“feels less like taking a lesson and more like this holistic, comprehensive experience of West Coast Swing”

I found West Coast Swing 3 years ago, and I’ve never been so addicted to improvement in my life. I’m a novice lead with no other social dance background, so I’m something of a clean slate when it comes to this dance. By this point, I’ve been lucky enough to take my fair share of private lessons from teachers across the globe and dance level spectrum. As far as teachers go, however, I cannot express how highly I think of Aris’ teaching style. Here are my highlights as to what made learning with Aris truly unique.

The way he gives feedback.

One of my fatal flaws is that I’m unfortunately picky when it comes to receiving feedback with my dance. After 3 years of dancing, I’ve gotten better at this over time, but it’s still a remarkable chore for me. However, Aris delivers feedback with this impressive combination of patience, grace, and attention to detail, that I blinked and the lesson was already over. I was engaged from start to finish. After most lessons, I’m accustomed to feeling like my brain is full: that if I absorb even one more piece of information, I might explode. After my lesson with Aris, I was surprised to find that I learned more concepts in an hour than ever before, could recall them all, and (here’s the kicker) that I somehow still had the bandwidth for even more!

Aris’ knowledge runs deep.

We veered from topic to topic, technique to technique, and every clarifying question of mine received an instant and thoughtful response. More than anything, the near immediacy of his answers showed me two things: 1) how bottomless West Coast Swing really was and 2) how deeply Aris has thought about dance, movement, and how to teach it. In follow-up lessons, I was impressed that Aris came fully prepared: remembering exactly what we worked on and picking right off from where we left off.

I was impressed not only by the content Aris gave me, but also his delivery and framing. Aris has some unbelievably strong communication skills. His teaching is fluid, impactful, and all inter-connected. If something wasn’t working, he was immediately able to pivot, express the topic in a different way, or even physically show me by either following a pattern for me or letting me dance as a follow to feel it out for myself. I’ve never had such a buttery-smooth first lesson with a teacher before.

That being said, I would say that working with Aris feels less like taking a lesson and more like this holistic, comprehensive experience of West Coast Swing. From the first moment you ask to work with Aris, you feel well-taken care of and taken in. He asked me a lot of questions to get to know me: from what I prioritize in the dance, to what I already know, to how I learn best. It’s evident that, as a teacher, he’s more than willing to invest in you. There’s something motivating about this immediate and internal belief that your teacher cares about your success.

In my day job, I’m a high school teacher (philosophy). I spend a lot of my time thinking about teaching, learning, and the very concept of education. I’ve gone back and forth on the best practices of education, and even the nuance of what role is superior in education: a teacher, a coach, or a mentor. In a single lesson with Aris, I somehow felt that he’s seamlessly accomplishing all three roles. I’ll steal a line from his blog to describe what it’s like: “ ‘Teaching’ feels so very incomplete for what he can do.”

Unsure about which teacher you should start with? Any teacher is better than none, but I don’t think there’s ARISk in taking a lesson with Aris. :P

--Mark O--