep.
[00:07:30] Enio: And yet,that's the one thing I tell everybody don't do that because it creates a little of frustration.
[00:07:36] Samantha: Yep.
[00:07:36] Enio: People say, oh, well, it's been done. And I go, you know what, the godfather of ballroom dancing, Alex Moore, I, I happen to find one of his books and he goes, do not start with a box step, start with forward changes.
[00:07:51] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:07:52] Enio: Because, and so we figured out a way to teach that it was so simple, that one lesson, one group lesson in I've got couples and I'm talking couples and
[00:08:02] Terryl: In a group class
[00:08:02] Enio: group class that can go around the room with forward changes in one 90 minute class. And I see people struggle to learn a box step. And I always question was that so that they would take more lessons or so that they would feel frustrated and realize they don't know what they don't know, whatever reason I always thought, what a dumb thing to start with, because it requires people
[00:08:27] Terryl: why teach 'em is something stationary in a line of dance, moving dance,
[00:08:31] Enio: right? So you put 'em out on the floor in the roadkill because the minute they get out there, they're getting run over by everybody moving around the floor. So even if mine were dancing, I call it country two country style, you know, uh, two steps, at least they they're going around the room.
[00:08:46] Samantha: Yep.
[00:08:46] Enio: So at least they go, gee, we don't have many steps, but one step would get them around the room. Hello. You know? And so it's always been when we would analyze something, we'd go, why did, why are we doing this? So we started challenging so much of what was being taught and how it was being taught to the point were, you know, we're, it's, we're heretics, heretics, I should say heretics.
[00:09:13] Terryl: Yeah, of course we are. It's interesting that you said gatekeepers cuz it took my brain in an interesting place that I hadn't really thought before, but as soon as you said it and I started processing it, I thought, oh, that, that explains a, a, a bit of a phenomenon that I have noticed.
And um, and that is Enio, has always said water finds its own level. And what happens if people come in and what they really, really want, they wanna be good dancers and you know, along the line or whatever, but if they, but they want the social aspect. I have seen good schools, good teachers, good size classes, where they get a group of people. And then what happens is their people end up leaving and going to schools where the teachers are not the quality
[00:10:14] Enio: inferior.
[00:10:15] Terryl: They are inferior teachers. I'll just, they are inferior teachers,
[00:10:20] Enio: technically
[00:10:21] Terryl: technically inferior teachers, but they are providing the, I'll just say looseness that they're actively wanting. They they've learned enough from the good teachers, so they can go now into this inferior school and be hot, hot. Right. They're there, they're like the big ones that, but they've still chosen to downgrade. Well, if you look at that and you think, why would somebody choose to leave a higher quality instructor, who's really giving them the foundations that they need to go to the school down the street, where the teacher could barely handle a level class that the other school is teaching. Why would they do that? And I think it's because of that concept of gate keeping, is because they are saying this is the right way that they've lost the inclusivity of creating a space for the people that want less.
And I think that was a really valuable lesson for me, is that McDonald's sells more burgers than everybody else, not because it's great quality because it has an known acceptable minimum quality.
[00:11:48] Samantha: Yep.
[00:11:48] Terryl: Right. You never gonna get worse than this. And it's that known minimum quality that you won't go below is what allowed them to sell millions and or billions or whatever their, their number is. And, and sometimes when you're focusing on quality, you forget that for a lot of people McDonald's is good enough most of the time. You know, one of and you talked about is dis demonstrating. And we would always on the end of our first, you know, week one, we would always demonstrate, this is what you would know at the end of
[00:12:23] Enio: this is what you'll look like after this is level one.
[00:12:26] Terryl: This is level two, this is level three, just so that the students that know that kind of where they're at. I had so many students and, you know, a lot of people think everybody wants level three. Everybody wants the advance, but I had so many students say, if I could just get to, to level two, that's good enough.
[00:12:45] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Terryl: I, I could be happy with that level one stuff. And I think it's hard for teachers to accept, somebody that's worked so hard on themselves, that level one's good enough. That there's a lot of people that when they get their level one that's enough.
[00:13:04] Samantha: Mm-hmm .
[00:13:05] Terryl: And now the challenge is as a business owner, if, when they get enough, what happens next? Do I lose them forever? Or do I create a space that allows them to continue being part of my community, even when they've decided level one is all they want? And I think most studios it's, if you are not on the path to do more, when you've ticked your box, you don't fit there anymore.
[00:13:43] Samantha: Yep. Yeah. And so that's that. So when you said gatekeeper, I think that's kind of the,
[00:13:49] Enio: well, my question,
[00:13:50] Terryl: interesting point
[00:13:50] Enio: when you said gatekeeper, cuz. I had always heard from, from one of my mentors that, and, and it was actually Wally Laird, six time world champion. And he said, as judges, our role is to keep the pendulum from swinging too far in one direction or the other, when it starts to get too much of this, then we slow it back down or we change the technique or whatever, and we keep bringing it back to the middle.
And, you know, unfortunately, sometimes the young ones come in and because of their ability to create, you know, new skills and techniques and bring
[00:14:28] Terryl: new and new levels of athleticism,
[00:14:31] Enio: uh, everybody runs in that direction, but it loses or takes away
[00:14:37] Terryl: from something else
[00:14:38] Enio: from that we started this whole thing about,
[00:14:41] Samantha: yeah.
[00:14:41] Enio: I mean, if you think about it, dancing is movement to music, or as Voltair says, you know, about thinking people mad, those that don't hear the music, um, If you understand that people enjoy music and they want, and, and there's a human need for connection, for touch. It's the most basic human need besides love, is touch.
Okay. Now, how do we make it safe? How do we make it easy? How do we allow them to, to dance? We are so focused in ballroom on strict tempo, which when I DJ I will not play, I will not play. I, five stars, one star. It is by a, you know, uh, and I used to love dancing to the, to the bands in England cuz of the energy, not because, I gave up my last time at Blackpool, I quit. I said I cannot dance Chacha to "talk to the animals" when I had been practicing the Tito Puente.
[00:15:37] Samantha: Yeah,
[00:15:38] Enio: I, it drove me nuts. I couldn't, I couldn't do it. Um, that was the final straw for me. But, uh, truthfully. The, the strict tempo, you can only dance two minutes.
[00:15:49] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:15:49] Enio: uh, you song have to be two minutes and this tempo must be this speed. Why? That you have just boxed your student in to, you know, oh, people don't dance Salsa. Why? Cuz they play too fast and too long
[00:16:04] Terryl: or, or they go to a club and it's like, oh, we like that song, but it's it's and it's a, that's a swing, but it's too fast. Or it's a, this is too slow. It's like, well the swing dancers, know different versions of it. If you've, if you've boxed them in.
