Dancing Through Life: Lessons Learned on and Off the Dance Floor - Hardcover

Benevento, Antoinette; Dobb, Edwin

 
9780312370855: Dancing Through Life: Lessons Learned on and Off the Dance Floor
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312370857 ISBN 13: 9780312370855
Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Likening the dance floor as a stage for human behavior, a former ballroom champion and co-owner of Fred Astaire Dance Studios shares lessons in life, healing, and motivation that she has gleaned throughout her career. 20,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor



ANTOINETTE BENEVENTO is co-owner of and National Training Director for the Fred Astaire Dance Studios and a former national ballroom dancing champion. EDWIN DOBB is a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and has written for numerous other national publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Discover.

Aus dem Klappentext




A warm and encouraging self-help book that draws inspiration and motivation from ballroom dancing.

 


Precisely because the dance floor stands apart from the everyday world, allowing dancers to play, experiment and take on new roles, it also serves as a stage for human behavior. Antoinette Benevento, a former national ballroom dancing champion and co-owner of Fred Astaire Dance Studios, has been a student of that stage for 25 years. She has discovered that getting out on the dance floor is a powerful and empowering metaphor for living fully in all realms of life.
 
Some of the tenets Antoinette Benevento lives, dances, and teaches by:
-Persistence is a form of beauty
-Give yourself permission to begin again--and again and again
-If you're not willing to risk falling, you'll never learn to walk (or dance)
-Desire is the energy that moves us forward in dance and in life
-To dance well and to live fully, body and soul need to work together
Building on the ballroom dancing craze that has swept the country, including the popularity of "Dancing with the Stars", this illuminating and highly readable book shows  that what you learn on the dance floor can help you dance through life.

 


ANTOINETTE BENEVENTO is co-owner of and National Training Director for the Fred Astaire Dance Studios and a former national ballroom dancing champion. EDWIN DOBB is a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, and has written for numerous other national publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Discover.




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Chapter 1

My life in dance began with a wrong turn—a misstep. It was 1980. I was a freshman studying elementary education at Montana State University in Bozeman, and I was restless. I also was fed up with winter. So I transferred to the University of Nevada, Reno, where I naively imagined I’d escape the snow and subfreezing temperatures that grip my home state from November through March—or April, or even May sometimes. Boy, was I wrong. Reno may be located in a desert, but it’s a high, northern desert that’s invaded by bone-chilling weather every year.

There I was in one of the country’s premier gambling meccas, where hope not only springs eternal but fills casino coffers around-the-clock, a little wiser geographically certainly but with little reason to be optimistic about my ill-advised wager. What in the world had I gained by coming to Reno? Every morning I shivered as I climbed into my car to drive to school and I continued to shiver, and grumbled to myself, as I reported to my job—working the counter at a busy Wendy’s. To make matters worse, I registered too late to get the classes I wanted at the university. I now could look forward to at least several months of boredom. And I can’t stand boredom.

That’s when my fortunes changed forever. Out of the blue, my roommate’s boyfriend told me that he was going to try out for an instructor trainee program at the local Fred Astaire Dance Studio. Would I like to be his partner? The idea wasn’t entirely foreign, to say the least. From seventh grade through my senior year in high school, I had been a member of school drill teams. I liked to dance, liked it very much. For my last birthday at home, my mother ordered a cake with the following words on top: “The dancing machine is now 18.” So after a little hesitation, I applied and was accepted. Within two weeks I had quit the fast food business and shelved my educational plans. I was spending fourteen to sixteen hours at the studio every day of the week, and I danced virtually all of that time. I talked dance, I dreamed dance, I was possessed by dance.

