Charlie Myers as a dance Teacher
Hello and welcome!
My name is Charlie. I am a dance teacher with over 10 years of experience in the community and 7 as a teacher and/or organizer. I bring a comprehensive and compassionate approach to my class offerings and aspire to draw in additional community members to the space with my well-connected social network.
My spaces are inclusive of all walks of life, and are intentionally queer-coded — That means I choose to avoid gendered terms when referring to “leads and follows” and also believe anyone can embody either of those roles, or choose to switch roles freely. I bring a lot of the philosophy of dance scenes on the East Coast including Asheville, Boston, Boone, and Chapel Hill.
My experience in dance is largely characterized by three styles: Blues, West Coast Swing (WCS), and Contra/Square dancing. I have dabbled in several other disciplines, but these three form the backbone of my identity. I will be offering WCS and Square Dancing opportunities in the Lawrence/Kansas City area — West Coast will be scheduled through the Lawrence Arts Center and the KU Ecumenical Campus Ministries, while Square will be through Oddball Hoedown. It is my goal to build a respectable presence of social dancing here in E-KS, and then attract attendees from the surrounding cities for special events and social nights.
My journey with dance has been a core component of my personal confidence development. Meeting people in a shared hobby which focuses on expression and connection has rewarded me time and again – I attribute many of my deeper beliefs concerning interpersonal interactions and boundaries to dance. I believe dance is something many people will “never regret learning how to do” and I bring this value system to bear when I am in a teacher/organizer role. I enjoy the idea of bringing new sources of happiness and confidence to my students!
Contra / Square Dancing
“Contra Dancing” is this funny thing.
Contra dancing might be called “line dancing,” “country dancing,” “folk dance,” or “community dance” depending on the different communities I seem to move in. I’ve seen it silly, I’ve seen it sexy, I’ve seen it as a wholesome inter-generational family activity, I’ve seen it transform groups of folks into close friends, and I’ve seen it teach folks lessons they never thought they needed to learn. It is definitely a funny thing to do in life.
Click through the link for the video
Being a caller, there are many resources I use to reference a long backlog of dance “patterns” — the underlying sequence which drives the dance. Some of those resources include:
Jeff Kauffmann - https://www.jefftk.com/news/contra
Reviewing YouTube videos (like the one above) and interpreting the pattern from the video.
Caller peers like Emily Rush, Beth Molaro, and many more