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About the Instructor

The short version

Richard Fowler began partnership dancing in High School, where he showed absolutely no talent whatsoever, frustrating partners and teachers alike. Stubbornness demanded that he continue until he wasn’t the worst dancer on the floor. During the next few years, he learned a few things about dancing, a little about teaching, and a lot about patience.
Richard has been teaching partnership dancing since 1988. During a brief competitive career, he placed in the professional Rising Star division in both Smooth and Rhythm, as well as in Open Theater Arts. Having proven to himself that he could dance reasonably well, he has since focused on developing as a teacher, analyzing and testing both movement and teaching methods in a quest to produce better dancers and better teachers. His students have placed numerous times in regional and national competitions, including 12 firsts at the US Collegiate Nationals, and, more importantly, continue to dance socially with a wide variety of partners.

He currently teaches classes for Austin Ballroom Dancers and gives private instruction in Austin, Texas.

Non-dance info

The not-so-short version

High school--the beginning

Richard began dancing in the Social Dance Club of L.V. Berkner High School (taught by Leon Schram, former owner/manager of an Arthur Murray Studio) in Richardson, Texas, after completely embarrassing himself on a date to a school dance that nearly cost him one of his better friends (and unfortunate date). Fortunately, the club had no standards regarding whom they allowed to participate, and after just a few weeks, Richard redeemed himself on the floor of The Texas Tumbleweed. He continued to be active in the club's lessons and outings to both Country & Western and Ballroom venues through graduation.

Oberlin College

Off to Oberlin College, Richard found a small but enthusiastic group of dancers in the Oberlin Social Dance Club, and the Experimental College (ExCo) Ballroom classes. There was little formal instruction, most of the students being taught by those in the club who knew the most patterns, and almost no technique, but it was fun, and being young, we healed quickly. In his second year at Oberlin, he found himself one of the officers of the club, and found that the position of ExCo Ballroom teacher had been willed to him by the graduating couple who had taught it in previous years. He did his best to teach and inspire, but the lack of actual instruction in technique and teaching left him frustrated with the results, even though his students seemed happy enough. This and other factors contributing to his overall frustration led to a Leave of Absence from the school while he took a little time away from the ivory towers.

Training in Dallas

Back in Dallas, Richard found himself bored and slothful. After strong words of advice that having a job and actually doing something would be beneficial, and his retort that "I don't believe in work--gainful employment, but not work." he was encouraged to seek employment at a Ballroom Studio. Remembering the frustration, he was reluctant, but the urging continued and he thought he'd give it a try. Unsure of his skills, he was challenged by the interviewer at a local Fred Astaire Dance Studio and finally stood up for himself, only to be told they could arrange a little dance demonstration to establish his level of skill and knowledge; just step through this door. Ack! There was a training class in the back room and they wanted him to dance in front of them with Tyree Beaton, their instructor. The panic subsided as the music played and he did just fine. He started work the next day.

It turned out that most of the training was in sales, with only a portion each day devoted to dancing and teaching. A guest trainer was brought in and did contribute a fair amount for a few weeks, but mostly the classes were teaching sales techniques and weeding out potential instructors from those who were willing to endure a lot of bull to get onto the teaching floor. After four months of training, they let him on the floor with brand new students. His sales were lousy and they tried training him more, with Tyree even throwing in some excellent technical assistance to keep Richard's motivation up, but it didn't help the sales much. After six months of this, his bosses were wondering if Richard would ever be able to sell enough lessons to help them justify the money they'd spent training him. He'd taken the first of the certification exams and passed, but just wasn't much of a financial producer.

The management was distracted for a couple of months as the manager bought the studio out from under the owner and allowed the Fred Astaire franchise license to expire. It was soon doing business as an independent ballroom, The Colláge. Turnovers in management resulted in some serious personality conflicts, and almost the entire advanced teaching department quit in the course of a few weeks. This left the new owner with a bunch of salesmen who could teach a little, to a point, a couple of advanced instructors, and the studio guru, Jesse Verdin. After a few shaky weeks of business, Richard convinced the owner that the reason his sales were so bad was that he never wanted to be in a quick-sales position, but wanted to be a teacher, and so would be much more productive if they were to train him for that position. They reluctantly agreed to give it a try, if Richard would agree to pass the training he received from Jesse on to newer members of the staff. Thus, Richard received several months of daily training from a true master. Jesse taught him patterns; Jesse taught the underlying techniques; Jesse taught how to teach students and how to train teachers; Jesse taught that good teaching is a perfect sales technique because students who feel improvements want more; Richard improved as a dancer, a teacher, and a salesman. Soon, Richard was giving Jesse a run for various top teacher awards within the studio; although Jesse always won the sales and hours taught categories, Richard was frequently a close second. Students were wanting to learn, to perform, and to compete, all of which meant money, so management was happier. There were shows; there were Charity Balls; there were competitions; in all of these Richard danced both with his students and with his dance partner, Elise Smith.

After a while, Richard's brain began to itch. The learning under Jesse had been mentally stimulating as well and physically challenging, but things were starting to get mentally boring. Liking puzzles, he took a course and became a bonded locksmith, but it wasn't enough. After flipping through course catalogs his sister sent up from the University of Texas, he decided it was time to go back to school and finish his degree.

(The Colláge in Dallas has since changed ownership and management.)

U.T. Austin

Richard moved to Austin to pursue a degree in Linguistics, thinking he'd leave the teaching behind. He discovered the U.T. Ballroom Dance Club while looking for people to dance with for fun. It turned out they needed an instructor and he needed to pay his tuition, so they gave each other a trial run. The club had 30 members and one class when Richard started teaching it in 1991. More classes were offered and Richard started a 2 hour technique class on Saturday mornings he called "Sports Group." He volunteered all the time for Sports Group, using it to teach fundamental technical skills that weren't always fun for the students, but which made significant improvements in their dancing and partnership skills. He also used this group to experiment with different teaching methods and to assess the efficacy of various technical theories he had heard of or been taught over the years. In Richard's third year the club had over 300 members and starter class sizes at the beginning of each semester were over 400!
He taught the UTBDC through two U.S. Collegiate Nationals, with numerous students placing in various divisions. His favorite was the couple that did just four basic figures in the beginner's division, even as others around them danced the full Bronze syllabus. He had told them to just do what they knew, and to do it very well, and the difficulty of the figures wouldn't matter if nobody else on the floor matched their technique; they won first in three of the four events they entered, and were second in the other.
After four and a half years with the club, conflicts between Richard and certain officers came to a head in club politics and Richard resigned from the U.T. club.

During his time at U.T., Richard also taught for U.T.'s Informal Classes. He taught sections of their Country & Western class, and developed several new ballroom classes, all of which were very successful. Richard decided to end his relationship with Informal Classes when they started having problems both reserving adequate and consistent space for his classes and paying their instructors on time.

Austin Ballroom Dancers

After giving up Informal Classes, Richard was approached to teach for a non-profit group, Austin Ballroom Dancers. He started teaching two classes each Friday night, and was soon teaching two more on Thursdays. Richard met the woman who would become his wife through ABD and he continues to teach for them, enjoying the great diversity of people and learning styles he finds in his classes.