Your center is the key to your balance and connection (read: the key to being a better dancer). Learn how, when, and why to engage your core muscles to make you a better follower, a better leader, and a better dancer overall. Warning: This class should make you sore, but in a good way! We’ll have Advil if you need it.

In this class, you'll learn how to make basic movements musical: With any one move, you can change the emphasis, the timing, the sharpness, everything! Mike calls this process of breaking down movement "musicaliting." Use these tools and hit the music like you played it.

“Sandra’s Stroll” is a vintage-inspired solo blues routine for women, choreographed by Australian instructor Sharon Davis to “The Mooch” by Duke Ellington. It‘s a great introduction to solo blues for any level of dancer. While fairly easy to learn, this routine provides many opportunities for creative improvisation. To see the choreographer perform “Sandra’s Stroll”, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT2FDz5VAHI

A routine for the guys to rock the socks (and other things) off of the ladies.

Your body is your best tool for expression, so use it!
In this class, you'll add richness and depth of movement to your dancing. Just as a blues singer bends a straight tone, we'll explore ways to alter our movement quality and enhance our expression. Expect your dancing to command attention when we're finished.

Leads will learn how to connect and move like a follow. Leads will learn to follow the rhythm of the music. You’ll get some sweet rhythmic variations, a crash course on micro-blues, and some simple techniques for looking like you wrote the music.

This class is aimed at focusing your following (and leading!) to its purest, cleanest form, improving your signal-to-noise ratio. We don’t want you to stop styling, we just want to make sure that your styling is purposeful and that your underlying dancing is as clear as it can be.

As blues instructors, one of the most common questions we hear from follows is “Do I ALWAYS have to just follow, or do I get to be creative too?” The answer: both! Our favorite blues dances are the ones which are completely, consistently connected, AND offer us the opportunity to contribute solo movements and suggest partnered movements. Through a series of exercises, this class will explore the idea that both partners can be creative contributors to the dance without “follower hijacking” or “breaking” the connection, and that connection is in fact essential to partnered creativity.

A blues dance should not be limited to an exercise in recently-learned moves when it can be so much more. Every partner has a lot to offer, and often it remains undiscovered by the end of a dance. Why is that? While there may be wonderful connection and musicality, the leader and follower just aren't engaged in a two-way conversation. Two are better than one.
This class, through organic partnering communication (not high-fructose flash and tricks), will help you be adventurous enough to find these great moments that help elevate one dance above the rest.