Ballroom Dancing during the commercial culture of dance halls from 1880 to 1920. Dance classes helped people keep up with the latest steps. In 1911, New York City alone listed 100 dancing academies serving 100,000 paying pupils, 90 per cent under age twenty-one. Dance halls also offered classes in fashion. The New York Society of Teachers of Dancing was formed to counter new vulgar dances and customs, such as “cutting in” from the ballroom.

Although most people of the world learn to dance by watching and being coached, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there were about 18,000 dance studios offering classes in the dance art forms that people learn for recreation. The age of students taking dance classes for leisure ranges from preschool to seniors. Recreational dance classes that are open to all comers differ from pre-professional dance classes that admit students who are selected through an audition process. Sometimes a recreational dance student becomes smitten with a dance form and wants to become a professional.

A teacher might direct the student elsewhere for more serious training among peers. Either type of student may participate in dance recitals or competitions to demonstrate proficiency. There are also schools and workshops for teachers of different dance genres and degrees of certification related to training completed.

Dance classes are commonly offered in ballet, modern, jazz, street jam, funk or hip-hop dancing, jazz, contact improvisation, African dance, Balinese dance, Latin salsa and tango, ballroom, Spanish flamenco, Middle Eastern dance, swing/jitterbug (Charleston, lindy hop, hand dancing), clogging, Brazilian capoeira, and Irish step. In the early 2000s, striptease aerobics made its debut. Click here to read about Empowering Dancers: Celebrating Growth Beyond Trophies and Medals.

Dance classes are usually for groups of children, teens, or adults at different levels of dance skill, including dance fundamentals classes for pre-beginners. Teachers may also offer private lessons to individuals. Dance instruction involves verbal explanation and modelling by the teacher. Typically, a class begins with warm-ups, exercises that prepare the student’s body to learn movements of a dance genre without injury. Teachers break down parts of a dance for students to learn. These parts are eventually put together so students can perform the entire routine.

The amount of dedication and discipline required in dance classes varies, ballet being one of the more demanding. It has sequential, standardized curriculum teaching methods, as well as examination procedures within each of several traditions for the progressive education of dancers, including the Cecchetti Method of classical ballet training, the Royal Academy of Dancing, the August Bourneville School, the Vaganova Ballet Academy, and the School of American Ballet. Modern dance, too, has its pedagogies.

In addition to dance academies and studios, dance classes are offered in recreation departments, community centres, senior centres, churches, schools, summer camps, hospitals, and prisons. Individuals can take “dance classes” with an instructor in their own home via videos. Lots of how-to books that codify the rules of a dance form and explain dance floor etiquette are available. Over time, books have provided increasingly detailed information about how to perform individual steps, their combinations in dance phrases, and phrases in the complete dance.

Classes in the kindergarten through university levels often focus on creative choreography. In these classes, students are taught the elements of dance (time, space, and effort in gesture and locomotion) and ways of putting them together to make an artistic dance. Then students are given problems, such as how to express a particular idea, to solve through their choreography.

Motivation for taking dance classes varies. Parents take youngsters to dance classes so they can develop grace and poise, acquire discipline, become physically fit, and be with peers. Dance classes tend to be the preserve of females, although jazz and hip-hop attract many males. Because males are more likely to learn sports than dance, those who have learned to dance are always in demand as partners. Students who are interested in broadening their dance experience and taking classes beyond their home studios can attend periodic convention workshops and competitions (classes are usually offered at these events), which are sponsored by over forty organizations.

Adults take dance classes to keep up with the latest steps, get exercise, gain firsthand experience in performing art, and fantasize. As one adult student said, “Up the stairs in your business clothes. You hear the piano playing Chopin. You are beat, but begin to feel a little happier. And then the class starts. I fantasize about being a princess. At the end of class, I am generally always so happy. And I keep wondering what was it that made the world seem like an enchanting place.