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.
The other major decision you'll have to make when starting is which dance style you want to learn. In fact this ties in with which method you choose to learn as some styles are more accessible than others, others may not have classes or teachers but may have DVDs or vice versa.
So how do you go about selecting a dance style to learn? The most important thing is that you enjoy the style of dance and it looks something like the kind of thing you want to learn!
There are many dance styles from jazz, ballet, hip-hop, tap, popping, locking, breaking, salsa, ballroom, house...and in all of them there is the opportunity to learn routines.
Probably the best thing to do to help select a dance style is to pay a visit to a dance studio with lots of different style of classes running...and asking if you can pop in and watch some of the classes.
Not every dance studio will be ok with this, but some will. Some will insist that you take part - which isn't a bad idea in itself because by doing the class you can see if it's the type of thing that you want to learn.
If they do let you in to watch, make sure you go around the various rooms in the dance studio to see what's going on in each. When I say visit a dance studio, I mean a big one where there will be several different classes all running simultaneously.
It's also worth mentioning at this point that most classes will have a warmup period, so if there doesn't seem to be any routines or moves going on you may need to come back later towards the end of the class by which point they probably would have learnt one.
Some dance studios also will have videos either on YouTube or elsewhere which may be able to give you an indication of what you are likely to learn in each class.
By typing in generic names of dance styles for example, "street dance" or "commercial jazz" or "lyrical" into a video site like YouTube and watching a number of videos you will get a feel for what type of moves and routines each style encompasses.
You could actually go through every dance style and do this if you want! Since most dance styles look vastly different from one another you will quickly get an idea of what you want to learn, and what you're not interested in.
This way you can go to the various dance studios and teachers and enquire if they teach such-and-such a style and find a place to learn this way.
Also bear in mind that different teachers have different ideas and combinations, so even if they teach the same style of dance they can look very different as well.
It might be a shock for a man to go into a hip-hop class and learn a very feminine routine. But some hip-hop teachers do, everyone is different you need to follow your tastes.
The best knowledge of all though is experience and if you are open-minded enough to try different dance classes with different teachers, chances are good you will eventually find something that you like (assuming you have an interest in dance in the first instance)!