No 39. Changing Lives through Dancing
By David Earl Woodbury

Friday, September 18, 2015

An Amazing Week!
Usually I give you several great quotes from a wonderful week of reading and study. But today I have to write about my week.

Last Saturday, I was Co-Chair for the stages of the Wellbeing Buy Local Festival of Santa Monica.  We had thousands of visitors come to the Festival. What an exciting day! We had a 100 booths and presenters. We had two stages each with a producer, emcees, and a full schedule of groups on each stage with presentations.

I was emcee for the Wellbeing stage and Arthur Murray Dance Center of Santa Monica was on stage for a full hour. We taught two classes, had a dance competition and we produced a full show with our fantastic staff.

We ended the day with yours truly dancing with Laurel Rosen, our Santa Monica Chamber CEO and President, dancing a Swing Routine. It was so much fun and Laurel is a natural dancer. We hit the ball out of the park!

Arthur Murray was all over the festival with our inspiring booth and all the new friends we met who are now coming in for lessons. And this was just a Saturday!

That Sunday, I was Team Leader for the 7:30 AM Mass. This is an honor for me and I was happy to guide our great team to help our 7:30 parishioner have a safe, clean, cool, and organized place to worship and gather. What a wonderful Sunday morning.

Wednesday, we started our Fall Youth Program in our school. What a wonderful way to start our Fall season of dancing. They youth kids will dance for 8 weeks and end with a special performance. Here’s to our great group of young dancers.

Wednesday night, Joel Rieck, Maria Leon, and I took some exciting dancing to the Lime Café for the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce Mixer. We are a recent Green Certified Business and we were featured to share about our greening process. Then, Arthur Murray was in the house. We taught our first group class of Swing. The dancing was a bit hit.

We then had a bit of a break at this Zero Waste event. Then, Arthur Murray took over the floor. We taught three line dances, Salsa, and then we went crazy with some Hustle Dancing!  What a great group and we had a ball dancing the night away the Arthur Murray Way with the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and with Sustainable Works from the City of Santa Monica.  I left on a high and am still floating on the fun we had.  Laurel Rosen and I danced our Swing spotlight again and we shared the last dance together. We were creating Golden Moments that would last a lifetime.

Today, Joel Rieck and I started our first Enrichment Program Ballroom Dance Class at St. Monica Elementary School. We taught a wonderful group of youths and our Fall Semester dances are Foxtrot and Swing. What a blessing to be on the campus of this parish that has over nine thousand registered families. We taught and danced our little hearts out and we can’t wait for next week to dance again.

This is on top of just being in our amazing school, with our inspiring staff, and our precious students, dancing, dancing, and dancing our way to health, fun, and happiness!

It has been such an amazing week, I just had to share it with you.  Walk in light. Live with an attitude of gratitude. Love life, experience each moment to the fullest. Go with change and ride the crest of the wave of life.

Keep on Dancing!

David Woodbury