Learning to dance can be difficult. It's often hard to remember
everything you're supposed to do and all the different steps that you've
been taught in class. While taking dance classes from a good teacher is
definitely one of the best ways to learn, having some books on ballroom
dancing can be a great help when it comes to trying to remember how to do
those steps you were taught. And you can always add your own notes right
into the books instead of keeping a separate folder of notes. I've purchased
quite a few books on ballroom dancing over the last couple of years that
I've been into it and figured that it might be helpful for others if I
gave you some idea of what books are out there and what they're like. So
here are some short descriptions about the books I own.
The first division to make is style -- there are books for both
American style and International style dancing. The American style books
seem harder to find and I've only got two, so I'll describe those first.
I found _The_Complete_Book_of_Ballroom_Dancing_ by Stephenson and Iacarrino
in a book store for the cost of about $16. It contains two primary
sections, one on the history of ballroom dancing and general information and
the other on the dances themselves. The dance steps are given in a brief
chart format and includes footprint diagrams as well as photographs of a
couple dancing the steps. _Your_Other_Left_Foot_ by Andy McCann is available
through his publishing company Amuse-A-Mood Co. This is one of a variety
of dance manuals they have and it's also a bit higher priced at about $37.
I chose this one one because it contains all of the information from the
company's _Dance_"Fun"damentals_ booklets (all the dances, steps, and levels)
as well as lots of more general dance information such as guidance/response
(lead/follow), music, technique and style, and warm up exercises. The step
patterns are drawn differently than most ballroom books using geometric-shaped
patterns, so they take a little getting used to reading. It can get
confusing at times, but it's generally a good book especially because of
all the extra information it contains in addition to the dance steps.
There seem to be a lot of International style books available and I
picked up three in book stores: _Modern_Ballroom_Dancing_ by Victor
Silvester, _Teach_Yourself_Ballroom_Dancing_ by the Imperial Society of
Teachers of Dancing (ISTD), and _The_Ballroom_Dance_Pack_ by Walter Laird.
My favorite of these is the one by Victor Silvester which costs about
$20. It contains a lot of different steps for all ten of the International
style dances and some of them have footprint diagrams as well. Each dance
is described and general information about the dance is given before the
set of steps. There's also a pretty good history of ballroom dancing
at the start of the book. If you're looking for a book to use for
International style, I'd recommend this as the one to start with; it's
quite good and I used it a lot until I got some other books (which I'll talk
about below). The ISTD book is relatively cheap at about $8 and it's also
pretty good since it contains a lot of different dances, including ones
outside of the standard ten international dances, and a fair number of steps
for each. However, for some of the dances the number of steps is limited.
The Walter Laird book only contains six dances and there's only about six
steps or so given for each dance. The steps are given with written
descriptions as captions to photographs of a couple dancing the steps. It's
a bit limited compared to some of the other books, but being a "dance pack"
it also contains a CD with music for each dance at two speeds (a slower,
practice tempo and a faster, normal tempo) with two additional tracks that
are mixes of the other songs, one for the three standard dances the book has
and the other for the book's three latin dances. It also has some flash cards
with the basic steps on them so that you can hold them in your hands while
you practice and there's even cards with footprints on them that you can
photocopy and lay out on the floor to create footprint diagrams. The ballroom
music CD is one of the best points about this book and for the price of
about $25 it's a pretty good deal for a book-CD combination.
The other International style books that I've purchased I ordered
directly from the ISTD. They have a variety of items available, but the
ones I have now are: _The_Ballroom_Technique_ by the ISTD ($19), _The_Revised_
_Technique_of_Latin-American_Dancing_ by the ISTD ($17), _Viennese_Waltz_ by
the ISTD ($9), _Popular_Variations_ by Alex Moore ($11), and _Popular_
_Variations_in_Latin-American_Dancing_ by the ISTD ($9). These prices are
converted from the pounds sterling listed in the ISTD catalog so they could
vary somewhat depending on the conversion rate when you purchase them. The
two technique books contain all of the syllabus steps for both the standard
and the latin dances. There are some exceptions though -- viennese
waltz isn't covered in _The_Ballroom_Technique_ with the other standard
dances, hence its own book, and the latin technique book doesn't have every
single syllabus step like the standard technique book does. The two
popular variations books are basically what their name implies. The latin
variations book contains most of the remainder of the syllabus steps that
aren't covered in the technique book as well as a variety of new steps and
variations. The standard variations book is mainly a series of combinations
of steps rather than listings of individual steps, but it contains both
new steps as well as new combinations of syllabus steps. The two technique
books are quite good because they break everything down into a fairly
detailed chart format description; the viennese waltz book is in basically
the same form, too. The charts can be a little tough to understand until
you get used to reading them, though. The popular variations books are
in about the same format, but the charts are basically compressed into
listing mainly the leader's part and adding notations about the follower's
part as necessary. In general these are all very good books, but they do
tend to be a bit technical and benefit by interpretation from a good dance
teacher, as will any dance book.
So, there are descriptions of the ten ballroom dance books that I
own. You'll notice that I found four of them in book stores, so you
ought to be able to find some on book store shelves, too. They are
good books and you may not even have to order books if the ones you can
find in book stores suit your needs. Hopefully this information will
help you find the ballroom dancing book you're looking for.
(
geocities.com/dronak)