For the last 8 years, the Long Island Press has put out a list of the best Long Island has to offer. Now with over 360 categories the Best of Long Island list is bigger than ever. This year your favorite dance studio and mine, Rhythmology of Westbury, has been nominated in the Adult Dance Studio category.

How does Rhythmology win the nomination of Best Adult Dance Studio on Long Island? YOU!!! Just like on Dancing with the Stars, you are the key!! You have to go and vote. So if you have had an amazing time learning, dancing and partying with the Rhythmology family, go and vote! You are allowed one voter per IP address per day per category, until voting ends on 12/15/12.  That’s over a month’s worth of votes. Let’s do our part to ensure that Rhythmology is recognized as what we already know it is: Long Island’s Best!!!

Here’s the link:  http://vote.longislandpress.com/engine/Welcome.aspx?contestid=71109  Vote every day!!!!

There is a difference between performing a routine and just dancing a routine on stage.  During the hours of performances that I watched, I realized that many dancers do not know how to perform to the crowd.  When you perform to a crowd one of the major things you need to do is to invite the crowd to enjoy your dance experience.

There are several ways that performers do this:

• Face the crowd–spend most of your stage time facing the audience, especially if there is no partnerwork. I know this doesn’t always work when performing in a club or something, but when there is a stage, the audience is in only one direction so dancers should maximize their audience face time.
• Smile at the audience–when maximizing your face time, smile at the audience. Its even better if you can meet someone’s eye. However, if you can’t do that, at least occassionally smile in the direction of the audience.  A blank face, or a concentration face, or the top of your head does not invite the audience to share your enjoyment.
• Dance big–utilize your bodies and the stage to your advantage.  Small groups or pairs should move around the stage: up and down, back and forth, diagonally–when you move the audience’s eyes follow you, instead of dipping back down to their phone to text someone or check their facebook page. Bigger dance groups should use big gestures, stretch out and fill up that stage with movement.  All dancers should make sure to finish their moves completely, when you shorten them up or don’t finish it all looks incomplete. This last one is also for everyone: dance your biggest and your hardest.  If you think you are, add a little more, because sometimes you think you are…but no. (This I know from personal experience.)
• Make appropriate costume choices for all group members: We are not all the same size and shape, so what looks good on some members does not look good on all members. I spent several performances looking more at the costumes than at the performance. A little more thought and responsibility should go into this, especially when the dancers are under-age.

Do you remember your first Salsa class? Do you remember what it was that made you decide to return to the dance studio, or the night club, or the community center where that first class was held? I do. It was early in the 21^st century. I had always wanted to learn Salsa. I have no idea why. Maybe it was Dirty Dancing or Dance With Me: dance movies that I watched over and over again thanks to the miracle of cable television. My oldest friend and I decided that we were finally going to do it.  She is of Puerto Rican descent so at least she had an excuse. I think she was the one who came to me actually. A Long Island dance studio was offering a deal:  four private lessons for ____ amount of money.  I honestly don’t remember.

I do remember that we were learning like three dances at the same time. They must have been Salsa, Merengue and Cha Cha, but I only really remember the first two. I also remember that the instructor was kind of a douche (can I say that?). I was over 30 and not exactly a size 6—if you get my meaning. This guy, during the second lesson was getting pissy with us because we couldn’t do things exactly the way he wanted. Forget the fact that I wasn’t a size 6…it was lesson #2 for cheese’s sake! However, I digress. What I wanted to talk about was why I stayed with salsa, not why I was tempted to quit and ask for a refund.

He must have taught the right turn, left turn, cross body right (outside turn) and cross body left (inside turn).  Gee, I really hope I got that right.  I have left and right issues—makes my current instructor crazy. Anyway, the clearest memories I have of those classes is turning and turning with the biggest grin on my face.  Just when I thought I didn’t want to do it anymore, he would lead me through a pattern that had me never wanting to stop.  To this day, I love doing turns, and sometimes spins—yes, there is a difference. So even though, that instructor needed to learn a few things about teaching, (namely don’t teach 3 different dances to raw beginners) he still gave me the joy of learning Salsa.  For that, I thank him…whoever he is.

