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The Latin, or Latin American, style of dance involves five dances: Cha Cha, Rhumba, Samba, Jive and Paso Doble. In social classes, we look at Cha Cha, Rhumba and Samba mainly with Paso Doble and Ballroom Jive being reserved for medal classes. The Jive type of dance is replaced with its slower version: Swing Jive.

An easy dance in a faster paced rhythm. While basic social footwork is fairly simple to understand, the Cha Cha is a dance that utilises the hips and lower body muscles to create powerful and sharp movements. More of a flirtatious dance, it is perhaps the most stereotypically latin of all the dances.

Commonly known as the dance of love, the rhumba is another easy socially taught dance. After understanding basic concepts of timing and footwork, the rhumba is the dance in which a couple expresses emotion to emphasise movement and action. While the Rhumba can take some time to develop, it is a very passionate dance that can prove quite fulfilling.

A difficult rhythm to pick up, the samba is the dance of the Carnival, and embodies the sensuality and playfulness of the latin style. Making good use of the lower abdominal muscles is essential for a samba to flow smoothly, and when mastered, allows for the performing of complex movements with limited use of energy.

With its background in Spain, the Paso Doble is famous for being the dance of the bull fight. While the man is thought to be the bull, and the female the cape, the roles of both partners change through out the dance between being the matador, the cape and the bull. This dance tells the story of a bull fight, and requires that both people display a lot of strength and power. It is rarely seen outside of competition due to the amount of the dance that is emotion and involves limited steps.

Jive is the quickest of all dances, and involves that the you be very speedy in your feet. Through easy instruction, it is not very difficult to learn. Being the fun dance, Jive is danced last in the typical Latin order so as to test the endurance of couples. Jive is the quickest of all dances involving faster footwork.

Ballroom, which is also called the Modern style of dance, incorporates five dances: Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Vienese Waltz and Quickstep. They all vary in speed, and Viennese Waltz is reserved for high level Medal & Social Classes.

A common form of ballroom dance, and an excellent place to start when learning within this style. Although its basic pattern is quite complex, the Waltz is good for allowing partners to get used to dancing, and to use their lower bodies to float across the floor. Ideally, the Waltz should look like a couple is dancing on clouds.

Another well known ballroom dance, mainly for its staccato (sharp) movement. While a large part of tango is thought to be walking, the dance encompasses more of a powerful attitude expressed in the movement itself, and the body positioning. Tango is danced in the knees, and the rise is minimised to create a “cutting” movement to further emphasise the sharpness.

Foxtrot is danced very softly across the floor, and is meant to be graceful and elegant in its styling. It is not an easy dance to learn, and is only taught in higher level social classes, and medal classes. Using the same music, the Slow Rhythm is taught to beginners as an alternative to introduce the slower style of ballroom dance.

Viennese is taught in higher levels of Medal classes & Social classes as it requires a great deal of skill & co-ordination between 2 people to create the beautiful movement of this faster Waltz rhythm.

Unlike the name suggests, the quickstep is not as fast as it is made out to be. While it takes time to grasp some aspects of the dance, this is taught in beginners classes along with Waltz and Slow Rhythm, and is then progressed on in the later social classes. It is considered the fun dance of the Ballroom style, and is meant to be danced as if the couple was one person gliding across the floor.

The New Vogue style of dance is one in that involves every couple on the floor doing exactly the same sequence of steps at exactly the same time. For this reason, the footwork allows for very limited freedom of movement, so the skilled New Vogue dancers add their own personal flair to their arm-work. While the idea of sequence dancing isn’t for everyone, there are some wonderful dances involved in the style, and each one can be personalised by a dancer given time to develop.

Popular throughout the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, Rock ‘n’ Roll is an energetic style of dance that is good for anyone that enjoys dancing. It is a very easy style to learn with an abundance of steps in similar rhythm. The basic pressure step rock ‘n’ roll makes for something quick and easy to learn, that means that less time is needed to be spent on footwork and steps and more time on creating the energy and the “bounce” of the dance. In the beginners level, focus is placed upon allowing a feel of the rhythm through the teaching of basic footwork. Utilising various kicks, turns and swivel steps, courses are designed to give beginners a chance to get into the music and understand the timing. In the later levels, the focus leans more on increasing knowledge of footwork, and applying the concepts from beginners to the advanced turns, arm movements and positions learned.

A very smooth, cool and casual style of dance, that uses an interesting form of elastic movement to create the feel of swinging past each other. Both the arm and foot work involve trying to maintain the couple on a single “track” of floor and moving from one side of the man to another, using a variety of movements. While this is not the easiest style to learn, it is broken down into its smallest parts so that anyone can piece it together should they put their mind to it. The beginners class works with a small number of moves so that everyone can get up dancing, and then works intensively in the last week of the term on the styling of the dance, so that we can turn the step into a motion of swing. The improvers class carries on from the beginners class teaching more styling of swing, as well as more complex movements as a person progresses.

Street Latin is a very free form of dance. It is meant to be sexy, sensual and racy when danced with somebody, and thus it is usual for couples to stand closer than in other styles. This style is broken down into 3 dances: Mambo, Salsa and Merengue. As there are a number of different styles of salsa on offer, and the one we offer (LA salsa) is the same as mambo, we have made our Street Latin cover only Merengue and Salsa . A very easy style, yet requires a lot of energy, and hip work to do it.

Hip Hop is a fun class, that is very creative in its movements. Based on the African–American style of dance, it aims to boost self confidence, coordination and flexibility. It is a great way to learn how to use your whole body for movement. Jam packed full of fun and excitement, hip hop is an excellent way to make friends and stay fit at the same time. It is open to all ages, with anyone interested entering into the social class on Thursdays. Taught by Justine, Hip hop is great if you are looking for something for general fitness and fun.

A resurrected dance at the studio, Ceroc is taught by teachers Emily and Adrian. It is a style that incorporates a mix of latin and rock 'n' roll, and can be very showy and crowd pleasing. Because Ceroc can be done to any type of music with a 4 count beat, it is very versatile and handy to know.

A great Swing dance has it's origins in the 1920's & 30's with the Jitterbug & Charleston styles. Lindyhop is a mixture of two styles & can be danced to slow or faster swing music. Rhythm & Blues or Bigband music characterise Lindyhop. Because it can be quite energetic young people are attracted to Lindyhop with it’s Charleston kicks & jumps. Basically the Swing steps have chasse' steps similar to Swing Jive.