Social Dance

LEARNING CURVE
The Same Class Through the Eyes of the Teacher and a Student

THE STUDENT:

Angela Renae Amarillas
Senior

s soon as I arrived on the Farm in the fall of 1993, I eagerly enrolled in as many dance division classes as I could fit into my pre-med schedule. In addition to taking ballet and modern dance, I decided to expand my dance world with a class called Social Dance Forms of North America with Richard Powers. I did not realize it then, but this would mark the beginning of a transformation in the way I think about and experience dance as movement, and dance as a way of life.

I have to admit that it wasn’t exactly love at first sight for social dancing and me. This couple dancing stuff just did not feel quite right to my classically trained body. Ballet had ingrained in me a very developed sense for my own center of balance, and I was used to being solely responsible for making my movements happen. After the first few truly terrifying attempts at what was supposed to be a polka, I quickly figured out that social dance doesn’t work that way. I had to reset my balance to share a new center-point with another body attached to mine, and learn a thing or two about following a lead. I remember wondering if, how and when I would actually float, not fumble, through a fox trot. I was motivated by the challenge, and decided to stick with it.

For a couple hours a week, Richard invited the class to explore the nonlinear, kinesthetic, simultaneous, intuitive aspects of ourselves. Combined with his insights into the historical and philosophical backgrounds of the dances he

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