How dancing feels is way more important than how it looks. We aim to teach students how to be a delight to dance with rather than how to show off. How to make your partner go "ahh..." and not caring much what anyone else thinks. Read more about making your partner happy.
Before you can make your partner go "ahh..." you have to connect. Dance teachers talk about connection a lot, but they usually mean what's called "dance connection:" good frame, clear leading & following, etcetera. That's great; you need all that. But what's more important than that is intention: intending to connect with your partner. If I intend to connect with my partner, and I stay with that intention and make it my priority while I dance, I'll be able to connect even if I don't have refined technique. If I dance without that intention, for instance if I'm distracted or bored or don't really want to dance with the person I'm holding in my arms, I won't have good connection no matter how skilled & knowledgeable I am. Our teaching is rooted in our belief that what's most important about partner dancing isn't knowing cool moves & having refined technique, but being kind & generous: human connection. Read more about connection.
Cross-step waltz is a playful, creative, easygoing, swooping dance that's very easy to get started with. cross-step makes a great starting place for beginning dancers because cross-step basics are so easygoing and intuitive you'll be up & dancing right away; you can learn enough the very first lesson to dance the night away. It's the easiest and most intuitive dance we know of: easier than swing because the footwork is dead simple, easier than other kinds of waltz because the frame is so forgiving, and because you can cruise along right away without worrying about getting dizzy (you don't have to turn & spin unless you want to).
Beyond those intuitive basics, there are literally hundreds of playful variations and figures in cross-step waltz, and we keep coming up with new ones, so there's always something to learn in this class. Check out some videos of us cross-step waltzing to get an idea of the variety & playfulness of this dance.
Cross-step waltz is in a period of rapid development, with many dancers creating new moves on a regular basis. In our own development of this dance, we've been focusing on a closer connection between partners. Because the basic embrace for cross-step is v-shaped rather than parallel, it's easy for the dancing to become disconnected, with partners veering or turning away from each other. Our answer to this has been to develop moves that emphasize connection, sometimes moving into a parallel embrace then back out into a more typical cross-step embrace, incorporating elements from turning waltz and from One-step Waltz. We emphasize connection and musicality in teaching cross-step waltz.
Viennese waltz is the original waltz; it's the dance they do at those grand balls in Vienna. The turning or rotary waltz commonly taught in Seattle (and elsewhere in the US, as far as I can tell) is not Viennese waltz; in Viennese waltz the left and right turns are perfect mirror images of each other, and therefore start on different feet, which makes Viennese waltz very intuitive. Also, you dance relatively close to your partner, with no leaning back or counterbalancing, which makes the turning much easier on the arms & shoulders by minimizing the centrifugal strain that a more open embrace causes. You stay together not by hanging on, but by dancing to each other.
A gloriously simple dance, Viennese waltz is not about fancy steps & figures. An occasional pause can be sweet, and you can do follows' turns, pivots, and fancy vintage steps if you want, but the true glory of the dance is the elegance of just turning as a couple, one way and then the other, spinning gracefully around the the room. Our classes focus on turning smoothly to the left and right (one is not harder than the other), plus transitions from one direction to the other. Waltzing better means waltzing more smoothly, with less effort and more relaxation. Our approach makes it very easy to get started; you'll be up and turning the very first night of class. Watch a video of us doing Viennese waltz.
Blues waltz is a way to waltz - really waltz - to slow, juicy songs that most dancers will just do a slow dance to. It's mellow, easygoing waltzing to songs with a fast triple beat but a slow bluesy feel: slow-grind blues, R&B, soul, and old-fashioned sock-hop slow dances. These tunes (typically in 12/8 time signature) have a fast underlying 1-2-3; doing regular waltzing to that just doesn't feel right because it makes you move way faster than the music feels. Slow dance feels right, but you don't always want to slow dance. Blues waltz gives you a new option: really waltzing in a way that fits the feeling of the music. Here are a couple of demos: one to the Beach Boys' great old sock-hop ballad In my room, and a more swinging version of blues waltz to Alicia Keys's uptempo R&B hit How come you don't call me anymore?
Blues waltz is based on a traditional waltz variation called hesitation waltz: waltzing to fast (and faster!) waltzes by not stepping on every beat. The term hesitation waltz was introduced by Vernon & Irene Castle back in the 1910s, but the idea goes back further, into the early roots of waltz. Hesitation waltz is also the cornerstone of tango vals. Blues waltz is great not just for juicy blues & the like, but also for fast waltzes of all kinds, from Strauss to musettes, Gypsy jazz to alternative tango vals. To give you a taste of this end of blues/hesitation waltzing, here's a demo to Yann Thiersen's musette-style waltz Valse d'Amelie.
This is a glorious dance that breaks out of the box with longer, surging steps. It feels especially delicious to move with your partner in close parallel this way. It's for slower waltzes, from cross-step speed on down, but it can also be adapted for fast waltzes and 12/8 blues tunes using the principles of Blues waltz. The steps are even, rather that a big 1 and a smaller 2-3, and it's very smooth; no rise & fall. It has a hypnotic, tango-like feel. It's very hard to describe this dance adequately, so here are 3 demos. The first is to the Seatbelts' Waltz for Zizi, the second to Sting's Ocean Waltz, and the third to Elvis's performance of Hank Williams's classic I'm so lonesome I could cry. The open box can also easily be adapted for use in non-waltzes.
