Carol Jerkovic, 47, of Burbank began teaching line dancing 13 years ago and was one of the first instructors in the area.
“It’s really great to be able to earn your living doing something you love so much,” she said. “I don’t just develop students, I develop friends.”
Jerkovic says she thrives on the challenges of working in a large ballroom filled with several hundred beginning kickers, getting up in front of the group with the microphone.
“There are lots of instructors out there just doing it for the money,” she said, “but if you’re not a good instructor, you’ll just frustrate your students and they’ll never come back to try again.”
Armed with a microphone and wearing slipper-soft moccasins, Jerkovic stands at the front of the ballroom. She keeps up a friendly patter with her audience while teaching them a new routine. Breaking it down into bite-size chunks, she repeats the various groups of steps in the dance before slowly threading it all together. The process usually takes fewer than 30 minutes for each new dance.
The kickers do the routine initially without music, then to a slow recorded song and finally with whatever live band is appearing at the club that evening.
She cajoles her students while adding large doses of humor. No one is ever singled out for making a mistake.
“I’m seeing from 400 to 500 beginning line dancers each week,” Jerkovic estimated.
“When you turn around and see the whole crowd moving in a flow, it’s great,” Jerkovic said. “Then you know they’ve all got it. And one other thing: I’ve never met a person yet who didn’t have a sense of rhythm. It just may take longer for some to find it.”
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For more information on instruction, call Jerkovic at 708-424-1072.