[00:16:19] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:16:19] Enio: In our club, we should have, we were open till three or four am. And we had people in their fifties and sixties that would dance the entire time salsa. And each song was four to six minutes long and they never sat down. They stopped to drink water, have a drink or whatever, you know, but they wouldn't sit down. People go, why is that? Because they were dancing different
[00:16:43] Samantha: yeah.
[00:16:43] Enio: Than the ballroom dancers. Their technique was different. The style of the style of salsa was different. So we have made our, like, you know, we think, well, we need to get these people as many social dances in a party. So we're gonna play two minute songs and whatever. And instead of teaching people how to dance, when in reality, the best part of a salsa song is in the last three minutes, the Montuno or the Mambo when the song kicks in, most ballroom dancers have never heard most of these songs because they play a minute and a half fade it out, you know, two minutes fade it out.
[00:17:17] Samantha: Yep.
[00:17:17] Enio: Or in competion, 55 seconds
[00:17:20] Terryl: So you're talking about gatekeeper?
[00:17:22] Enio: Yeah.
[00:17:22] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:17:22] Enio: So as gatekeepers are you saying, are you, are you asking whether we are looking at ourselves as the gatekeepers of what should be done? Because then I get on a soapbox and I piss everybody off because I challenge what they've been doing. Or are you talking about the gatekeepers that she side,
[00:17:43] Terryl: but she was talking about the gatekeepers. I, I understood what you were saying is the gatekeepers of the, the ballroom dance studios as what, how dance should be viewed by the population at large,
[00:17:56] Samantha: exactly
[00:17:56] Terryl: is how I understood
[00:17:57] Samantha: exactly
[00:17:58] Terryl: the question.
[00:17:58] Samantha: If, if you are not in lifted frame and body contact and dancing, a reverse turn and a natural turn, then you cannot be dancing to a three, four piece of music because you don't know what it should be. Or if you are not doing, um, a rock step after two side steps, then you don't know what swing should be, because when we dance single time, east coast swing, there's always a rock step at the end of it. Kind of putting, creating a market for ourselves by saying, we are the authorities on the subject, therefore, what you have been dancing growing up in your families, in your backyards, in your communities is not the correct educated form of dance.
[00:18:46] Terryl: What's an interesting thing that you say that having had a huge Latin club was how many high level pros would come to our club.
[00:18:55] Enio: We're talking Latin or ballroom,
[00:18:56] Terryl: right. And which ones chose to get on the floor and which ones just found a nice corner to sit and watch. And kudos to Victor Veyrasset, standard champion. He was always out there on the floor. and how many Latin champions in my Latin club never got their tushy out of the chair. Just sat there in the back of the room and watched. Why? Were they intimidated? Right. Cause they're Latin champions, but it's it's I think because they knew they couldn't do what was happening on the floor.
[00:19:35] Samantha: Mm-hmm yep. You take the structure away and suddenly you don't know how to handle the situation,
[00:19:44] Terryl: right.
[00:19:46] Samantha: Yeah, but to go in to, to, uh, hop from that topic, to, to your question about gate keeping in a different way with, with judges kind of modulating the pendulum swing of, of movement. Um, you know, as with all art forms, as with all sports, the, the way that we dance naturally will change over time and will grow and evolve. And, and you do kind of see people pushing it to the extremes to figure out where the borders, where the edges are for what we can do. And, and depending on who the champions are at the time are who the judging panel at the time is, different things are evogue and different things are not. So do you look at the pendulum swing in competitive dance as completely separate from social dancing at large? Or do you wish there was more of a, wish there was more of a connection between the two?
[00:20:47] Enio: Okay. Okay. Go your head, a long time ago. I heard this; competition bastardizes the art form. Okay. If you take that concept that you just said, a lot of what most people don't understand is that social dancing is just for fun, right? It is for fun. Competitive should have, um, the, what I call the usability factor. I don't, I don't know a whole lot of people who can do jive. And I pick my jives, my whipping boy, because it has gone so off the rails. There is nobody who, who can do jive when they're 65 years old, to be honest, this, you get people out there that, what do you see? Even at Blackpool? At the end of the night, when they, in some comps, Blackpool doesn't do it actually. But some comps where they, at the end of the comp, they say, you know, they have all the couples switch partners, final the finalists, the six finalists switch partners. What do you see left to right, right to left, change a place
[00:21:57] Samantha: mm-hmm
[00:21:57] Enio: American spin. They don't do gold. They don't do silver. They do left to right, right to left. And is why? Because they're saving their energy? No, I'm sorry. It's because most of that garbage isn't usable. Isn't leadable.
[00:22:13] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:22:13] Enio: You can say it is, but yes, in a school where that's the all that's taught instead of, when we see shag champions like Charlie, uh, Womble and Jackie McGee at 75, he's doing back bends and splits. Okay. He's doing stuff
[00:22:30] Terryl: lead and follow
[00:22:31] Enio: lead and follow.
[00:22:31] Samantha: Yep.
[00:22:32] Enio: Lead and follow. And I mean, these communities exist and the ballroom community doesn't go into them because they're afraid of, as they say, they don't know what they don't know. And they're afraid of finding out that they're not as good as they seem.
One little thing. I wanna point out when I would go out, a lot of times with students not, having left ProAm for 20 years and I got back out there, the judges would stop me after I would dance a student in salsa or swing. And they'd say, oh my God, it's wonderful to see that style again. And that's the part where, like I say, I didn't, I didn't feel the need to do what the young kids were doing.
It's not, yes, it will develop. And it will grow in the athleticism. But as I said, it's bastardized the dance form because it doesn't look anything like what it originated as. At least keep something that says, this is a Rumba. But when I look at it, as one coach said to me, turn the volume off on the TV and tell me what they're doing. Uh, could be, could be a Samba, could be a Chacha, could be a Mambo. You know, like, because they're taking every figure from every dance, putting it in because they know it, they can speed it up and it is wonderful dance, but it's not Latin or ballroom when the girls got no, no spine and she's hanging over him like a, like a, a, like a rag on a waiter's arm, you know, I go, you know, they missed they're.
Somebody should hand them a copy of Bandwagon. Somebody should show 'em the elegance and, and say, are we only sport? Or is there a component of art? And that's the problem, the musicality and the movement and the stillness. I love. But they're going off the rails by just how they focus on speed and athleticism and they've forgotten the artistry.
