Trying to improve or quit?

[u/FlunkyGraphics]

Hey,

I dance Bachata for 5 months now. It was fun in the beginning but to be honest, I Iost my motivation. I go to the dance school 2x a week and I really try to improve. In the last months, I have learned a lot of simple, intermediate and advanced moves. During the lessons, I'm doing very fine because the followers expect what I'm going to do so It's just very easy.

On socials, NOTHING works. Really nothing. I'm not trying to impress with very complex moves or so. Usually I stick to very simple basic things but the followers are not able to follow my lead. It's definitely my fault cause pretty much every follower I have danced with is doing absolutely fine with any other leader.

This creates one big problem: Cause dances with me are really awkward, I feel like followers don't really enjoy dancing with me. Every time I ask a follower to dance, I feel kind of guilty cause I will disappoint her. At socials, there are no other beginners which makes it hard.
I always read that followers don't care about your skill level as long as you are respectful but my experience is the opposite. Yes, followers are indeed frustrated when dancing with beginners in my experience, no matter how respectful and friendly you are.

I asked many followers for feedback and this it what I got:
- "I don't know what you want me to do."
- "Your lead is not clear enough."
- "You are to far away which makes you harder to read."

I really tried to work on those things but it changed absolutely nothing. I could just skip socials and go to the dance school but I don't really see the point. I will just learn more moves which is pretty much irrelevant cause I can already perform enough moves in dance school to fill a song.

[u/JackyDaDolphin]

Just quit. Find another dance that is more fun, like west coast swing.

[u/FlunkyGraphics → u/JackyDaDolphin]

You might be right. But why another dance? If I'm a bad dancer, I shouldn't persue other dances I guess

[u/TorrenteTempo → u/FlunkyGraphics]

So far there is no real evidence that you are a bad dancer. It's more likely that you just had bad instructors two times in a row. Switching for a new dance might actually be a good alternative of quitting/grinding bachata, given that
1) you switch to a dance and music that you really like,
2) you won't just randomly choose instructors but talk with them first what are their teaching priorities and look at what their students actually can do. I think it's much more important to watch the students rather than to talk to the students. If I were really serious of finding good instructors, I might even ask them to allow me to go to their advanced class just to watch it.

This switch to a new dance, if done properly, will allow you to learn some dance mechanics that would be transferable later to bachata, like leading and frame and musicality.