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Israeli partner dancing is a fun, energetic and exciting form of popular dance that incorporates dance styles from around the world in a uniquely Israeli dance style.

Every Israeli dance has its own unique choreography, made up by a choreographer. There are many benefits to this style of dance. However, choregraphed partner dancing leads to a number of problems.

In most Israeli Partner Dance classes, we are taught choreography, not how to dance with a partner. Typically the man and woman learn their own parts for each dance, without regard for how they communicate with one another. Too frequently this results in partners wrestling with one another in a test of wills.

People have so much difficulty, they often dance with only a few select partners. Sometimes people get so frustrated they do not even want to dance with their regular partner if one of them does not know the choreography for a dance.

In this workshop, you learn the language of social dancing so you can dance easily with other people.

Solve The Gender Imbalance Problem And Make Your Group More Sociable

In Israeli Dancing, people find it too hard to dance with anyone but their regular partners. People without regular partners are left out.

In other social dancing, gender imbalance is solved by changing partners. In other social dancing, most people dance with everyone else. Most people like dancing with different people.

When the people in your group have taken this workshop, they will be able to dance with one another easily and will be happy to change partners so everyone gets to dance.

Learn To Dance Beautifully, Two People As One, Four Legs One Body

Sometimes our dancing with a partner is transcendent, leaving you with a feeling that can last for days. Words cannot describe these experiences. You have to live them.

The problem is these experiences do not happen enough. Even when you and your partner know a dance, rarely do you dance as one.

In Israeli partner dancing, we often have two people dancing as two, both doing the steps in close proximity, but not moving together.

Many women, since they know the dances, take their step before the man initiates his step. Even if the woman takes her step only a fraction of a second before the man, the effect is noticeable.

In this workshop, you learn to dance every step as one.

Dance as Light as a Feather without Pain or Injury

Many people push and pull on their partner as a means of communicating, thinking in this way they can help lead their partner through a dance. The effect is the opposite. Pushing and pulling does not help your partner. Puhing and pulling makes things worse, throwing your partner off balance, slowing them down, confusing them, and preventing them from dancing freely.

Most severly, pushing and pulling is dangerous and can cause injuries.

Besides the dangers, pushing and pulling is unpleasant. Even minor discomfort is unacceptable. When we dance, we should be comfortable.

In this workshop, you learn to dance safely, without the use of force.

Understand the Principles for Social Dancing

For the last 1,000 years, the big question in social dancing has been how does the woman know what to do. Every dance teacher has answered that question and they all have been wrong. Some of what they say is good, some is bad, and some of the time they make up a story. Neither the teachers or their students know which is what.

Dancing with a partner turns out to be a math problem, specifically geometry. Andrew Weitzen published the solution to this problem in 2007. In his book How To Dance With a Partner, Weitzen shows that there are only four elemental patterns in social dancing. All figures in all dances are made up of these four patterns. These four patterns are what is being led and followed.

Leading and following these four patterns is done according to Weitzen's ABCDs(tm). Weitzen's three Laws of Balance, Connection, and Direction, define the choreography for the woman, answering the question how does the woman know what to do. Everyone is communicating according to Weitzen's rules even though they do not know it.

Weitzen's principle are so simple they fit on a single card, beautifully printed, which each person attending the workshop gets.

What the Woman Does Is Simple Though Challenging

As you can imagine, the number of possible steps the woman is asked to do is enormous. She can step forward, back, left, right, on the four diagonals, and turn left or right. That is 10 possibilities without considering distance or timing. Since the man also has those 10 possibilities, that makes 100 combinations on the first step. For a two step sequence, that makes 10,000 possibilities. The woman cannot be expected to know figures to understand where the man is asking her to go. What she is asked to do, must be simple.

Complexity comes through simplicity. Like the infinite variability we see in computers coming from Ones and Zeros, from Weitzen's book, we learn that the woman is only asked to do two things, take a step or rotate. In combination with Weitzen's ABCDs, this produces all the woman's choreography.

Knowing where to move is half the problem. The other half of the problem is how to move. We call this technique, that is how to move.

Since the woman is dancing with different partners, many she does not know, in a variety of different dances, with countless choreography, we cannot expect the woman to know when to use different techniques. The woman must use the same simple techniques all the time.

In this workshop, the woman learns both where and how to move so she can do every step in every social dance.

The women learn to do every partner dance by following without learning the steps. You learn how to follow dances you do not know. You learn to do the dances more enjoyably than the women who know the choreography because you learn to dance as one with your partner. You learn how to dance so men love dancing with you.

Men Dance with Confidence

The men who know how to dance with a partner, are a pleasure for the women to dance with. These men are in demand as a partner. Once you learn the principles for communicating, you can be sure what you are doing is correct. You have more confidence.

In this workshop, men learn how to explicitly signal the woman on what to do.

Even Beginners Can Learn to Communicate

What ever your level, from novice to advanced dancer, you learn how to make each dance fun.

Raise The Level Of Your Whole Group

Most importantly, when everyone understands the etiquette and skills of partner dancing, your group has a more enjoyable experience.