Every Man's Survival Guide to Ballroom Dancing: Ace Your Wedding Dance and Keep Cool on a Cruise, at a Formal, and in Dance Classes

Overcome your fear of dancing!

New to dance? Can't dance? Hate to dance? This book is an insider's guide to social dancing. It's everything you should have learned in dance classes, but didn't.

Are you rhythmically challenged? Do you finish dance classes more confused than when you started? Do you wish you knew how to slow dance?

In this book--part guerrilla manual and part cotillion handbook--you will learn how to walk onto any dance floor and perform an admirable dance, with any partner, to any music, with confidence and grace. That's the ultimate goal of a social dancer.

Learn the essential principles common to all music, rhythm, and dance. Despite the title, this book will help both leaders and followers. Really!

You will learn:

• A foolproof method for hearing the beat of the music.
• How to count music. They don't teach that in dance classes.
• The correct way to count step patterns (dance figures--the fancy moves). Dance classes often mess this up, which adds to your confusion.
• Three dance rhythms: single, double and triple rhythm, the building blocks of all dances.
• Three simple rhythm patterns (the pattern of weight changes) that will get you through any song.
• The basics of leading and following.
• Slow dancing, survival dancing, surviving the wedding dance, and how to fake a dance.
• 17 easy exercises (most you can do without a partner).
• Plus, free instructional video clips at iHateToDance.com and HearTheBeatFeelTheMusic.com

This book has the tools everybody needs to know to make their partners happy.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This book does not teach specific dances. It's a foundation book focusing on the basics. It's a book to read before your first class, as well as during your first year of classes. What you will learn is the rhythm pattern, the pattern of weight changes, for 18 common partner dances. You need to know the rhythm pattern for a dance before the first class because it will not be be explained or adequately communicated in a class.

JAMES JOSEPH used to hate to dance. Learning to dance was a struggle. So he simplified the process, which he explains in this book. He took his first beginners' class in 1984. In 1996 he started training under the late Skippy Blair, a Swing Dance Hall of Fame member, and who was considered by many the teacher of teachers. He's now a GSDTA certified dance instructor. He is also the author of, Hear the Beat, Feel the Music: Count, Clap and Tap Your Way to Remarkable Rhythm.