[00:24:38] Terryl: Okay. So where I think I got two points
[00:24:41] Enio: I'll shut up.
[00:24:42] Terryl: The first one is I'll just say ballroom versus the street dances. Now within the street forms, they do have competitive forms too.
[00:24:54] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:24:55] Terryl: so I'll, I'll kind of touch that, but basically the street forms, their music is in constant evolution and is changing. The ballroom forms, waltz is a waltz is a waltz is a waltz. We're not changing the music of waltz. So the dance itself has some stagnant-ness to it that's inherent to its definition. Right.
[00:25:29] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:25:29] Terryl: So you can't, it can only change in certain directions. It has changed in the directions of more athleticism, which is in the same direction as you've seen in figure skating.
[00:25:43] Samantha: Mm-hmm,
[00:25:45] Terryl: figure skating is now being critiqued because it's losing some of the artistry because it's down to, okay, we have to have one double here. We have to have one trip here and everything is just connect the boxes. And so, because ballroom in that sense, the we're not developing new sounds for the waltz, right. Or new sounds for these things. They're not really changing the music of the dances there though, there are some changes and I can feel his spine going, but there are, there are some changes in, in whatever, but basically it's not. Whereas if you look at swing, the music of swing in the last 30 years, has come is completely different.
I mean, what's being played on the radio now and what was played on the radio 30 years ago, that they were swinging to is not even remotely similar. And so the street dances, the dance evolves to fit the music. And that is the nature of what street dances do. They will constantly evolve and ballroom by its definition is going to be somewhat stagnant.
So the growth has to be different. And so that's why I say for ballroom, that's why they've gone more like skating. They've gone for the athleticism. And especially if there's the big push to get it into the Olympics. And so they're going in that direction, which ultimately will, if they do what they're trying to do, they will turn ballroom dancing into the Olympic sport where it is nothing like the public skating that people go to. I mean, they, they become two completely different things, which in essence, they should be. Um, so there needs to be social ballroom that is completely in and unattached to competitive ballroom. Which now takes us over to the street dances because the street dances in their effort to grow as communities and have stand, you know, raise their standards. And because some people are competitive, they have competitions and stuff in those forms too. And the same issues that we're discussing here in ballroom are being discussed in those communities, because we're privy to those also. And there's the same issue of, of all that fancy show stuff in swing and salsa, that doesn't belong on the social floor. Again, it's the exact same thing. There are two separate things, even though that community in a whole will drift the music, within that drift, it still has the division between the two categories that must and has to be kept separate. And the one issue is when people start assuming that what belongs on the social floor is what they've seen on the show floor.
And a perfect example of that is in our social dance classes and how everybody likes to do a dip at the end of the class. We would take our hundred people and we would crowd them one corner of the room, which it made it the equivalent of what actually happens on the social dance floor and demonstrate what actually happens.
[00:29:19] Enio: I asked I, okay guys right now, the end of the song, and I go, how many of the girls put your hand up? If you wanna get dipped at the end of the song, and there would be another couple facing the opposite way and you see they're heads like coconuts.
[00:29:31] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:29:31] Terryl: Right.
[00:29:31] Enio: I think girls, how many do you want to get dipped? And the guys are looking around and they're thinking, wait, you don't wanna get dipped girls. No.
[00:29:38] Terryl: Right. Because, because they assume they saw that on the show floor, it applies on the social dance floor. So even within the street dance community, that division still gets blurred.
[00:29:52] Samantha: Mm.
[00:29:54] Terryl: So that's my thought
[00:29:56] Samantha: no. And, and I think you, you summed up kind of the, the, the direction and the education that needs to happen in the fact that we, we are living in two different worlds with social dance versus competitive dance. Even in the street styles, you have your social dance and your competitive dance. So the analogy to figure skating, I think is a great one because when you sign your kids up for a figure skating class, you're probably expecting them to learn how to figure skate, not how to be the next world champion, unless you decide I want them to be the next world champion.
In which case you seek out a different coach or a different set of instruction. And I think perhaps taking that same philosophy or, or making that education known. When you walk into a dance studio, we have a social program. If you want to learn how to dance. And at the point that you decide for yourself that you want to do this other thing that is competitive dance, we can transition you into that, but that's not gonna be the expectation right out of the gate.
[00:30:57] Enio: I, I think the kids, like, you know, like whether you put your kids into piano or judo or anything, you can put them into a competitive program.
[00:31:06] Samantha: Mm-hmm,
[00:31:06] Enio: no problem with that. Right? Because at their level they can't, you know, the, the lead and follow would probably be a little bit more challenging. And, and yet in the swing world, the shag world, the salsa world, no, that's not the case. So it, that doesn't apply to ballroom and Latin ballroom and Latin are a little bit more structured. So I have no problem teaching young kids to whatever I have a concern about what's gonna happen to their joints, their bones, uh, with the pushing of the straight knees, with the hardness that they're teaching it. It's like, why are they doing that? When that isn't
[00:31:44] Terryl: those bones that, that,
[00:31:46] Enio: yeah,
[00:31:46] Terryl: that soft tissue,
[00:31:47] Enio: but that style, it looks so ridiculously hard. So there's a lot of issues for me when they're talking about the kids.
[00:31:55] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:31:55] Enio: But I'm talking about a studio, a studio turns off more people to dancing than it brings than it brings forward. Why? Because people go in and immediately they're being sold, you know, competitive. We wanna get you into competition instead of having, if you had a fun Jack and Jill, and you tell people, Hey, doesn't cost you anything, get in there. Just, just have fun. You draw a partner out of a hat and they go, oh, that was fun. Some people it's not their thing. They don't have to jump up and get in the, in the line. But unfortunately it's this focus on selling competition,
[00:32:36] Terryl: but, and I think that goes into cream, rises to the top. So, if you focus on the top of the pyramid, you're focusing on a small piece, but if you focus on building the base of the pyramid as big as possible, right. Focus on the bottom layer of the pyramid by default the competitive nature of some people, the, the desire of some people to be, uh, meticulous about learning things, those people by default will gravitate up out of that next level. And so if you start with 10 people and 10% of, of let's just take a random number, 10% of people start become competitors.
If you start with 10 people, you get one competitor. If you start with a base of a hundred people, you have 10 competitors.
[00:33:26] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:33:27] Terryl: right. So people say, oh, you have 10 competitors. Well, I have 10 competitors because I have a hundred people in my foundation.
[00:33:33] Samantha: Yep.
[00:33:33] Terryl: So where do you focus? Do you focus on that 1% or do you focus on the hundred people? And our philosophy was to focus on the hundred. That's the, my train again, it's like get, build the foundation.
