The Standard Dancing Pyramid Back when we were teenagers, our Standard dance coach at the time introduced us to the Standard Dancing Pyramid. It was a great way to understand the different styles of Standard dancing and how they relate to each other. Also, the Standard Dancing Pyramid provided us with a better understanding of different teachers’ backgrounds, which gave …
Right now, as I’m writing this (though certainly not as you’re reading this), I am in the car with Simeon and one of the teachers at our studio, Atanas Malamov, driving from Provo, UT, to Las Vegas, NV. In a strange way, driving a few hundred miles south-east is getting us closer to our final destination, Seattle, in the far …
Happy New Year! Being that this blog post will start off our new year, we thought it a perfect time to go back and take a look at the top five ballroom costume trends of 2019 to help get some perspective for 2020. Some of these trends are awesome and we really hope they stick around, but some of them …
A 10 Dance Hairstyle that works perfectly for Latin and Standard! How often are 10 Dancers caught in this situation? The organizers of the competition decided to hold the Latin and the Standard events on the same day! Or, the competition is only a one day event? Or finally, the organizers are actually offering a 10 Dance competition, which means …
Ballroom Makeup Tutorial for International Standard or American Smooth! In this video tutorial, Kora demonstrates step-by-step how to achieve this beautiful look for International Standard or American Smooth. Follow along on our YouTube channel to recreate this look for yourself. And just in case you’d like to buy the exact products that Kora uses in this tutorial, all products featured …
For students just starting out, buying your first real pair of womens ballroom shoes can be a daunting thing. There are so many brands, so many different types, so many different heels! In our many years of teaching, we have offered buying advice to hundreds of students on their first serious pair of dance shoes. Now, we want to …
In Part One of our Buyer’s Guide to Womens Ballroom Shoes, we discussed what makes womens ballroom shoes so unique. We also discussed the differences between International Standard shoes and American Smooth shoes, and took a look at the front of the shoe, the toe box. For Part Two, we are going to break down the heel, the colors, …
Happy June! We know it’s been awhile since we’ve published a blog post, and that’s because we were laser-focused on our training for the Blackpool Dance Festival! Well, now that the festival is over and we’re in Bulgaria for a bit of R&R, we have a little more time to publish a post. Unfortunately, our results at the Blackpool Dance …
We’ve published quite a few step by step articles about how to do competition makeup. This article is great for learning Latin competition makeup for women. And in this video, Simeon teaches all of you men out there how to do your competition makeup. But with all of the makeup we put on our faces, it can be difficult to …
Spring arrived, the sun reappeared, and Costco started carrying mangoes again! We love mangoes. Not the big orange/green types most often pictured as mangoes, but the small golden yellow ones called “Honey Mangoes”. Those are our favorites. We buy a huge box of them at Costco every week when they’re in season and have no problem ingesting all six …