Internationally Championship Level Ballroom & Latin Dance Certified Coach, Adjudicator, and National Examiner
Director, Choreographer...
"Dance is not what I do, it is what I am.
I am not the dancer; I am the dance." -- Percell St Thomass
It is with great excitement and anticipation that I bring you this program and vision to better your dancing.
I began dancing while in Europe in my... 'tweens'. Fast forwarding to the early 1980's, while continuing in the International, I began study in the American syllabus while teaching at the John Saionz school in New York. My principal coaches continued to be Peter Eggleton, Irene Donaghey, and Vernon Brock. After studying mostly under Armando Martin, I finished the American with Dagmar Jarvel. Like everyone else, I have had many other great coachings along the way, yet I attribute all that I am to these masters. I have, now, been coaching and judging since completing my adjudicatorship with John Morton in the early '90s.
Despite the mutual admiration between my latter coaches and me, I knew that there was an immense lacking in the teachings and learning of Ballroom, Latin, and the related arts.Since my beginnings in Classical Jazz and Tap, I had come to know dance, not as a rote expression of a prescribed syllabi of steps and patterns, but as a form of natural movement put to a specified rhythm, timing, and styling. My parents, one in forensics and the other in coronary care, were closet dancers and musicians, who urged me to study kinesiology (the study of muscle movement through time and space), as well as music. Because of this, I came to understand the relationship of music and movement (dance) more than the average student and/or teacher. This, I believe, is what intrigued Vernon, and lead Bobby Medeiros to once call me "the undiscovered, Bobby Medeiros". It was this knowledge that also led me to write the book, and design the teaching series, "DanceKinesis".
This has come at a huge price. Fame. I left the competition circuit early in my career to hone and teach my dance movement series. This cost me the celebrity status of many "National Champions". Yet, I have owned and operated two very successful studios/programs, continued to coach and choreograph many competing ams and pros, and help studio owners around the US and the world to build and run successful businesses. Injuries and some unfortunate professional obstacles had caused me to put my objectives and directions on hold for a while. Now, fully recovered, we have been moving forward, and reintroducing amateurs and professionals to a 'better way to move and dance'.
DanceKinesis will spark a new generation of dancers who dance more healthily, more technically correct, more artistically knowledgeable, and with more personal joy and fulfillment.