We just love the basic idea of waltz: traveling with your partner, turning left & right together. 2-step foxtrot (2-step for short) lets you dance like that to non-waltz music. It's intuitive and easy to learn because it's based on a rhythm that's already familiar because it's found in many dances: quick-quick-slow (QQS). QQS is the basis for swing (rock-step step), nightclub 2-step, salsa, rumba, zydeco 2-step, Cajun 2-step, polka - a truly universal step. So most dancers already have the feel of it in muscle memory from some dance. Or if you're just starting out, you learn a rhythm you'll come across in many other dances, making them easier to learn. You can easily incorporate moves from all of those dances into your 2-step.
We find it especially valuable for faster music. When the music speeds up, the QQ becomes a small, in-place rock-step; you use the rock-step to move into a left or right turn, waltz style. Danced to faster music, 2-step has a wonderful feel that combines snappy & springy with circular. It's the perfect dance for medium-to-fast swing, jump blues, fast country tunes, salsa, zydeco etcetera: just about any kind of non-waltz music that's medium or faster. Even polka! My Austrian friend Doro vouches: "Yes! This is how we dance polka in Austria!" Here are 3 demos to uptempo music: Problemes dans ma tęte by the Malian group SMOD, Owl City's hit Fireflies, and Grover Washington's R&B classic Just the Two of Us.
So why's it called 2-step if there are actually 3 steps (QQS)? Historical reasons, basically: there was a ballroom 2-step using QQS back in vintage days. Other dances, like Cajun2-step, zydeco 2-step, and more recently nightclub 2-step, probably inherited the term from that. My best guess is it's called 2-step because it starts with one foot then the other: left-right-left, then right-left-right. Confusing the issue is country 2-step, which has 4 steps (SSQQ), which makes it always start with the same foot. Dance history is like that.
We have an eclectic approach to cha-cha, happily dancing it to contemporary music from all over the world (see the video), old rock 'n' roll classics, guilty-pleasure ballads, sweet & mellow swing tunes, even blues - all in addition to the sizzling Latin & catchy pop it's traditionally danced to. We have our own styling, sweet & relaxed rather than intense & macho, and we've developed a lot of our own moves, so even Cha-cha veterans will find plenty of new stuff our classes. Here are some videos of Lynn & Zachariah dancing our style cha-cha.
First there was vintage one-step, a huge ragtime dance craze in the early 20th Century. It was done to kinda perky music, with a characteristic tippy/toddling movement style. Blues/tango one-step takes the basic idea - one step per beat, walking with your partner - but does it with different styling to slower music. We use some steps and basic principles from tango, but we keep it simple: no tango experience required. It's a delightful, easygoing dance that suits a lot of different kinds of slower music, including slinky blues, slow swing, slow Latin, cool atmospheric international music, even slow waltzes - pretty much anything you can move at a mellow, easygoing walking pace. Here's a demo.
Learning at least a little of the other role is the very best way to become a better dancer once you've made it past beginner stage; it'll give your dancing a huge boost. Sometimes we get a request to teach a role reversal workshop, where everyone does the other part, but that's not the best approach. It's too artificial; you learn dance in regular dance classes, and it takes more that just an isolated workshop to begin learning the other part; it's a whole new learning process in itself. If you're a beginner at something - e.g. the other role - you simply go to a beginning class. Waltz is probably the easiest dance for learning the other part because the 2 roles are so parallel and similar.
You know how dancing with some partners just feels magical? That's musicality. It feels magical, but it's not mysterious; we teach the nuts & bolts of musicality as part of every class. We don't teach separate musicality classes because musicality isn't a separate thing. Musicality is what makes dancing dancing, rather than just doing moves. In our classes we teach musicality step by step; we break it down. Musicality is more important that executing a move just right because musicality makes dancing delicious; technical proficiency does not. Our classes focus on what you can do, as a lead or a follow, to make dancing with you delicious.
When it comes to musicality, we're all follows. To be musical, both leads and follows have to follow the music, but especially leads. Following the music means surrendering to it and letting it carry you, letting it lead you from each step to the next: dancing within the music, following its rhythm, mood & phrasing, and not anticipating. Follows learn not to anticipate the lead; to be musical, leads have to learn not to anticipate the music. Anticipating the music works like this: if you bring your weight down right where you expect the beat to be, then you're dancing to your own expectation, not the music. Dancing musically means actually hearing or feeling the beat and letting it carry you, letting it lead you. Dancing to the music itself, not your prediction of where you think it will be. A good follow dances deep in the sweet spot of the music, and a good lead facilitates that, inviting his partner to dance right there. And then adapts gracefully to wherever his partner actually does dance. Good leading is inviting and then adapting; not controlling, forcing, or directing; musical leads are gentle and adaptable. Gentle, musical dancing opens the door to creative collaboration, the best kind of partner dancing there is.
A coupla footnotes to that: