My dancing practice routine

I practice partnered dancing for about thirty minutes every day. I practice six dances: Waltz, Foxtrot, Nightclub Two-Step, Rumba, Salsa, and West Coast Swing. I spend five minutes on each of those six (thirty total), and one minute on ribcage isolations. I also spend 5 minutes practicing Cuban motion in place while brushing my teeth, not counted previously because it's while I'm doing something else.

When I practice a dance for five minutes, I pick one to three items from the list of things I am working on, write those down in a notebook (my practice log), and practice them. I dance without a practice partner, which means I will step through the pattern holding my frame (hands, arms, lat muscles, torso...) as if my partner is there.*,+

*Since late September 2024 I like to imagine doing this with a different partner each time. I lead, and the hand belongs at the follow's eye level in many dances, or at their hip level. Some follows are heads shorter than me and some heads taller. I have specific follows that I call to mind: "Okay, I'm dancing with [short lady I know], adjust my frame appropriately." Pick short, tall, or in between, and then I'll dance like that for the five minutes. This helps me remember to pay attention to my follow so I can give them a comfortable frame.

+I find this style of solo practice works very well, much better than I expected when I started doing it. One still needs experience dancing with a partner but solo practice goes a long way.

I work on different things for different dances. I take private lessons. Each lesson my teacher gives me a few things to work on for each dance we practice. Besides writing paper notes on those, I add these items to note cards on my dancing bulletin board. When I run out of space on a card, I start a fresh one. Each card gets a date on the back for the card itself and any batches of added items so that if I want to, I can later figure out what I was working on and when. The dancing bulletin board makes it easy to remember what I am practicing.

These items look like:

1. Drills, for example bend and send for Waltz and Foxtrot, Cuban motion drills for rumba and salsa, and activate relaxation for West Coast Swing.
2. An amalgamation (ordered list of figures) to work on as homework, usually with specific notes for each figure/pattern in the amalgamation.
3. A point about a specific pattern. For example, "rather than leaving your arm behind — keep your arm in the same position relative to your chest when you turn and step forward in a crossover break."
4. A figure/pattern I am learning as homework.

I also have sequences and amalgamations my teacher gives me which I will work on if I have nothing else to work on for a dance — which is rare. I used to do sequences end to end but lately it is not productive — there are some parts that are very familiar and only a few parts that clearly need work, so I focus on those.

I generally practice without music. This helps me be intentional about how I'm moving so I can make sure I hit the positions I want to, the way I mean to practice them. With music I will tend to rush to hit the beat, and this makes it hard to get good practice in. Over time it gets easier to do the motion through muscle memory, such that I can do it to music without having practiced it to music.

Sometimes I do practice with music. For example, in west coast swing I'm working on making sure my first step in a pattern always lands completely past my standing foot so that I set a clear direction for the follow. I can and do practice this without music, but it's important to do with music, too. That's because I'm used to adjusting my step size to the music, and with faster music I am more likely to make the mistake of taking too small a step for 1. That means I want to practice with fast music to make sure I do the right thing "live and under pressure."