How to learn dance from beginning
How to Learn Dance at Home Step by Step: Complete guide
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Interested in dance and want to learn a few dance moves at home? Here's how.
Written by Red Bull Editorial Team
4 min readPublished on
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Dance is one of the most multi-purpose skills out there. What else can you use in the club and as a workout? Lots of people learn to dance in structured settings like studios, but with the prevalence of the internet, many resources like videos and online communities for support, anyone can learn to dance at home.
How to Learn to Dance at Home
Want to improve your moves? Follow these steps to learn to dance at home:
1. Select a style
Start by deciding what style of dance you want to learn. There are tons out there — individual dance styles like ballet, jazz, and hip hop, and partner styles like ballroom and salsa. Definitely figure out what type you're interested in before you get started, which will make it easier to find the best resources.
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2. Decide on technique or routine
Next, decide whether you want to learn basic technique or a specific dance. Most dance styles have foundational movements that trained dancers practice repeatedly to build their strength, endurance, and skill. However, some folks who are just learning for fun might prefer learning a specific dance, like Lil Uzi Vert's Futsal Shuffle rather than just practicing the basics.
3. Find the right video
1 min
Dance Home Guide: B-Boy Wigor
Zaczynamy wyzwanie: #RedBullHomeChallenge! Pukamy do drzwi domów B-Boys i B-Girls, a oni pokazują, jak mieszkają. Oczywiście tanecznym krokiem! Zobacz wideo Dance Home Guide z B-Boyem Wigorem.
Now's the time to find your teacher: A video.
There are tons of fantastic vids out there from professional dancers, teachers, musicians, and amateurs to help you learn to dance. Lots of websites offer classes, tutorials, or tips for burgeoning dancers — some are free and some cost money. If you're looking for a technique class, search for something like "hip hop dance class." If you want to learn a specific dance, search for the name of the dance along with "tutorial," like "Chicago Cell Block Tango tutorial."
4. Warm up
Dance Your Style 2019: Tokyp warm-up
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Before you dance, it's important you warm up. Get your heart rate up and your muscles warm by jogging in place. Do some stretching like touching your toes and opening your hips to loosen up. Most dance styles require a bit of flexibility, so focus on a few exercises that will help lengthen tight muscles before you get going.
5. Do the lesson
Finally, it's time to dance! Play your video, and get moving! If you're using a smart TV, keep the remote nearby so you can pause and rewind when you need to see a step again.
If you're using your phone or laptop, keep it close by for the same reason. Don't be afraid to do the same step or section a few times over — some steps take longer than others to master.
Tip: Try the moves in front of a mirror next to your video so you can see how you look.
6. Practice
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master a new skill — don't give up! Keep practicing with the same video and new videos with other teachers to get better at your dance. You'll see improvement the more you work at it.
B-Boy Junior poses for an action shot
© Little Shao/Red Bull Content Pool
Best Resources to Learn How to Dance
The internet is an amazing place. So many resources exist for people to master dance at home. Consider these top learn-to-dance-at-home resources to get started.
Free Options
For a more cost-effective option (though you'll have to do more searching for solid content), try out these guys:
YouTube: YouTube is a great place to start to find dance class videos if you're still figuring out which styles you're interested in learning.
Vimeo: Vimeo has always been a favorite of creative types, so you might be able to find some solid videos there.
Twitch: A newcomer to the user-uploaded video game, but Twitch is a competitor nonetheless. You could find some gems on here!
Where to Start
Totally overwhelmed and not sure which style you should start with? Consider starting with one of the big top three: Ballet, jazz, or hip hop. Almost every other style of dance uses some ballet terminology (yes, even hip hop), so it might be helpful to learn a little ballet before anything else.
Jazz and hip hop are also foundational styles — jazz is the basis for contemporary dance and hip hop informs lots of popular, urban and music video dances. Want a list of a few dance styles to try? You got it. Keep in mind, there are hundreds of different dance styles out there — one of them is absolutely perfect for you!