[00:33:48] Samantha: Yep.
[00:33:48] Terryl: The people will choose whether they stay at that level or they move to the next level or not.
[00:33:54] Samantha: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so I, I wanna take, um, the comment about the longevity concern and, and what we are teaching, um, predominantly young youth, uh, dancers, but also attempting. To teach older individuals, which always makes my toes curl and my, my teeth go on edge. Um, very extreme athletic pursuits of, of the dance world. So, um, a project that you guys have recently launched is, uh, Yoga 4 Long Life. Um, my understanding is that it, it incorporates your Pilates and yoga backgrounds in a way that allows dancers to really heal and train their bodies in a more sustainable way. Is, is that correct?
[00:34:48] Terryl: Yes. Um, but once again, based on what I just said about that, the, the big pyramid, I am not going for elite yogis. I am, what I found on my yoga journey was, um, I would go into a class. and I mean, cause there's a whole bunch of different styles of yoga, so I'm not gonna do, but you would go into a class and they would start you with very basic stuff. And then when you get to level two, they're doing hand dance and, and the jump between level one and level two was to the point where many of those people would never do it.
They would get injured trying to do it. And um, so I look at it this way, competitive athletes, high level athletes who have been doing care for their bodies for years, they're kind of a different category. They know what they need, but the majority of people, my student base, the, the people that are playing around with stuff.
Again, they're the bottom of that pyramid. And about 300,000 people a year fall, the majority of those falls are sideways. They're not necessarily forward or back 30,000 of those people never leave the hospital. So
[00:36:29] Enio: they'll throw an embolism and basically,
[00:36:31] Terryl: right.
[00:36:32] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:36:32] Terryl: I mean, my grandfather died that way. He broke a hip people don't die from broken hips. He died broken hip.
[00:36:39] Samantha: Right.
[00:36:40] Terryl: So, um, it is, it's a very real issue. And what happens is I'll just say more of the weekend warrior, not the, not the super champions because they, they will seek out the high level and training that they need, but the regular person that base of the pyramid. They may have gone through their whole life and their level of fitness, cuz they were relatively active, was good enough and they're crossing a threshold. They're not as I always, my, my verbiage is a day or two past 20, right? Because one of the things I observed is you, you can look at five year olds, they can do things with their body. They can still, whatever, by 10, I'm already seeing the restrictions in the body. And I'm seeing the, that lack of flexibility and, and, and the habits of motion that are ingrained. By 20, those habits of motion are calcified, solidified into the body and will remain that way for the rest of their lives. For good and for bad. And this is why I tell people, you, you know, your, your mom's walk, your sisters, walk your dad walk. You can, you can spot 'em in a crowd because you recognize the way they move. We have a re recognizable habits of motion that carry over into everything we do. So by the time we've hit 20, those habits of motion have crystallized in our body and have set up deficiencies and problems. And so, taking that concept of not trying to do headstands, not trying to do anything super fancy, but to expand those habits of motion, take you into movements that you hadn't necessarily done. Start focus on bringing balance between the left and right side of the body. Um, strengthening the things that weren't necessarily strengthened.
And, and if you always move the same way, you don't know, it goes back to it. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that this side, this side is tighter than that side. You don't know that this is weak and that is strong. I mean, before I started yoga, I had a year round six pack. I thought I had great abs. I walked around with a year round six pack. I thought it was all that until I walked into my first yoga class and I didn't have the correct ab strength to do what was being taught in that class. Totally changed my view of what strong abs were. So, and there's a lot of people that are like me that have a preconceived idea of what is strong and they think they have that strength and it's not until it's challenged.
So I have focused on building a yoga program that the intermediate classes, which I really have only planned on teaching a few, not a whole, whole lot. Um, cuz that's not my big priority are the same as what I would, you would find in any intermediate yoga class, in any school. What I have now taken is what's below intermediate and broken into denying levels.
So it's not just like beginner, intermediate. It's like, okay, these are the skills that people need to walk into any studio and take an intermediate class. And while I'm still teaching intermediate classes, my focus, my energy that I've gone into is that concept of a teacher is how can I break down these skills and explain them to people and get bodies that haven't had those balanced that have got these crystallizations that have these habits of motions and gently bring them through and not be geriatric chairr yoga. That there's something in between because there's a lot of people that have done the geriatric chair yoga, and I've done a, you know, a few of those, but really I'm I'm my niche is for those people in between helping them develop the skills so that they can carry the grandkids and they can do the groceries and they don't fall down. And what
[00:41:13] Enio: slow down.
[00:41:14] Terryl: I'm excited.
[00:41:15] Enio: She did. I didn't have coffee. She. She must have.
[00:41:20] Terryl: I had tea.
[00:41:20] Enio: Okay. that's true.
[00:41:22] Terryl: But I mean, but that's really the, the, the goal as I'm focusing on there and because I was trained in Pilates, the Pilates that I'm bringing in is, is along those same lines. little bit trickier for Pilates to be structured in, in pre-recorded classes. But basically it's the same concept that I'm working to build through there.
[00:41:47] Samantha: That's awesome. Well, and I feel like that that mirrors so much of what you've already discussed about your dance teaching philosophy, which is we have this pre-described leveling system and we have established information and we don't necessarily wanna change the information, but we wanna change how we're getting to the information and the process that, and, and the path and the process that we're taking to reach those checkpoints of our information that we're, that we're disseminating to our students.
[00:42:16] Enio: You've heard her say many times, and I've said it several times. Um, we're skill based teachers.
[00:42:21] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:42:21] Enio: we're not pattern based teachers. And so every skill that you can basically take in dancing is something we do in life because otherwise, dancing is not created in a dance studio. Nobody said, I'm gonna start with a Quickstep. People were doing it and, and dance teachers codify it and calcify it
[00:42:44] Samantha: mm-hmm
[00:42:44] Enio: and they make it, um, I hate to say the word, uh, so that the McDonald's teachers can replicate the same teaching. Unfortunately, um, the words are, are, are memorized. You know, we, we, I remember back when I worked for, for schools, they, they would require you to pass the wordage, you know, and, and even getting, um, Taking your, your tests to be a judge, uh, a quarter of a turn, you know, eighth of a turn between one and two, continue to rise, you know, oh my God. But the, I understand the need for the understanding of it, but you don't wanna regurgitate that to the student. And so if you start by giving them very simple skills that are replicatable without frustration, you are gonna turn out hundreds of students. Once you turn out those students, if they enjoy it enough that they wanna compete at it., great. But it's like, it's so far down the, the road.
