The question of levels in a social dance class environment has long been the talk of heated debate. As teachers we have a duty to protect the safety of all our dancers, we also want to see our students progress. If a class does not have any restrictions such as ‘invite only’ or ‘you must have attended X course’ or ‘you must be assessed by a teacher before moving into’ then you may well think that you can just put yourself up into the next level and ‘give yourself a bit of a c

Dance is the expression of feelings when listening to music. The music makes you want to dance and move your body to express how the music is making you feel. Without the music we are not dancing, we’re simply moving. Each piece of music has a beat or pulse. The steady repetitive pattern which gives us the timing of the music. As dancers we either move freestyle, (expressing freedom of movement) or with structure (in a dance routine), or in partnered social dancing we lead an

Pushed for practice time? Need to make the best use of your rehearsals? We all know that dance practice time is precious, and sometimes there just isn’t enough time to rehearse as much as we want. Therefore we need to make the most efficient use of the time we do have to practice. Here are 5 top tips to help you maximise your practice time: 1)    Pick your peak energy times – all our body clocks are slightly different, but if you fall into the ‘average’ category of getting up

Scientific studies have shown that those perceived as ‘good’ dancers share 2 genes that are associated with being good social communicators. Therefore, we think that dancers are often better in social environments, able to communicate more easily than others that don’t share those genes. Humans use body language to communicate with each other. Some people with higher levels of emotional intelligence can pick up on body language more easily. Dance is a visual art and those tha