Physical activities affect the way we feel! Let’s face it, if you’re lazy, then most likely you won’t want to do anything that day. If you’re up and at it, then you will most likely be willing to do more things, like going for a walk or a run.

Dancing is a good way to get those healthy happy hormones moving, which can also help slow down the process of aging and EXTEND your life! Scientists believe that music, dance, laughter, physical touch, and social interactions combine together in a way that releases these Happy Healthy Hormones!

Which hormones are being released?
These happy healthy hormones are called
“beta endorphins”, “enkephalins”, “dynorphins”, and “oxytoxins”. They help reduce the harmful stress related adrenal hormones which disable a person’s immune system and increases the fat storage around the waist and hips area. Put more simply,  it helps reduce stress and depression, and make you feel happy and healthy all over.

How are they released?
The frontal lobe of our brain has more endorphin receptors than any other portion of our body. This area is responsible for human creativity, personality and high-level social/cognitive thought processes. Endorphins, enkephalins and dynorphins are effective “analgesics”, which kill pain and allow us to experience the joy of the moment, which is then further enhanced by synchronizing our biorhythms with the music. The self-generated “feel good” chemicals that dancing releases are amplified by our creative frontal lobe. We start to feel euphoric joy, new energy and powerful motivation washing all over our entire body. This pleasure drives us to dance, without becoming tired or bored, for longer than most people can do with any other form of sustained healthy exercise. Dancing is ever so much nicer than the “going nowhere” metaphor of a boring treadmill or repetitive exercise machine!

More healthy benefits of dance:

-strengthens bones, builds essential core muscle mass, and boosts mental health

-lower your risk of many types of dementia and can reverse previous mental atrophy

-Weight loss can get good results if they increase with the speed and type of dancing, how long and how often you dance. Usually overweight individuals need about 50 minutes a day!

-Dancing can give you awesome core muscles. You need to use your core muscles to keep your balance, and it also gives you good posture.

-One such study appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2003. Joe Verghese, MD, and colleagues studied 469 people who were at least 75 years old and did not have dementia. At the study’s start, they answered surveys about mental and physical activities, like doing crossword puzzles and dancing. Five years later, 124 had dementia. Frequent dancers had a reduced risk of dementia compared with those who rarely or never danced. Of the eleven physical activities that we studied, only dancing was tied to a lower dementia risk.

Check out< a href=http://www.joyfulaging.com/JoyfulDancing.htm> Joyful Dancingfor more information!

Hartweg, Larry. “Joyful Dancing.” Joyful Aging. N.p., n. d. 0. Web. 27 Jul 2012. <http://www.joyfulaging.com/JoyfulDancing.htm>.

During my years in the dance community, every once in a while I will hear someone complaining about counting while doing salsa.  They say they personally hate to do it because it confuses them or because it doesn’t feel natural.  I have also heard people say that they hate OTHER PEOPLE who count while dancing…which is just silly.  Why is it silly, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Not everyone has natural rhythm.  For some, rhythm has to be learned and how do you learn something? You practice it over and over again. For salsa, you repeat 123,567 with your feet, with your voice and in your head.  For those new to dancing in general or those new to salsa, getting familiar with its rhythm is important. You should not only count while dancing, but also do it while listening to salsa in the car, while cleaning the house, or doing yard work, or waiting for the train.

Another reason why it is important to count in salsa is because the musical counts of salsa and the dance counts do not match up. A bar of salsa music consists of 4 beats. A salsa dance basic takes two musical bars. 4×2=8, right? No. Don’t be ridiculous. A salsa dance basic only consists of 6 steps even though there are 8 beats of music.  This can get confusing! I don’t know how many times I have heard people say “Well, what happened to the 4 and the 8?” We don’t use the 4^th or 8^th beat when dancing the basic. Otherwise it’s just too much work. Just kidding, those are the rest beats.  The 4^th and 8^th beats are used at other times during salsa, so don’t miss them too much. They’ll be back. (You might wish they’d stayed gone, depending on the tempo of the music.)