LIke I said, you teach a group class with a hundred people in it. You're gonna make more money, but this, the teachers try a group class without the skills of teaching that many people and without teaching, without the skills to teach even group skills and they fail. And so they carry class for months and months and months don't make any money. They fall back to one student, one teacher, and what can they do with them? ProAm because you take 'em to gold and they go out dancing, nobody can dance gold. Therefore they can only dance with the teacher, which adds to a lot of frustration and people giving up. So if it's taught dancing the same way and in yoga, we're teaching or Terryl's teaching skills.
[00:44:45] Terryl: So basically the way I've structured my syllabus is the same. Like when we, when we did our syllabus, which I'll come back to the dancing, um, but I've structured my syllabus, not on, what people normally think of a level is like, okay, what skill is needed here? What skill I'm I, I wanna start teaching 'em this skill at this level. So these are the things that I can use to teach the skill. And these are things I can use to teach the skill, which is the same way we would take our ballroom classes in our Latin classes, Salsa, whatever is we would say, okay, our students would say in week one, salsa, they're teaching pattern a and pattern B. That's what the students would say. We were teaching, this is how we describe what we were teaching week one. In week one, we're teaching separation and connection and changing hands. The ability to change hands. Now, notice that doesn't include a step. So if, if I felt like I could pull this step out and put another step that did equal skill. So every, every class was focused on skill,
[00:45:50] Enio: a skill,
[00:45:51] Terryl: the skills. So that was week one was this skill. And the weeks two, and week three was combining skills from week one and week two and adding in a third skill and week four. And this is how we screwed everybody up because everybody, like, for example, they would take a test and we'd say, you're being tested on what you learned this month. We would take the skills that we did in week one, two, and three use new patterns. and that was their test to get to the next level. Which they would go, well, we didn't learn those steps in weeks. One through three. It's like, no, you didn't learn those steps, but you learned those skills.
[00:46:32] Enio: So we say, is this from week one?
[00:46:34] Terryl: So I'd say, I'd say, is this new? Is this new? Is this new? Is this? And they were like, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, what's new. It's a new combination of these skills. And part of the reason why do that, secret secret, is we wanted 'em to fail. Cause I wanted to keep 'em in level one longer until they actually were good enough or they actually handled those skills and they recognize it.
[00:46:57] Samantha: Right.
[00:46:57] Terryl: And the average person stayed in my level one for three cycles. But side note is it was all based on skills and that's exactly the same thing I've done in the yoga rather than doing typical yoga classes, I've broken down what the skill is. At this level, they should be able a novice. Okay. So I'm and so basically I've got; nurturing, novice, beginner, improver. And at each one of those, I've got them subdivided. I've got, you know, there's
[00:47:26] Enio: intensity levels,
[00:47:27] Terryl: right. So there's people that are just coming out of, you know, beginner. Okay. Now they're wanting to work toward being an intermediate. They have new skills. Well, there's the people that are just going from beginner to introduction to those new skills. And then there's people that have kind of got the skills and are ready to start going into intermediate. Those two people have got different needs.
[00:47:49] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:47:49] Terryl: so all those transitions I've fought through what these transitions are to get people up through the different levels and focus on, on that level to make it more accessible and bringing into the, the people feeling uncomfortable. It's the one thing that is a little bit different. It is an online yoga program. There's lots of online programs. Um, but what is different is in addition to my online program, I do a weekly zoom class. And what is different about my zoom class is when I first did it, I did like everybody else. I did the class, live. And, but then I found I couldn't watch the students. So as a teacher that was driving me bazooka. So what I do is I prerecord the class. I play the class to the students and I watch them through my teacher's eyes. And then I can give them feedback. I can either give them feedback at the Q and A after the class, which there's always a Q and A after the class.
So I am available personally. And if they don't, if they're uncomfortable with doing it in front of everybody else in the zoom, they know that they can text me or email me,
[00:49:03] Enio: or a private lesson
[00:49:04] Terryl: or whatever they can, they can contact me privately and, and get some feedback. So they have the access to a real life teacher who is watching their practice and is available for Q and A, but they also have the anonymity of, and the, the convenience of being able to do a class whenever they want, because it's online, they can do it in the middle of the night, on Sunday night, if they want
[00:49:30] Enio: our library, our Netflix style library is up to 280 videos. So, um, I've been, I've been basically because of the pandemic. I didn't have anything to do. So I got to play with all my toys. I got to edit, which I hadn't done in many years. And, uh, so we cranked out 280 videos. We were shooting about one every other day. And, um, now not only those, but we're also doing the same thing with combining the, um,
[00:49:58] Terryl: well, we've had requests for dance lessons on that too.
[00:50:00] Enio: So we're, we're starting to put together the other half of the program, which will be a separate site, but it's gonna be the ballroom part of
[00:50:08] Terryl: Well dance part, just say dance part, not ballroom, dance part.
[00:50:11] Enio: Yes.
[00:50:12] Terryl: Because some of our former students just like we miss having lessons with you. And so we're, we're trying to figure out how we can take the same format because you know, this is partner dancing. It's got different limitations than yoga, but to create along the same line of,
[00:50:28] Enio: I wanna jump back to when Terryl started with just talking about this, she talked about the number of people that are that fall
[00:50:34] Samantha: mm-hmm
[00:50:34] Enio: And one of the things that, um, dancing and yoga both do is they work on balance and core strength, but
[00:50:45] Terryl: they're both antiaging,
[00:50:47] Enio: right. Yes. And, um, for, for Alzheimer's, it's a very, um, useful thing. They they've come up with studies con no conclusive in one respect, but all of those things will help you.
[00:51:04] Samantha: Yep.
[00:51:05] Enio: And so we're looking at the aging population and saying, look, we're still able to teach the young ones and whatever. Okay. You go take that kid and you bounce 'em around and whatever, no problem. But we're gonna focus on where there's massive amounts of growth of, um, you know, the senior population is one aspect. But for a lot of people don't wait until you're seniors start this now
[00:51:31] Terryl: it's preventative.
[00:51:31] Enio: Right.
[00:51:32] Terryl: And because, I mean, just 12 minutes a day of, of weight bearing is enough to prevent bone loss. So that can be dancing. That can be yoga. So, I mean, 12, 12 minutes a day is, is really all it takes to prevent bone loss, uh, to prevent falls, to prevent Alzheimer's. And you don't wanna wait till you already
[00:51:52] Enio: don't look at me when you say that.
