Welcome
The Dance Routine Corner
Learning to dance? This site will help you with advice on learning dance routines and new choreographies.
With you on your journey to becoming a great dancer.
Help!
Common problems and topics covered when it comes to learning a dance routine, new steps and performing.
Beginners Routines
You're eager to dance, you've seen some amazing dancers and wanna dance like them too.
The first things you need to know are covered in this section, including warming up and where to go to learn.
Read on...
1. Where To Begin
The first thing you need to decide when beginning to dance is where and how you want to learn dance routines. You have a number of choices, the main three being:
1. Learn in a dance studio/ dance classes.
2. Learn 1 to 1 in private dance lessons.
3. Learn on your own from videos and DVDs.
There are advantages and disadvantages to all the options above. In some cases you may be restricted in your choice, for example there may not be any dance studios or classes nearby to where you live so you may have to learn from videos.
To read more detailed analyses of the pros and cons of all the above methods, click on the links above.
To sum up most people will learn best inside a dance studio whether that is in private lessons or in a group class. A big advantage is that you are learning in a room with a teacher - this has many benefits among them that you have to concentrate harder and you can ask any questions if you're finding parts of the routine difficult.
The choice between 1 to 1 lessons and group dance lessons is a personal one. You may be really nervous about being in a class with other people so may want to work on your own with the teacher to build up some confidence first.
For others this may not be a problem and you may feel confident enough going into a class on your own or with some friends. 1 to 1 lessons will be more expensive than classes with others.
The third option is learning in your own bedroom or house using video lessons and DVDs. This is actually a much better proposition than it was say 5 years ago, namely because of the advent of YouTube.
While there are many amatuers that post tutorials up there you must be wary of, there are also many pros who give up their time to teach lessons for free. And there is often more than 1 tutorial covereing a particular move so you can see different ways of doing it and check to see if what you're learning actually looks right!
On the whole DVDs are a better way to get an introduction into a dance style than YouTube because they are more structured...and there is no 10 minute tutorial limit like on YouTube!
If you're strapped for cash this may be the best way to get started or to pop into a few classes at your local dance studio, and take them home to practise.
With all these options you will be able to learn dance routines. Nearly all classes do, if you ask for routines in private lessons it's usually as simple as that, and DVDs will normally have at least one routine if not more.