Anyway, I said all of that to say, don’t hate on those people who need to count out their salsa steps.  All they want is to get better at doing the dance we all love so much.

Tell us why you NEED these tickets! We will pick our winner from the comments below!

So there’s Artistic Gymnastics, Synchonized Swimming, and Trampolining and Race Walking, but no dancing aka DanceSport in the Olympic games. Why is that exactly? Ballroom dancers begin training at the same age as gymnasts and swimmers, they work just as hard to perfect their craft.  They spend years on the competitive circuit the same as other athletes do.  Yet, the many ballroom dancers of the world do not get to show their stuff at the biggest competition on the globe: the Olympic Games.

However, the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) has been working to change that.  It has applied to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include DanceSport as an Olympic event. “The platform of the WDSF is based upon the simple premise that the multitudes of extremely talented youths throughout the world who work so hard to excel in their sport truly deserve the opportunity to compete on the Olympic level.”

In order to become an Olympic event a sport has to be recognized under the Olympic Charter, and according to Rule 29 of the Charter, DanceSport is eligible. Also WDSF has been recognized as the required international federation which makes sure the sport follows the rules of the Olympic Charter. Thirdly, DanceSport is a competitive event practiced in 88 countries which meets the requirement that the sport be widely practiced on an international scale.  So why is there still no DanceSport at the Games? It has not received the recommendation of the IOC’s Olympic Program Committe. There are 31 other sports waiting to receive the same recommendation including karate, racquetball and squash.  Even if DanceSport gets the recommendation it will be seven years before it is actually included in the Olympic Games–which is why we have yet to see golf and rugby matches which have been recommended and are still awaiting their day in the sun.

So, it looks like there may be hope that one day competitors in ball gowns and tails will compete for the glory of their nations, but don’t look for it in Rio in 2016.

For more: http://www.dance-fever-studio.com/dancesport-as-olympic-event-2.php

It’s that time of year of again! Congress time on the east coast! August 9^th-12^th is the 4^th Annual DC Bachata Congress and August 29^th-September 2^nd is the 12^th New York International Salsa Congress. It’s time to strap on those serious dance shoes and get moving.

What’s that? What is a dance congress, you ask? A dance congress is an event for professional and amateur dancers to meet and enjoy the dance they love. At this point in time, Salsa congresses are the most popular, but Bachata congresses are popping up these days: sometimes in conjunction with a Salsa congress and sometimes independently.  Salsa congresses can be found in many countries around the world with a predominance in North America. Congresses typically include workshops, shows, master classes, retail booths, social parties, live bands, and competitions.

The first salsa congress in the world took place in Puerto Rico in 1997. The promoter was Eli Irizarri. The number of participants of this first edition was 375, coming from 19 different countries. In 1998, the number of participants was 550 from 23 countries and 32 salsa companies performing and teaching. In 1999 the participants were 800 from 34 countries with about 56 salsa companies performing.

Now there are Salsa congresses all over the world with thousands in attendance and two of them are right in our own backyard. (Actually, there are three but the Connecticut Congress was in the spring.) If you have never been to one, you might want to think about it.  Attending a congress is a two to three day immersion in something you enjoy.  There are workshops from morning til early evening on every level of dance.  Sometimes there are workshops on things you’ve never heard of.  I had never heard of Salsa Rueda until my first congress.  I tried it and loved it and now whenever I go to a congress I look for a Rueda workshop.  Now, they even have Bachata Rueda—so much fun. You can find workshops on various techniques like spinning, partner work, shines, and musicality.  You can practice different kinds of salsa: On1, On2, Rueda.  You can even learn dances that aren’t Salsa or Bachata: Bellydancing, Kizomba and Zouk are a few examples. And, of course, the Cha Cha Cha—can’t forget that one. (The cha cha always make me feel sexy, don’t ask me why.)

