If you are new to lindy hop or have not had a lot of experience yet, you are expected to start from the ‘Promenade’ course, followed by the ‘Lindy Circle’, the ‘Swing out’, and finally the ‘Savoy’. A little bit of Charleston basics and solo jazz is integrated into these courses. If you don’t feel quite sure you are ready to move to the next stage, you can take this or that block again (maybe with different teachers).
After completing these 4 blocks, you can choose any intermediate-level course we offer if you really feel comfortable with all the previous material. If not, we strongly recommend you stay in the Track group. We expect that by this time, you are already an active social dancer.
See below the description of the courses.
This course is for absolute beginners. You will learn basic rhythms and moves/footwork of the dance, get acquainted with the classic jazz standards we dance to, and get ready for your first socials.
In this course, we will give you more complex moves, more fancy turns, and combinations. If you want to join this course, make sure you know 6- and 8-count basics, promenade, send out and bring in, change places, can find the ‘1’ in music, and keep a steady rhythm.
If you have some partnered dance experience, you might consider taking this block as a first one and skipping the ‘Promenade’ (or maybe taking a private class before joining).
This course is dedicated mostly to swing-outs – the core and iconic move of Lindy Hop. We will review the moves of the previous courses and give you new rhythms and variations, developing your leading-following skills.
Before joining, make sure you can differentiate between 6- and 8-count moves, know promenades and lindy circles, feel comfortable with your triple steps, and manage some basic partnered Charleston.
This course is named after the most famous swing dance club in Harlem in the 1920s-50s. The dance floor there was called The Track (because of its shape). You can join this level after completing the basic courses and having at least 9-12 months of dancing experience. Your triples are floor-connected, and your bounce is steady; you can do swing-outs, circles, promenades, lots of 6-count moves, and some solo breakaways. We hope that by that time you are a regular social dancer and curious to learn more about the technique and history of swing dancing.
In this course, we will consolidate the material you have learned so far and expand your repertoire of moves. We will learn more complex combinations of known moves, trickier variations, work on partner connection, and refine leading-following skills, including some switching exercises.
The pace of learning is relatively relaxed, with a lot of time to practice in the class. Each block (and by each teacher’s couple), a different content is offered, so students can stay in the group for years without being bored.
No audition or invitation is needed to join the group. Drop-ins are possible.
No audition or invitation is needed to join the group; however, teachers might give you some feedback and suggest moving to another Savoy group with a more relaxed way of learning and simpler curriculum.
This group is invitational and arranged for dancers with at least 3-4 years of lindy hop experience (including social dance and self-practice) who would like to improve their dance technique and develop an individual style. Please contact us to arrange a try-out session or ask your current teachers for an invitation.
We expect you to be absolutely stable with your basics (lindy hop and charleston), be able to improvise, use different rhythms and footwork patterns, be attentive to music and partner’s dancing, and switch between different tempos. Having some solo jazz experience is required. We will be looking at technique, learning more complex combinations of the known partnered and solo moves, playing with different tempos and styles, work on musicality and improvisation. The curriculum is tailored to the needs of the participants.
Here you are encouraged to give some (polite) feedback to your partners, share your experience, and ask a lot of questions. We expect the students to like technical details and repeat the move until it is done properly.
Balboa is a very elegant dance that originated in the 1930s. You can dance it to very fast music without getting sweaty and use a minimal dance floor. We divide classes into three levels: absolute beginners, improvers (3-9 months of experience in that dance style), and intermediate (more than 1 year of classes or 9 months if combined with intensive practice).
Collegiate Shag was danced in American colleges in the 1930-40s. Danced to a fast tempo (up to 320 bpm), it is still very playful and light.
We divide classes into three levels: beginners, improvers (3-9 months of experience in that dance style), and intermediate (more than 1 year of classes, or 9 months if combined with intensive practice).
At the moment, we offer two types of solo (non-partnered) jazz dance classes.
The jazzy warm-up is an open-level, dance-along class. What are we gonna do there? Of course, we start with quite an extensive warm-up and special exercises for dancers. Then we just dance to jazz music: the music doesn’t stop, you dance along with Katya, you can copy-paste the moves, or you can improvise on the fly. We start with the easiest moves, and incorporate solo jazz moves (and maybe even some easy combos from the famous routines) and rhythms into our dancing, slowly expanding our repertoire. The music will be jazz, but diverse – Latin jazz, electroswing, blues, New Orleans, classic swing, bebop, folk jazz, maybe sometimes even 1 really grooving pop tune… Every class is a new playlist; every class is different!
We offer so-called authentic solo jazz classes, which means that we are respecting the jazz roots and getting inspiration from the jazz club’s dancing back in the day. Classes combine learning new moves, drilling, improvisation, body awareness, and musicality.
Levels: solo jazz fundamentals (up to a year of experience in solo jazz) and solo jazz explorers (for dancers with solo jazz experience more than a year and ready for improvisation and performances).
Drop-in lessons are possible (just buy a drop-in ticket in our Shop).
Our tap teacher Roosmarijn graduated as a dance teacher at Codarts in Rotterdam. To specialise more in tap dance, she also took lessons from various international teachers at tap festivals in Stockholm, Dubrovnik, Barcelona, and New York City.
Levels: more or less beginners (Tap 1)-improvers (Tap2)-intermediate (Tap3), but better to check with Roosmarijn