Ballet
Jazz
Hip hop
Contemporary
Lyrical
Breaking
Ballroom
Bollywood
Tap
African dance
Latin dance
Swing dance
Flamenco
Learning to dance should be fun.
Take the time in the comfort of your living room to learn a new technique or routine to show off to your friends.
10 Basic Dance Moves Anyone Can Learn
Do you ever watch someone dance and wonder how they come up with moves so easily?
Great dancers often master a specific set of moves that they can fall back on again and again.
Read on for 10 basic dance moves you can learn in minutes and use every time you wanna dance.
P.S. You can learn all of these moves for FREE on STEEZY Studio! No cc required. 😉
1. The Two-Step
When I first started dancing at parties, the Two-Step was the first move that truly came naturally to me.
It really is as simple as stepping from side to side to the beat!
If you're looking for something foolproof that allows you to just groove and enjoy the music...
Boom. Here it is.
2. The Monestary
This move was born in a club called Monestary out in St. Louis!
It’s built on a Two-Step, so if you took that class, you’ve already got a foundation for the footwork.
But rather than bringing your feet together, you’ll tap them to the front with your knee and foot turned inward.
Then, as you tap the feet, you’ll move your arms and shoulders in a circular movement.
3. Booty Pop (Side To Side)
Like the Woah, this sexy move is super TikTok-friendly – but with more feminine energy.
To do a booty pop to the side, you’re gonna bend your knees, put your hands on one knee, and then bring the other leg from bent to straight while turning your knee inward.
If you’re a long-haired baddie, be sure to keep all your hair on one side so it doesn’t flop in your face as you pop!
Read this article on How To Dance Sexy to get more tips on pulling off moves like this one!
4. The Billy Bounce
Surprise – this club-ready move is built on… a bounce!
But what makes it unique is that your knees will come inward on each bounce rather than just up and down.
Once you’ve got the funky lil knee bounce down, you’ll add in an upward kick on each side.
The best thing about this move is that while the footwork takes a few minutes to learn, you don’t necessarily need to add an arm movement to make it look cool.
Just keep your arms front and center.
5. The Woah
Even if you’re not actively involved in the dance community, you’ve probably seen people hitting the Woah – on TikTok, Reels... all over your newsfeed!
Whether you wanna make a viral video of your own, or you’re just looking for a fun, basic dance move to pull out at the clerb, this one is too good not to learn.
Since the locking arm motion is so sharp and pronounced, use the Woah to accent the heaviest bass beats in your favorite songs.
6. The Dougie
Yes, the Dougie is a real dance move!
Like the Two-Step, you’ll be shifting your weight from side to side, but this time, adding some shoulder movements and a lil more attitude.
Try this one out to some songs other than the one that made it famous – you’ll find it works with any hype beat.
7. Scoop Arm Into Hip Sway
Sooo this one is more of combo than a move, but it only takes a few minutes to learn and it works with any fun sassy song…
So it deserves to be here, ok?!
For this move, you’re gonna scoop your arm across your chest, then bring it over your head, and finally point it in front of your chest.
Once you point the arm in front of you, you’ll sway your hips from side to side and groove it out.
8. The Bust Down
The Bust Down was popularized by LA rapper, Blueface, in his 2019 club jam “Thotiana”.
You’re gonna grab your belt, put one arm in the air, and allow your body to dip with the beat.
Note: Licking your eyebrows like Blueface is fun, but not required. 😛
9. The Biz Markie
The Biz Markie is an old school party dance inspired by, you guessed it, rapper Biz Markie!
It rose to popularity in the 90s, when Biz Markie himself began performing it on stage.
As you practice it, remember to allow your shoulders to bounce – the bounce is what gives this move its cool, laidback flavor.
