Customer Reviews

Country Western Dance Sampler (Shawn Trautman's Dance Collection)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I play in a country band in Reno, Nevada and I bought some of these dvds to educate myself on what the crowd expects. This one was extremely helpful. It gave me a great overview of the most popular dances. Not everything is two-step and it's great if you can know what else everyone is doing. This dvd does have some great two-step but its also got all the other ones you need to know to be up with everybody. Excellant sampler!!

Another great DVD. Shawn Trautman has a unique ability to give excellent instruction that is detailed, clear and presented in a logical order that is easy to learn from. All of the lessons on this DVD were easy to follow and the picture-in-picture close-up shots of their feet were very helpful. The lessons move at a pace well-suited for someone who likes detailed instruction yet wants to keep moving forward at a good clip. I love country music, and the music selection on this DVD was energetic and kept my interest. During the 2-step lesson, I was inspired to pick up my guitar to see if I could figure out the picking pattern - VERY COOL! We went through this DVD just one time and felt very comfortable, even though the polka wore us out (who would want to dance that one over and over??) :-) Five stars.

I FOUND THIS DVD PUTTING ME IN THE MOOD FOR

BOOTS AND HATS.THE WAY SHAWN AND JOANNA

TEACHES HOW TO HOLD EACH OTHER MAKES ALL

THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.IT'S ALL IN

THE PATTERN OF STEPS THEY TEACH.THIS ONE

IS ENERGICING AND INTERTAINING.JUST GREAT.

I have no country western dance experience at all and thought this DVD gave me and my partner a great foundation to work from.

My wife and I are new to ballroom dancing in the last year. We've taken some lessons, but found that we needed the extra help of videos that we can use on our own schedule in our home and we've tried a bunch of them. This DVD and the whole series of new videos from Shawn Trautman have been a godsend and much more useful to us than the others we've tried. We are actually doing the dances within a short time and having fun, rather than getting aggravated with one another. Trautman's emphasis on the differing roles of leader and follower and the very clear demonstrations of those roles have helped us enormously. These DVDs include much more music and time to practice the new steps than most videos, rather than just watching an instructor do a step and go to another step. We like this video a lot and strongly recommend it. On a side note, the logistics/timing of shipping and subsequent email communications with the company were, after many frustrations with other online outfits, the best we've seen.

The Trautman videos are the easiest to follow dance instruction I've ever seen. The higher price is just about the only reason I can't give the Country Sampler a 5 star rating. Here are the things that will keep me buying Trautman videos despite the higher-in-comparison pricing:
1. The sampler videos are a great way to get exposed to many different kinds of dancing and to decide which ones to explore more fully. (If you find a dance style you really want to learn about, you can always buy the DVD specifically for that dance with the more advanced instruction)
2. From the very beginning Shaun and Joanna are dancing together. (In other series like "Invitation to Dance" the lady spends half the time standing around doning nothing while the male instructor shows the leads what to do.)
3. The tidbits that Joanna throws out for the follows are very helpful. It's nice not to having everything in a dance video taught from the leads point of view -- instead both parts are taught together as they are meant to be danced together.
4. There is a good focus placed on how the leader lets their partner know what's coming by using the proper holds, arm positions, pressure in the hands, etc. After all, fancy steps are no good if you and your partner aren't dancing the same ones.
4. The demonstrations generally use a sideways position that lets both partners see what their feet should be doing, but they also show you from different views when this is needed.
5. The basic steps that are taught are easily enough for me to go into a dance hall and not feel like an idiot, and it leaves me competent enough that I can seek out the competent and better dancers to partner with and I can then learn the more advanced moves from them. (This probably only works for the following partner and not the leader....)

My husband and I know how to two-step. We were looking for a video to help us re-learn the moves as for one reason or another we had not been able to dance for quite awhile. This video had one dance move for the two-step. I feel like I wasted my money and I don't have a lot of money to spend on videos. It needed a better product description.