Why? The full answer would require me to tell you everything that’s happened since then, and I’ll eventually get to the highlights in the chapters to follow. But for now suffice it to say that certain features of dance captivated me from the start. Looking back, I realize that something important was missing in my life then. I knew that much. I was searching, but I wasn’t sure what I was searching for—until I joined Fred Astaire and began dancing full-time. Suddenly I felt energized, fulfilled. I knew instantly that dancing would become my life. What I’m about to say may strike you as corny but it’s the truth: The first time my instructor took me in his arms and swept me across the dance floor, I felt like I was being transported back in time or to another world, a world of elegant balls and fairy-tale romance. The dance floor, I soon learned, was a fantasyland where everyone lives happily ever after. It’s a place that stands apart from the everyday world—its conflicts, cruelties, and disappointments. No wonder I became addicted, as do so many others who make the same discovery.

As you might imagine, my job as dance instructor didn’t seem like work at all. I was getting paid to impart something I loved to students, which gave me a great deal of pleasure. But I wanted more. I wanted a serious, long-term partner with whom I could practice, someone who would challenge me to improve my skills. That’s when the fates placed another opportunity in front of me. A visiting dance coach was impressed by the enthusiasm that I and two other instructors exhibited and suggested we attend a national contest in Miami—as observers, not participants. It would be an opportunity to see how our skills compared with those of the best professional dancers in the Fred Astaire system. Should we find competition appealing, it would also give us a chance to meet potential partners. And we’d be staying in sunny southern Florida, a place I was absolutely certain was warmer than both Montana and Nevada. In my mind I was on my way long before I boarded the plane. Simply stated, I was thrilled.

Thrilled but unprepared for what was about to happen. In Florida, Larry, a young and eager instructor from the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Phoenix, introduced himself. He explained that he’d been stood up by his partner and was looking for a way to salvage the situation. Then he asked me to dance with him in the novice division. There was no time to get to know each other. Certainly no time for rehearsal. Just step out on the floor and follow his lead. And those were not the only reasons for turning down Larry’s proposal. At the time in October 1982, I was ten to fifteen pounds overweight. I lacked proper dance shoes, to say nothing of a traditional dance costume. And if you’ve ever seen the extravagant outfits contestants wear at professional ballroom dancing events, you can imagine how much like an awkward, out-of-place bird I felt at the time—a drab starling among brightly colored peacocks. Still, against all odds, I found myself saying yes.

Remember the first time you appeared in front of an audience? Now imagine doing so with a stranger and without knowing what exactly you’re going to perform. I began wishing I’d never left Nevada. Then I received another sign that dancing would be my destiny. Larry had chosen a rumba, and the moment the music started I was at one with the infectious rhythm of that Latin classic. Instinct guided me as I swam in a sea of sensation—Larry and I turning together across the dance floor, hundreds of eyes watching our every move, and, finally, applause. Real applause. The clapping startled me. We’d certainly won the approval of the audience, but what about the judges? After a short deliberation, they awarded us first place. No one was more surprised than I. I’d come to watch and ended up winning. More important, an ugly duckling had been transformed, if only for a moment, into the belle of the ball.

The following summer I transferred to the Phoenix studio to be able to train with Larry. Our choreographer was a veteran dancer named Michael Bickley. One day Michael asked me to join him in a back room of the studio. “I want to show you something.” He placed one hand under my left arm and the other under my right leg, then lifted me in a single, swift movement over his head, just as I’d seen ice dancers do. One moment I’d been standing on the floor, the next I was suspended in the air—and, it seemed, soaring. After work I called my mother to tell her about experiencing for the first time what ballroom dancers call a full press lift. “I felt like I was in a dream,” I said excitedly, unsure of what exactly I meant other than that the exhilaration had convinced me that anything’s possible. And in that spirit I told her with complete conviction that I was going to become a champion ballroom dancer.

Soon afterward, Michael became my partner and for the next ten years I devoted myself to competition. In 1984 we placed fifth in the World Theatrical Championships. Two years later, we won in the Rising Star Division at the American Smooth Ballroom Championships. When I retired in 1993, we held fifth place overall in the American Smooth. At the same time, I had been moving up the management ladder at the Phoenix studio—from instructor to assistant supervisor to supervisor to assistant manager to manager. The same year I left competition I purchased the studio. That, too, was a turning point in my life, more momentous than any previous,...

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Verlag
St Martin's Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312370857
ISBN 13 
9780312370855
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
228
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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