Attending a congress with other students from your dance school is another great way to bond and make new friends. (If you share a hotel room, you really have little choice about the bonding part.) Watching the myriad performances is a great motivation to improve your dancing. And if social dancing is your favorite part of Salsa or Bachata then you will be in heaven.  Imagine a ballroom packed with dancers, a live band, and a party-rific atmosphere, then multiply times 10. Now imagine three consecutive nights of this! Saying it’s a good time is an understatement.  It’s amazing! Unbelievable!  You have got to try this.

A 21 year study shows that dancing, more than any other physical or mental activity, can help prevent dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Isn’t that something? Dancing! That’s so crazy! Yet compared with swimming, golfing, biking, reading and doing crossword puzzles, dancing reduces the risk of those mental ailments the most–by 76%! Crossword puzzles reduce the risk by 47% (glad I just downloaded that crossword app while I was on vacation) and reading by 35%.  I am an avid reader, I just started doing crossword puzzles and I love to dance.  I’m good! The physical activities, by the way, did not reduce the risk at all. 0%. Something to think about isn’t it?

Isn’t dancing physical, you ask? Of course it is. However, it is not just physical. According to socialdance.stamford.edu: “dancing simultaneously involves kinesthetic, rational, musical and emotional processes.” What does all of that mean? It means that we don’t just move when we dance.  We make decisions about which moves to make (as a leader) or how to respond to certain moves (as a follower). We interpret the music that we are listening to.  We enjoy dancing to certain songs more than others and we enjoy dancing with certain partners more than others. Social dancing is whole-body experience. It works the mind as well as the body.

Social dancing, with a partner, requires each dancer to use his or her mind. There are many decisions to be made while dancing, and being able to make those decisions within the dance is the key to maintaining intelligence. The more decision making you can while dancing, the better is for our cognitive reserve. As we age, we begin to forget things if we only have one way of thinking about them. That’s why the elderly often forget names, because is a name is just one path in the brain, but if they can associate different things with the name or with the person they have more than one path, and therefore have more cognitive reserve. Dancing requires you to come at things in different ways.  Which moves can you do on a crowded dance floor? Which follower can do which moves? Which leader will make you turn a lot as opposed to just dancing the basics? The more solutions you can come up with, the better the brain works.  Or maybe its better to say that coming up with solutions and putting them into practice while dancing and having a good time helps the brain work better.

However we decide to say it, all that matters is this: dancing can keep your brain healthier than not dancing. So slip on, tie on, lace up, and buckle up those dance shoes and I’ll see you on the dance floor.

For more information on this topic:

http://socialdance.stanford.edu/syllabi/smarter.htm

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022252

Did you know that in the heyday of big band Mambo (the forerunner to present-day Salsa) the musicians and singers who performed were not allowed to mingle, socialize or dance with the patrons who came to hear them? Even entertainment was segregated. Until the Palladium.  The owner, Max Hyman, convinced to open his doors to a Mambo band, would only allow them to play once a week, and a matinee at that.  I bet he was glad that he made that decision.  It was such a success that he began booking Latin music through the theater’s whole schedule. Not only that, Hyman opened the Latin nights to minorities. That was a big thing in 1947!  For the first time, white Upper East Siders, Jews and Italians from Brooklyn, danced side by side with Puerto Ricans, Cubans and African-Americans.  It was history in the making: on the dance floor of the Palladium!

It wasn’t just everyday folk who went to Palladium either.  On any given night, the patrons could “rub elbows” with Lena Horne, Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr., Henry Fonda, Duke Ellington and Marlon Brando.  Musicians from other clubs would drop in for a set: Dizzie Gillespie and George Shearing and others.

However, the big thing about the Palladium was the DANCING.  The dancing at the Palladium is what sparked the Mambo craze of the 1950s. The dancers there were called Mambonicks–and to get on the dance floor, you had to be the best of best. You were competing for dance space with the likes of Cuban Pete and Millie Donay, and Augie and Margo.

The Palladium dubbed itself the Temple of Mambo–and hundreds flocked there to worship on the dance floor.