Ballroom Dance Books

Are you interested in reading about ballroom dancing? Sometimes reading about an activity can be as rewarding as participating in it, or it can certainly stoke your interest further.

Ballroom Dancing Books - Helping You Learn

Although ballroom dancing is an activity that is best learned through performing, you can learn much through reading. There are books that highlight the history of the dance, and that highlight particular dancers.

One such book is “Modern Ballroom Dancing: History and Practice” by Victor Silvester who was widely considered one of the fathers of ballroom dance. This book features a solid introduction into the basics of international-style dancing, but offers something that many other books don’t – details and clear pictures of footwork and patterns. The descriptions of various dances and moves will help the non-novice as well as the beginning dancer.

Other books that feature ballroom dancing might be written for the beginner. It’s human nature to seek out lots of information on a topic that is new to us, and in the realm of ballroom dancing, there’s much to find.

Consider “The Complete Book of Ballroom Dancing” by Richard Stephenson and Joseph Iaccarino, which features more than 500 photographs that highlight what a social ballroom dancer might need to know – including steps to the cha cha, the tango, the waltz and others.

This book is good for dancers who don’t have any dance training and who want to learn some basic steps for various social dancing situations they might find themselves in. Featuring American-style dance, this book is considered – thanks to its emphasis on showing dance steps via detailed photos – a good primer for the beginner.

You might not like the name, but “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ballroom Dancing” is a top-selling book about ballroom dancing that offers something for the beginning to the more experienced ballroom dancer. What this book offers the dancer is not only an explanation of the sport, the steps and the terminology, but a real explanation and examination of the sport itself.

Whether you are a complete beginner or someone with a little more dance experience under your belt, a book can help you through the process of becoming better. When you go shopping for a book ask yourself these questions:

• Is this book trying to teach me how to dance, or will it augment what I’m learning in classes (the latter is better)?
• Are there many photos or illustrations that will help me visualize the steps?
• Who wrote the book? Does this person have ballroom dance experience?
• If I’m interested in the history of ballroom dance, does this book give me some of that so I can see where dance came from and how it has become the sport that it is today?
• Is this a nice-looking book, something I can put on my coffee table for others to look at?
• Am I looking for the book to replace lessons? (No book can teach you what a teacher can. The pictures in the book don’t move and can’t ask you to follow along.)

Reading can’t replace actually doing, but it’s important to read up on the activities in which you’re interested. Ballroom dancing is no different.