Wanna learn more about classic Hip Hop moves? Read this: How To Dance Hip Hop for Beginners
10. The Humpty
For this bouncy move, you’re gonna circle your hips to one side as your bend your knees.
Then, you’ll jump and cross your legs, allowing your feet to tap the floor briefly before you jump back to your original legs apart position.
Once you’ve got that down, you can complete the move by adding in a windmill motion with your arms.
The leg cross in this move makes it perfect for any Hip Hop song that features a double bass (aka that BOOM BOOM sound that you hear in songs like “Lip Gloss” by Lil Mama)
We hope you enjoyed learning some of our favorite basic dance moves.
Of course, this list is just a start!
In addition to the 10 moves on this list, STEEZY Studio has 100+ other FREE beginner classes where you can learn step-by-step from the world’s best teachers.
What To Read Next:
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How To Start Dancing Hip Hop For Beginners
How To Learn Dance At Home
How to learn to dance from scratch: 6 key tips
Dreaming of learning to dance, but something stops you? All beginners have fears. And The Challenger has ideas on how to start dancing, even if you've never tried it.
Forget your fears
If you think that you do not have a sense of rhythm, flexibility, age is not right, this does not mean that you cannot sign up for dancing. All fears live in the head. Modern types of dances perfectly develop all these qualities. In dance studios you will be in a group for beginners or individually, the trainer will show and tell you what to do and how to do it. Training takes place gradually, from the basics - you will be taught everything.
Try different dances
There are many dance directions: European, Latin American, Caribbean, modern, oriental, fitness, classical. How to decide? Go to trial lessons and find something of your own - so that this particular dance ignites you, gives you strength. Maybe it will be not one, but two directions. In the first lesson, you will get acquainted with the basics, starting with the simplest. If you have chosen a pair dance, you should not worry about the lack of a partner - the studios will always help with this.
Dance for yourself
Here is the main secret. Dance at home, in the hall, on the street. A little practice - and you will dance anywhere without hesitation. Enjoy the movements, do not think about how correctly and well you do it. Let at first it doesn’t work out the way you would like, but the more you practice, the easier the elements are given. Desire is all you need. A competent coach will teach technique and inspire confidence.
Nobody dances the first time like Baryshnikov - tune in to success, and you will succeed.
Attend classes regularly
Yes, learning to dance after two or three lessons is unlikely to succeed. Regularity is important here - then you will definitely see progress. You can learn the basics in a couple of months by attending two or three classes a week at a school or dance studio. The main thing is not to stop. At home, too, dance whenever possible.
Do not compare yourself to others
Level yourself. Everyone needs a different time and amount of effort to achieve the desired results. History knows examples when people learned to dance professionally and successfully competed even in adulthood. But you need to put in the best effort. A person who lives by dancing can do it all. From scratch. Any age.
Don't forget your dream
Dances inspire, ignite, change from the inside. If you try, you will probably not be able to live without them and you will regret only one thing - that you did not come earlier.
Thanks to dancing, you develop a sense of rhythm, flexibility, improve health, improve your overall mental state (dance is recommended as a therapy), the body becomes more toned, and posture improves. The dancer moves in a different way in life - he flies, proudly carries himself. It is beautiful.
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12 life hacks, to quickly learn how to dance from Mamita Dance
Dancing
Author: Pavel Collect
Psychologist, Teacher of Salsa and Tango
Dances
Author: Pavel Pavel Pavel Psychologist Psychologist, Teacher of Salsa and Tango
At the start, you always want to get a quick result.
When it doesn't happen, the hypothesis arises that everything takes time. After a conditionally acceptable time, humility comes to mastering pair dances, which, perhaps, is not given, and I will just do what I learned somehow.
This is the most common story of those who believe that the fact of attending pair dance classes is enough to learn how to dance.
Absolutely not. If you want to really dance well, you have to make an effort outside of the dance class. A good teacher will definitely be needed, but the initiative should be on your side.