[00:51:53] Terryl: Well, yeah, you don't wanna wait till you are already experiencing bone loss. You don't wanna wait till you've already fallen. You don't wanna wait till you are already losing your memory. You wanna start doing those things beforehand, right?
[00:52:05] Samantha: Right.
[00:52:05] Enio: So we're trying to, you know, tie, tie it in. And so all of that comes back to now the schools that are, you know, pandemic was a reality check for a lot of people. A lot of studios went under and some never closed. They kept the doors open people in the back door and stuff, and that was not a good thing, you know, to me. Um, it showed that a lot of people didn't care about other people and it was only me, you know. I understand your business has to survive, but for me, um, the studios, if the studios go under the, I'm talking about the ballrooms, not, not studios, if the ballroom's go under, there's no place to do
[00:52:49] Terryl: to use what you're learning,
[00:52:50] Enio: what they're other than competition. Think about this, this, if the only place you have to do, you know, ballroom dancing is at a competition and they've eliminated all social dancing. Where would you be able to do it?
[00:53:07] Samantha: Yeah,
[00:53:07] Enio: you can't.
[00:53:08] Terryl: So the, the club experience or the, the, the, the places where that, that hosts the social dancing,
[00:53:15] Enio: you know, um, to
[00:53:17] Terryl: me are more important than the studios.
[00:53:19] Enio: Absolutely.
[00:53:19] Terryl: Because there's always gonna be another studio.
[00:53:21] Samantha: Yep.
[00:53:22] Terryl: And, but the places that host social dancing, I think they are.
[00:53:26] Enio: That's where I talked about the usability. If people, if, if dancers, dance teachers understood that lose the, uh, strict temple music use real music. Now people will come in and you can have a session, like, like skating has a public session, and they have a patch session, and they have hockey and they have all these different things and they rotate through. And so you can have, um, the mob session where people are just standing there and bopping around, to the same music. And then they see, oh my God, look at the good ones. Now they're in a session that's advanced.
And that advanced session people are doing Quickstep and whatever. And, and you would have people gravitate into that, but you would not, you would be growing the base where to be honest, that's where the money is.
[00:54:19] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:54:19] Enio: you know, we taught at a salsa, uh, Congress, the first LA salsa Congress and the editor of, uh, the biggest salsa magazine online worldwide said, I can't believe they have you teaching beginners. I said, that's who I'd rather teach.
[00:54:36] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:54:36] Enio: I could go out and teach an advanced grouping. Great. But I made the most impact teaching our method
[00:54:44] Terryl: our foundation.
[00:54:45] Enio: And she ended up writing this whole article about how we were talking about the physics of movement to beginners. And they were just, just soaking it up. And she goes, I had never heard anybody. She goes, I'm so used to take your foot, put it here, take your foot, put it there. And we're coming in and talking about the physics of the rotation and things like that. So it was, you know, that was kind of a life changing thing for us. We always took something and said, Hmm, there's a need for this and her, her yoga now, our fitness overall thing, we're still looking at the same thing. It's bringing it to more people and you know, we're not reinventing the wheel. Just the opposite. We're saying, think about it this way. Yes. There are a thousand entries, 10,000 entries at Ohio Star Ball. Except for one thing, you have people going out there doing five and 600 entries.
[00:55:41] Samantha: Yep.
[00:55:41] Enio: So don't brag to me about how many entries you have, how many people you're still, you know, other than Ohio and maybe Emerald, a couple of others. You're still talking about 2000 people.
[00:55:52] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:55:53] Enio: 2000 out of 320 million.
[00:55:58] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:55:58] Enio: Okay. But if you go to, for example, we, we are kind of getting into the shag world now in the shag world, they have week long convention, week long, no, not week long, 10 day long conventions where people just go and the entire street is covered with clubs that are
[00:56:17] Terryl: and people just go from building
[00:56:19] Enio: club to club, following the DJs and dancing, uh, you go to a, a swing or a salsa event after the competition, they go and eat and then they come back and social dance from midnight or one o'clock until four or 5:00 AM.
[00:56:34] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:56:34] Enio: Now, those people are practicing more than the person that goes into the studio and has their weekly,
[00:56:39] Terryl: and is getting up at five o'clock to get their hair done.
[00:56:42] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:56:43] Terryl: for the competitions, which I do wanna do one little PSA though, here, about having places to dance. And this is, this is something that you hear over and over, and they, all people will complain about the places to dance disappearing. And, and for us, the places to dance is so critical for us dancing, and yet, they won't spend money there. And the places because dancers have the reputation of costing the clubs money. They scare people off and they don't spend money. And that's why clubs quit having the dances. Dancers don't realize they're cutting off their own nose.
And granted, we don't wanna drink alcohol and try to dance, but spend money.
[00:57:27] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[00:57:27] Terryl: right. I mean, you don't have to spend a lot, but in order to keep the places open for us to have places to go dance. And that's, that's in ballroom, that's in swing. That's in salsa. That's in Tango. I don't care what kind, the, the house, not the studio, but the places that are providing us the opportunities to dance, they need to,
[00:57:47] Enio: to survive.
[00:57:48] Terryl: They need to survive,
[00:57:49] Enio: survive and thrive
[00:57:50] Terryl: because if they survive, then there will be place, then there will be need studios and there will be need for teachers. Yep. But not necessarily the other way around. If it's only teachers and studios and they haven't supported those other places. And the only places to compete is, you know, the only way to do this is it competitions
[00:58:12] Enio: in costumes with, um, a fake tan.
[00:58:15] Terryl: And that goes back to, and to me, that goes back to your gate keeping question is, as you, we need to support the, the, the non-strict tempo, the clubs, the people that. Because as long as those exist, our industry will always have entry level people. Without those, we will lose our entry level people. And I think that's, that's our focus in everything we do is our entry level people.
[00:58:47] Enio: Yeah.
[00:58:47] Terryl: That kinda sums us up.
[00:58:48] Enio: Getting, getting back to the entries. We're getting, you know, uh, each promoter is more and more, Hey, we're up to this many entries, this many entries, the world's not growing. Now, you're seeing a lot of the kids and yet who are the kids that you're seeing? A lot of the Russian kids whose parents come here and re you know, realize for their kids, that's as valuable as being a piano virtuoso or violin virtuoso. And they get their kids into it. And I don't see a whole lot of what I, what I call the, you know, white bread Americans getting their kids into that. They're getting into soccer and football and whatever, but we've lost, we've lost our way.
[00:59:30] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:59:30] Enio: And we've lost our way because we got, you know, we, we forgot that social is more important
[00:59:37] Terryl: and they didn't have the social. So I don't think they creates, that's
[00:59:41] Samantha: it's not the expectation.
