Difficulties of Learning Swing Dancing in Seattle

A fan of TeachStreet (who happens to a good friend of ours) recently related the following story to us — we wanted to post it to share with you the type of problems we’re trying to help solve — enjoy!

From Kim: “After quitting my job in July, I wanted to learn new skills, to try things that I had always wanted to do but never had the time to do. First on the list was swing dancing. Seemed to me that the people having the most fun dancing were doing swing so I wanted to learn how to join in. But since I also had bad flashbacks to high school dances, I wanted to have private lessons. I didn’t relish the idea of flailing around in front of a group of people (that’s probably one of the reasons I hadn’t tried to learn to do this before now) so it had to be 1-on-1 lessons or no go.

Come August I was ready to start. I did what you would expect: I typed in “Seattle swing dance lessons” into Google. I also knew that there was a local dance studio that was well known for their swing dances so I visited their website. There was: “Private lessons are also available. Questions? Email us”. So I did. And I waited. A week later nobody had gotten back to me so I left a voicemail. And I waited. Four days later I got a call. It went something like this (paraphrased):

Him: So you’re interested in swing dance lessons?
Me: Yes, I am still interested in private swing lessons. (Note the nuanced “still”
Him: Group lessons are a much more cost effective way to start out.
Me: Fortunately finances aren’t nearly as much of a problem for me as embarrassment is. Do you have instructors who are willing to take on a raw beginner?
Him: Absolutely!
Me: Well, if you’ll give me their contact info I’ll start calling them.
Him: No need, we’ll have them call you!
Me: Super!

And I waited. No calls. Back to the internet. I found another swing dance company that advertised private lessons so I sent off an email. They got back to me the next day (hooray!) and we set up a lesson for 1pm that Friday. I found my way out to their studio at 12:55 and went up to the door. Locked. I went back to my car that had a view of the door and waited. And waited. At 1:10 I called the phone number etched under their name on the window and left a voicemail: “Hi, didn’t we have a lesson today at 1:00? I’ll be around another five minutes or so in case you’re running late. Please give me a call.” Nobody shows up so I left. And I haven’t heard a peep from them since either on the phone or on email.

I confess that at this point I was a bit discouraged. This shouldn’t be this hard. Why are these folks avoiding me? They don’t even know me yet! I can understand them hiding under the desk after a little exposure but I should still have a clean slate with them at this point. It was baffling really.

I mentioned the difficulty I was having finding an instructor to some friends of mine. They mentioned that another friend, Alex, had taken up dancing in a big way a couple of years back and he might have a recommendation. So I wrote to Alex and sure enough he came back with a glowing recommendation for a friend of his, Chris Chapman, who runs HepCat Productions. I wrote to Chris, mentioned Alex, and asked him to take me on. He showed up when he said he would (hallelujah!) and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying our weekly lessons in swing and lindy hop ever since.

I’m pretty good at research and I had a lot of drive to make these lessons happen but if it hadn’t been for a lucky connection made by a friend, I’d still be wondering whether I’d like swing dancing. That’s why you need to make TeachStreet into a viable marketplace for students to find instructors and vice versa. There’s a big problem out there waiting to be solved!”

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Kim — we couldn’t agree more — TeachStreet would love to (and we plan to!) help with customer reviews of Teachers, feedback on instructor response time, location- and cost-based feedback, and much, much more!