1. Listen to music
The most common and accessible advice that is given already at the first lessons. And it definitely works. Music creates a certain atmosphere of the dance and intuitively you want to move to it. It doesn't matter where you listen to music - in the car, on headphones while walking or doing household chores.
An addition that will help you dance better is your active participation in the music.
Sing along, dance or simply beat musical accents with any free parts of the body. In the subway, for example, it is enough to tap out bright moments with your fingers, in the car to sing along with sounds, and at home you can jump for pleasure.
2. Watch videos of good dancers
It's complicated, but also obvious. It’s more difficult, because without recommendations from more experienced dancers, unfortunately, it’s not so easy to find a good quality video on the net (I mean not the resolution quality, but the content itself).
Meaningful video viewing is about building an understanding of HOW dancers make a particular impression on a partner or viewer. Technology is at the heart of everything. Understanding how the pros do it is a big step forward.
It is important to distinguish a show from a disco dance, a choreographed performance from an improvisation, a stylized dance from an authentic one, etc. Ask for recommendations, and dance instructors will always upload a couple of videos of worthy landmarks.
Tango Z. Showreel.
Online modern tango courses
Tango nuevo is the most advanced version of tango. We can quickly learn to dance from zero to a steep level.
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3. Dance in salsatecas/milongas/discotheques
A very delicate moment when it is worth coming to the first party. From a technical point of view, most students in 1-3 months have a sufficient set of figures and techniques to come and dance calmly. Psychologically, the same moment can be stretched out for an indefinite time. After all, it is imperative to “not lose face”, “learn more figures” and be sure what to do in case “there is an unfamiliar movement”.
In fact, the partygoers don't really care (except for a small layer of non-professional teachers who want to help inexperienced dancers by treating them as customers in the future). It is important to come and try dancing after a month of classes.
You can only with friends or guys from your group. This will be enough to feel the adrenaline and inspiration from the dance.
4. Dance with partners or partners not of your level
The conventional wisdom that you need to practice in groups of your level does not stand up to the test of experience. Perhaps now your eyes widened in surprise, and you want to meaningfully read the phrase again. Yes, you saw everything correctly: when you dance with a partner of your level, you don’t grow anywhere.
It's important to understand that not only does it work one way and you have to dance with cooler dancers, but it works even more effectively the other way. It is no coincidence that teaching pair dances dramatically raises the level of the teacher himself. You have an endless stream of very beginner dancers.
How it works. A more experienced partner needs to be "stretched". It's easy and obvious. With beginners, you need to take more initiative on yourself, see the general pattern of the dance more widely, turn on and insure more, try to be an example and be more careful.
The quality of interaction begins to grow significantly. And wonderful partners too.
Dancing with partners of your level doesn't make you grow. Dance with beginners and more advanced dancers
Dominican Bachata Women's Style Online Course
Want to learn how to hypnotize those around you with the most appetizing part of your body? On the course we will tell you all the secrets.
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5. Learn to dance for a partner and for a partner
Turks and Argentines are one of the best partners in the world. In Russia, partners are highly valued. Why? The answer is simple. In Argentina and Turkey, it is not questionable for men to ask another man to lead in one piece or another and give feedback on the quality of the lead. For them, it will be a great shame to hear moralizing from a partner, or even more so to be known in the community as an insecure partner.
In Russia, due to the constant, often far-fetched, opinion that there are more women in pair dances, partners calmly get up and study their partner's part.
Such partners then grow into very cool dancers and teachers. In no case do this at parties, only in class. Here we are talking only about the learning strategy. At parties, be yourself.
6. Do not memorize the links
Always try to look deeper and understand the through principle and idea of movement. Understanding what and how is done will make it possible to independently generate any sequences and chips.
Human memory is limited and there will always be a moment when something will escape and your repertoire will be limited by the size of RAM.