[00:59:42] Enio: The social is a waste of time.
[00:59:44] Samantha: Yeah.
[00:59:45] Terryl: And since they're the predominant at this point, the majority in our community and they don't appreciate not, not all of them. I mean, there's definitely a do, but you know, as a whole, the competitive mindset doesn't necessarily appreciate the social because they look at it and see it's a lower dance form forgetting the fact that that's what they're in essence, feeding off of.
[01:00:11] Samantha: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's um, dancesport and ballet are thought of in the same category, when, when I speak to, uh, Eastern European competitors, it's, it's said in the same sentence, ballet and ballroom. So the expectation is, well, there's not social ballet, so why would there be social ballroom? And, and to your point, you know, if you have kids that are growing up in the US and you're white and you're middle class, you're probably putting them in sports because athletics are gonna get you a scholarship. And if you are, um, a minority, Latino or African American, quite honestly, you probably can't afford the cost of ballroom dance lessons at studios for very long. And there aren't programs to help subsidize that in a lot of cities or you don't have it as part of the school system, which makes it inaccessible.
So I, I think to your point, Finding the root of, if this is a social experience, if, if the goal of dance is language and community and partnership and, and creating a social environment for us to do that, then the best thing that we can do as studio owners and instructors is support the local businesses and the local community organizations that can create the opportunity for dance to exist in our community, whether that's working with bars and restaurants, whether that's working with, um, if you have like creative arts, um, organizations they know in Salt Lake, they have excellence in the community which partners, jazz bands, performers with dance opportunities. So finding that and supporting that and breeding a positive environment in those areas so that you do have people that go, oh, that looks really fun. How can I learn to do that?
[01:02:07] Terryl: Right. Exactly.
[01:02:10] Enio: There's, you know, the fallacy that, um, that kids are gonna get at the scholarship. It's, it's a joke that I, I saw the numbers, the percentage of kids that, that go from anything even to the scholarship level is minute, you know, out of a school of 5,000 kids, five might get a scholarship, you know, but you get, you know, you get 70 kids playing football, 11 are playing at any given moment and the majority of,
[01:02:44] Terryl: but then dancing all 70 would be dancing.
[01:02:46] Samantha: Right.
[01:02:46] Enio: That's the difference. And in terms of just I'll take California, they're not gonna be able to afford grass pretty soon.
[01:02:53] Samantha: Right.
[01:02:53] Enio: Okay. Because of the water. So you're gonna see, um, those faces a big basketball court for 10 kids, five from another school, five kids. Using a basketball court, volleyball, you know, 11 or whatever, seven, whatever the numbers are, football your, the cost to do these sports compared to dancing. But the only problem is the perception of what we give when we introduce kids to dancing. It's either ballet. I don't want my boy to be a ballet dancer, right?
[01:03:33] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[01:03:33] Enio: or the competitive aspect of it, which requires a long time. Why not
[01:03:40] Terryl: and money
[01:03:41] Enio: why not teach kids just to dance to their music,
[01:03:46] Terryl: whatever their music is.
[01:03:47] Enio: Let's put it this way. Um, twerking and all that stuff. That's, you know, that's kind of the, the parents gotta hide their faces, um, in showing kids how they, they could touch, the human need for touch in a safe way. When left to their own devices
[01:04:05] Terryl: in a way that the parents can be more comfortable with
[01:04:08] Enio: think about it this way the parents could be out there next to the kids, dancing to the kids' music. That's been the big resurgence of West Coast swing
[01:04:16] Terryl: and shag and Salsa is you've got the parents and the grandparents out there dancing the same dances as the kids,
[01:04:23] Enio: to their mu the kids' music to,
[01:04:25] Terryl: to the current evolution of what the music is
[01:04:28] Enio: instead of, and then eventually you say, you know, yes, I know you like McDonald's, but someday you'll enjoy shrimp and lobster. And the kids are like, nah, I don't want that. You know, it's, it's something that they grow into the Frank Sinatras and the Linda Ronstadts. You'll grow into the that. It's not like we wanna kill the old stuff.
[01:04:49] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:04:49] Enio: But trust me. I, I have a personal thing against, um, this strict tempo ballroom stuff, because it's, it's
[01:04:57] Terryl: it's unrelateable to the non dancers.
[01:04:59] Enio: It's diabolically bad.
[01:05:01] Samantha: Yep. I,
[01:05:02] Enio: I mean, singers are bad, but , you know, and, and see, nobody wants that when you come in, why, why do we have to make it so structured that it, they can only dance it at what one tempo.
[01:05:17] Samantha: Yep.
[01:05:17] Enio: That's where we fail.
[01:05:19] Samantha: No, absolutely
[01:05:19] Enio: it's our inability to adapt to real music so it shows how little we know. And I'm gonna give you a quick, uh, little story. I was the us amateur champion. I thought I was hot stuff. I could jive, my jive was probably my best dance. I go to Disneyland where they used to have. They probably still do have it, a Sunday dance that would bring in big bands and there'd be dancing. And we would go. And at one time they had disco, but they always had an area for big bands. And I thought I'm gonna go in there and do my thing. I took a friend and it was Lionel Hampton's big band. And he opens the curtain, opens to Hamp's boogie woogie. And my first thought is, Ooh, this is a little fast, but I'm the us champion, I can handle this. And all these old timers that in that day, 1979, were probably in their mid fifties. I, to me, they were dinosaurs and I was gonna show them what a dancer could do, you know, ego. And I go out there and I start jiving and my partner is staying with me and we're jiving. And I look over, they're not doing jive, they're doing something else. And in about three minutes, I'm like, I'm heaving? I mean, and at four minutes I'm coughing up a lung. I have to sit down. the band went six minutes, five and a half minutes, and I have to sit down um, dripping wet from one song. And these old timers are just doing boa, Balboa.
[01:07:08] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:07:09] Enio: And most pros would've, you know, turn tail and run just left me, Uhuh, because I'm competitive. Okay. All right. What are you guys doing? You know, cuz they look at me like what's the matter kid you can't cut it. And they taught me something that, I didn't know what I didn't know, was I was trying to fit music into what I had been taught as opposed to dancing to what was playing. And so one of 'em said to me, kid, you're in the wrong gear. I was doing jive and the music was probably playing at 180, 190 beats a minute. And they were doing Balboa. They weren't breaking a sweat. And they were because they were efficient in doing the dance that fit that speed of music, they could go all night long. I burned out after one song. I was like, okay. And that's when I signed up for real swing lessons.
