Dance clubs in the US???

D

daley

As some of you may know from my previous posts, I was born and raised in Austria, where I also learned ballroom dancing. In Austria, dancing is a rite of passage for many teens, and virtually everybody I know/knew is familiar with the basic steps of most standard and Latin dances.

I already know that this is not the case in the US. However, the thing that always shocks me is the price of lessons in this country! In Austria and Germany, I was a member of a dance club for about 200 Euros per person per year. There was a minimal fee of 3 Euros for lessons and free access to the floor space. The level of instruction was excellent, and it was fun. We were mostly social dancers, but there were some competitive couples as well.

Do you know of similar institutions (outside of universities) in the US? I find the prices of dance studios utterly ridiculous. My husband and I are not interested in competition dancing, but enjoy high level social dancing. We are not really interested in courses for the general community as they tend to focus on ballroom basics...Ideally, what we are looking for is something like my former dance club in Vienna

Any ideas or suggestions? Thank you in advance.
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Depending on which city/state/region of the US you are in, there are generally 3 types of places where you can go for dance classes.

1. Dance classes operated by the municipal government, there are usually advanced classes
2. Dance classes operated by local groups, usually a social or dance club
3. Professional dance studios

Usually #1 or #2 are the less pricy options and #3 is the pricey one. Of course, this is just a general rule of thumb depending on your location and what is available where you are.

Good luck and welcome to Salsa Forums. I am new just like you and find this to be a very helpful community.
 
From what I've heard, the large chain schools will try to sell you very expensive packages consisting of group and privates over a long contract.
But independent schools and instructors, some of whom rent space for their classes, typically charge about $10/hour of class time when you pay for one month, and they don't have contracts.

I haven't heard of any clubs like you've described; but I do know of a local casino ruedo group that meets once a week for a couple hours and just asks for a $5 donation. Maybe there are similar groups elsewhere for ballroom.
 
As some of you may know from my previous posts, of which there are none, since this is first post... bwuh?
 
daley said:
As some of you may know from my previous posts, I was born and raised in Austria, where I also learned ballroom dancing. In Austria, dancing is a rite of passage for many teens, and virtually everybody I know/knew is familiar with the basic steps of most standard and Latin dances.

I already know that this is not the case in the US. However, the thing that always shocks me is the price of lessons in this country! In Austria and Germany, I was a member of a dance club for about 200 Euros per person per year. There was a minimal fee of 3 Euros for lessons and free access to the floor space. The level of instruction was excellent, and it was fun. We were mostly social dancers, but there were some competitive couples as well.

Do you know of similar institutions (outside of universities) in the US? I find the prices of dance studios utterly ridiculous. My husband and I are not interested in competition dancing, but enjoy high level social dancing. We are not really interested in courses for the general community as they tend to focus on ballroom basics...Ideally, what we are looking for is something like my former dance club in Vienna

Any ideas or suggestions? Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

I can't be of any help for the US in general as it is a big place.

I also learned to dance in a dance studio in Germany as a teenager and it was relatively inexpensive way back in the day compared to what people pay in the US these days. I think they were (are) so affordable because they have (or had) so many students. I wasn't aware that this is still happening today, its been awhile since I was a teenager. Back in the day the dance studio I went to had 5-6 ballroom beginner classes with between 200 students each. After that they had another 4-5 intermediate classes with about 100-200 students each. Then there were bronze, silver, gold and competition classes. So...when you do the math: the studio in a mid to large city in Germany which was in competition with about 4-5 other dance studios had about 4,000 students annually. The combined total students in all studios at the time was about 15,000-20,000 dance students. At a $100 for a 12 week course...the dance instructors were very very well off.

Fast forward to today and the US: a very successful dance studio would be very happy to have 300 students across all classes combined. Therefore the price of classes to pay for instructors, rent, heat and marketing to keep the studio going has to be 10-fold of what I described above.

Depending on the city you live in, there might be more options. For example, I am participating in a project where a group of us are offering free rueda lessons (its a version of salsa danced as a group) to all comers. The rationale is that to get more people to dance rueda, more people have to learn it first. None of us need the money, so we do it for free and a friend and her church group found a free space to pull it off.

Chances are that if you are in a city where there is a lot going on, there will also be people who are organizing free or inexpensive dance events and classes.
If not, take the lead, start one.
 
bailar y tocar said:
Chances are that if you are in a city where there is a lot going on, there will also be people who are organizing free or inexpensive dance events and classes.
If not, take the lead, start one.
Click to expand...

I second that. I'm still exploring Latin dance resources in Seattle for listing on my website, and it's amazing how many options there are - and how little publicized they are. In fact, some of the best instructors sometimes get the least publicity. Some struggling dancers may even offer free classes as an incentive for graduating to their intermediate level classes, for which they charge a fee.
 
daley -

it's true and sad that the club system (and related pricing structure) doesn't exist here. moreover, i doubt you will be able to replicate your experience with a community of "high level social" ballroom dancers here. it just doesn't exist in the same way it does in many places in Europe.


would you be open to learning new dances that are taught for less, such as salsa and Argentine tango?
 
sweavo said:
As some of you may know from my previous posts, of which there are none, since this is first post... bwuh?
Click to expand...
I've found an identical post on Dance Forums from someone who uses a different handle. I've PMed this DF user to ascertain whether the two posts were made by the same person (if not, then this may be another copy&paste spam).
 
ya i removed the name of the "club" since i suspected this was just an ad keyword placement to fool google. If not and it is legit, daley will get his info. Otherwise.. no keyword for you :)
 
Not sure about the SF post, but the DF one is legit as the institutions being described are called "dance clubs" (at least within the dancesport world) in Europe. We'll see...
 
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