Abbreviated URL:
dance.StephenWright.org

Ballroom Dance

See information about Steve Wright's social ballroom dance classes on Tuesday nights at the Hollywood Ballroom [SUSPENDED].

Visit the webmaster, Dr. Stephen Wright.

Essential books every serious dancer should have:

Amazon.com sells an excellent book, Ballroom Dancing, by author of the Standard Syllabus book and president of ISTD Alex Moore, it also has step diagrams, which the Standard Syllabus book doesn't have. Shipping is low ($4 for the first item, $1 additional items). It covers all 5 Standard dances.

As of today (8/26/13), the best price I found for the individual dance Latin Syllabus books is at the official US-ISTD (United States Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing) site, $20 each plus shipping. Unfortunately, the shipping is $7 for one lightweight paperback. If you buy 4 of the 5 Latin Syllabus books (Cha Cha, Rumba, Samba, Jive), however, shipping is only $10.

Formerly the best price was at "ballroomdancers.com," where they are now $21-$25 per book + Shipping/Handling. Years ago, shipping costs were $5 (less per book if more than one ordered; for example, $9.50 S/H total for four books), but now you have to enter all your personal information and credit card information, and click on "Pay By Credit Card" before finding out what the shipping costs are.

Sometimes you might get lucky and find a cheaper price on Amazon.

You can pay a lot more, but a number of sites have essentially the same price (including shipping) as the official US-ISTD site for the Standard Syllabus book, which is entitled: The Ballroom Technique. They also recommend Ballroom Dancing, (mentioned above), as a complementary "perfect companion" volume (by the same author), but it's easier to get it from Amazon.com (and I personally prefer this book; one advantage it has over the The Ballroom Technique is that Ballroom Dancing has foot diagrams. To buy books from the US-ISTD site, go to the Books and Manuals page, or, if they've moved it again since my update, do a Google search (site:http://usistd.org/ books); this is how I found it this time, since there was no longer any obvious link from their homepage.

DVD/Videos and online video clips:

BallroomDancers.com sells videos (we haven't compared prices), but the real attraction of this site is the free instructional online video clips, which include some basic figures in most dances in the "Learn the Dances" section of their Learning Center, which also includes an intermediate or advanced Variation of the Week. There is also a "Learning Center" which covers important basics.
DanceVision.com also sells videos and other media, some of which are very well done (I've seen some instructional dance videos on other sites that I thought were very poorly done). Many of these allow you to see a sample in a video clip. This is true for instructional videos as well as for videos of competitions & shows.

Updated 4/3/2020