[01:08:08] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:08:08] Enio: So that's the thing that we don't understand. We're trying to make people well, we're selling people dancing to straight tempo. Nobody wants that garbage teach. How to dance to whatever's playing. So an interesting thing, I go in and I do seminars at some schools and I say, how many of you think it's easier to teach east coast swing and 99% will shoot their hands up. And I go, do you realize that west coast swing not only is more usable because of its variety of tempo? It is not the slow swing. We danced the us open and we danced, we opened at 168 beats a minute and finished at 192. West coast swing. And so it's, if it's taught correctly, you can do it at any tempo
[01:09:02] Samantha: mm-hmm
[01:09:02] Enio: But what they don't realize is who learns faster, the man or the woman, the guy's busy, right? The guy, first of all, he doesn't have the background of ballet and cheer and all that. So he's gonna find it a little more difficult. West coast swing. He's pretty much standing there guiding, he's learning to lead. And all he has to do is keep time with his feet. He doesn't have to, he only has to turn left or turn right. Or block her. Right? So the first six steps of west coast swing, the guy never needs to go beyond those really beyond four. And the woman can also learn variations, syncopations. So she can progress at her level and he's happy. And I like to demonstrate that if the guy does it right, he can take her to a bar where they have a big screen TV and they've got football playing on the screen and he can keep his eyes on the screen as he passes her from one side to the other. And oh, now he focuses on her during the commercials. All right. Time back in. All right. He just goes back to letting her pass. So, but in reality, west coast swing, you can use for jazz, blues, R and B, rock and roll, hip hop, uh, ballroom. You can use it for Foxtrot. You can use it for a country. What can you not use it for, waltz?
[01:10:21] Samantha: Right?
[01:10:23] Enio: So you teach, I call it the, um, Swiss army knife of dancing. You teach something that's usable now say to 'em. Yeah, but what are you gonna do when they play Cha-Cha? You can swing, but it isn't the same thing. Now you cross them into, in the swing world. They, they cross, um, paths with nightclub two step, hustle, a little Chacha, an occasional, they call it the California mix now or
[01:10:50] Terryl: and some country
[01:10:51] Enio: in some, some countries,
[01:10:53] Terryl: no, and some country
[01:10:54] Enio: and oh, and some country, excuse me,
[01:10:56] Terryl: some two step
[01:10:56] Enio: yeah. But that's why. You start them with getting good at something. And they, once they learn that learning anything else is like a piece of cake, but you, you don't have to take 'em into syllabus and you don't have to take 'em into patterns. You take them into lead and follow, and then you, then when they see a Jack and Jill, they go, well, how do you judge 'em? Well you see, who's more musical and the audience can pick the winners
[01:11:26] Samantha: right.
[01:11:26] Enio: Because it's not about who pointed their toe best it's who connected with their partner and the music, you know? And then you give extra credit for improvisation and, you know, uh, creativity.
[01:11:41] Samantha: Yeah.
[01:11:42] Enio: So,
[01:11:43] Samantha: absolutely.
[01:11:43] Enio: That's, it's funny. That's why I start everybody with Wesco swing if they don't want salsa. They come in and they, they wanna, I say, what kind of music do you like?
[01:11:53] Samantha: Mm-hmm
[01:11:53] Enio: well, what would fit that kind of music instead of saying, well, okay. You're you're gonna come in. I'm gonna teach you the Waltz. Do we see a disconnect there?
[01:12:02] Samantha: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love this. I, I feel like I could talk to you guys for like four more hours, but, um, I know that you probably have very busy days to get to, um, so I will leave this podcast episode, which, which turned into two rather quickly. Um, I will leave this conversation here for the moment and hopefully I can have you both on a future episode to continue this dialogue, cuz I, I love your perspective about skills based instruction and building your foundation and letting that grow into a more, um, positive dance community in a positive, positive teaching opportunity. Um, so thank you both so much for being on ballroom chat. Uh, where can people find you after this episode when they're listening to it?
[01:12:53] Enio: Um, I'll give you four websites. How's that?
[01:12:56] Samantha: Perfect.
[01:12:57] Enio: Um, Terryl's is yoga, the number four for long life. Yoga 4 long life. Um, we have our own, which is kind of our, we use it for movie auditions and stuff like that. Enio and Terryl dot com. Um, the one that I think will help Stu uh, studios, teachers, and whatever is E XT dance consulting dot com. And that one, I have a little quiz on there for teachers to see if they know what they know, what they don't know, but it's for fun. Um, and then our old studio, which we kept as a yearbook let's dance, la dot com. And that one was when people say we wanna see, you know, do you really walk the walk? Yeah, we did it for, you know, 25 years. Yes. And we documented it. In fact, it's still growing
[01:13:52] Terryl: and it is basically. It was transformed into that's why you said a yearbook. So it's an online yearbook for the students.
[01:13:59] Enio: We just keep adding stuff to
[01:14:00] Terryl: keep adding and for them to share pictures and, and whatever so
[01:14:05] Samantha: awesome
[01:14:05] Terryl: that is,
[01:14:06] Samantha: and those links, uh, if you are listening or if you were watching this episode right now, uh, those links will be in the description box below, so click on those and check them out. Um, thank you Enio and Terryl so much for being guests today again
[01:14:19] Terryl: thank you too.
[01:14:20] Enio: Thanks for having us.
[01:14:22] Samantha: Thank you once again, to Enio and Terryl for being such wonderful guests for the podcast. If you have any follow up questions, if you want to reach out and find out more information about either their consulting or their, uh, yoga platform, you can do so in the links, uh, using the links in the description box below.
As always I'm Samantha, I'm your host with Ballroom Chat. You can follow the Ballroom Chat podcast on Instagram and Facebook at Ballroom Chat. Or you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com/ballroom chat. We occasionally post patron only content over there. Um, so thank you so much for the support. It really does help the podcast grow.
If you have not already done, so please do make sure that you hit the like button, subscribe button, follow button. Uh, give us a five star review on apple, podcast. If that is where you were listening to this. We really do appreciate both your feedback, your likes, your, your follows. Um, again, it kind of helps us reach a, a bigger audience, and that's really the goal is to make sure that we are sharing our stories and our learning experiences with the most people in our community possible and beyond our community so it can grow. Um, so once again, thank you guys so much for supporting the podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Uh, next episode, I have another dynamic duo, a little bit of a lighter episode. Um, but we get into some useful learning information and tools and tips that they are sharing. So be sure to tune in for our next episode when it drops, um, and as always stay safe, stay positive and see you dancing very soon.