In Argentine tango, for example, there are seven levels of movement construction that, when mastered, will allow you to make millions of combinations. And how many dance sequences can you really remember? In rueda, more than 150 figures dance in a rare circle. It's hard to keep more in mind.
7. Develop your body
Many years of experience in teaching partner dance shows that as soon as everyone pairs up in a class, any progress in individual style ends.
But it is the individual style that distinguishes everyone at the disco: partners change, and style is always with you.
The body as the main instrument of dance must be very plastic, responsive and emotional. Surprisingly, not all pair dance schools have a general physical warm-up. It is vital to tune the body and understand how it works.
You can always train extra and concentrate more on the basic steps, as their true value is as body work. The sequence of steps is, in fact, the simplest thing that can be in pair dancing. The quality of individual performance determines the craftsmanship.
8. Try on the images of inspiring dancers
A psychological life hack for those who have already mastered the steps, but still feel that there is not enough brightness and drive. Most are terribly afraid of being someone else's "clone". Here the action is the same as under the influence of hypnosis - the more you resist, the more you plunge into an altered state of consciousness.
With a high degree of probability, you are already dancing like someone else's "clone". A meaningful fitting of someone else's image is that you mentally take the image of the one who inspires you (inspiration is critical in this case) and "put on" yourself. Then you start dancing and trying to feel in general how it is to be able, for example, to be the best partner or the sexiest partner in a disco. This is much more difficult than it seems. But it works extremely efficiently.
9. Dance to offbeat music
Habitual rhythms keep you tight. Tango salon or speedy timba leave little room for experimentation and fantasy. Pattern dancing is always noticeable and is reserved for beginners.
The truly new is born outside of the usual. Look for places to experiment. If there is no place, organize self-training. The main thing is not to get carried away, because music determines the style. We bring something new to pair dances, rather than trying to change them.
Search, improvise, do not be afraid to go beyond, develop in different directions, be inspired by music atypical for the style
10. Try your hand at basic dance directions
dances exist according to their own non-choreographic laws.
This is the deepest delusion, which has turned into a ceiling for the qualitative development of partner dances. After all, all professional dancers, for example, in salsa or bachata, build their ideas on the basic choreographic principles.
Do not think that choreography is only applicable on stage. Any meaningful movement of the body can be choreographic. In general, try classical or modern choreography. Basically, hip-hop can work too.
11. Look for battle sensations
Pair dances return us to an active position of manifestation of our body.
As in the days of our ancient ancestors, we impress the members of the opposite sex by how dexterous, hardy, sexy, etc. we are. Modern laws of the jungle in the entourage of big cities.
If you look around the dance floor, it becomes clear that the majority are clearly herbivores (not in the sense of vegetarians, but in relation to those around them). I am sure that predators are always more interesting in terms of the attractiveness of the image - try to find a counterbalance among herbivores, for example, a cat woman or a lion man.
The conversation is about an internal position, not about aggressiveness. Lability and lack of control are inherent in adolescents, and not in adult self-sufficient people.
Accordingly, even a training or friendly battle gives, on the one hand, practical skills - to make a bright sequence of movements, bring an idea to a climax, show a spectacular feature, on the other hand, develops the psychological basis of the dance - self-confidence, resistance to extraneous attention, self-control and self-control in complex elements.
12. Communicate with professionals
The environment shapes the internal position. Basically, real passionaries of the dance community are ready to openly talk, discuss and support the development of dance in every possible way. Universal principles and the ideas they articulate have a much longer and more practical perspective than meets the eye.
Accept that, for example, behind the words "listen to your partner" is not only a beautiful metaphor, but also a practical skill to literally listen to your partner. At the same time, always treat every thought, even the most respected teacher, as a private opinion.
Your skill will lie in finding the scope of the idea even in conflicting opinions. Most often, the contradiction is speculative and the truth lies in the angle of perception or situationality.
Your dancing growth will stop sooner or later. This can happen at the level of three basic steps or years of experience in teaching and show performances.
