As a beginner, I would rather focus to learn one dance at a time.
How would you practice if you only know a few figures in each dance. Even you can link these figures together, but would it be boring as well if you have to repeat the same set of figures again and again.
My two instructors did teach me only one dance at a time. In Standard dance, the routine would cover all four walls. In Latin dance, the routine would cover about ten different figures. I have no problem to practice in a public dancing club.
I believe some instructors choose to teach in multi-dance format because it is much easier for them. The short session of each dance would allow them to have a fresh start. These instuctors would never get a high blood pressure.

Yeah, you all are right, but you forget one thing. If you want to learn to dance well, you must be ready to work on the movement you want to learn. My opinion is that it's not good to hop from one dance to another every five minutes. You must learn well one thing and then do other.But if you want to dance only for fun, change dances, becauce you'll get bored.

to achieve what? social ease? competitive perfection? let out your exhibitionist tendencies?...
too many questions that you have undoubtley gone through with your instructor.
Trust the professional
If you like the way he talks to you & you see or fel that you are learning continue.
GUARANTEED NO teacher wants to hold you back! We enjoy dancing with gold level dancers too. And we want all our students to achieve this as fast as possible.

jo

All of the responses that you have gotten are exactly right! The thing you HAVE to answer for yourself is why you want to learn to dance.

Do you want only to learn one dance, so that you can dance mostly to only a few select types of music? Even if you go to a "Salsa Club", you will find that they play merengue, cumbia, cha-cha, rumba, bolero, even occasionally R&B music there. You will find yourself very bored!

Learning various dances gives you the flexibility to say: "You know, tonight I feel like going swing dancing. I went salsa dancing last week, so maybe this evening I will go to a ballroom dance." Having those type of all around dancing skills makes your dancing, ooooh so much more enjoyable!

When I first learned to dance. I jumped right in as an instructor. I was forced to learned the major six ballroom dances to start, and within my first three months of training, I was a Bronze instructor in 13 different dances. So, believe me, I know how you feel about starting off learning a little slower than you first imagined.

Now, I start all of my beginning students off with anywhere from 4-8 dances.

The best advice I can give you is to keep up the hard work. As your dancing progresses, you will be able to have lessons of working on just a couple of dances, while working on some very good technical issues in the dancing.

Happy Dancing!!!

I totally agree with Blair there - dancing only once dance will frustrate you, not to mention bore you to death!

Personally, I find it nice to recognize the different dances I was taught in the music I hear on the radio, tv, etc. I'm also happy and very excited that I can do the bronze syllabus for seven different dances!

I can imagine that everything might seem slow for you and that you want to progres faster. However, the benifit of "going slow" is that you have the TIME to PRACTICE the same variants over and over again, which undoubtedly results into a "must-have" ability to make it look "zesty". (Since, after all, you have been practicing it thoroughly and EXACTLY know how to move to it and how to make it look wonderful.)

Doing that with multiple dances at the same time, only makes it more fun to do

Over time you will learn more variants and WILL progress in your abilities and knowledge. Besides, good things come to people who wait

Good luck!

Michelle

"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero." - Horace

You are correct in your belief that you will learn a particular dance quicker if you only work on that dance. However, your instructor also has a point that your suggested learning strategy will likely frustrate and bore you. Unless you only want to learn a particular dance like salsa for club dancing, I would recommend that you follow your instructors advice. Learning to dance is not something that you can pickup up in a few lessons, it is a long-term project.

Blair

i think your teacher is right that you need variety, so not to get bord with it. However you can have variety in the same type of dance and it is easier to learn one type of dance at a time as with anything you do! have fun with it and you won't get bord!

good luck!

One other point is that you'll find there's a lot of material that applies to multiple dances. Both in terms of patterns (steps) and technique. Maybe this is just me, but for some reason I often find it easier to master a new pattern in one dance than another, even if it's more or less the same thing; then I can apply it to other dances pretty easily.

Waltz/foxtrot and cha-cha/rumba/bolero are two obvious sets of dances where you see this happen a lot. Also salsa/nightclub two-step, if those are offered where you're taking your classes. But I've applied things I've learned in salsa to waltz, etc., so there's definitely benefit to learning different types of dances too.

In other words, you might find that learning several dances at once turns out to be easier than studying just one! And it's certainly a very good thing to be able to say, "Okay, my brain can't absorb any more waltz right now, let's do some cha-cha instead."