Adult Dance Schools - Getting A Raw Deal? by Kevin Shwe

Wherever you go, whichever town you live in you'll be able to find a dancing school for children. Not to mention the new ones popping up all the time.
But what about dancing schools for adults? There are nowhere near as many and all the ones available seem to cater exclusively for professional dancers, or are 2 - 3 year college courses.
So where does an adult beginner wanting to learn to dance start? Well naturally it quite depends on your goals. If you just want to learn a couple of dance moves or do it as a hobby your aims are very much different from a late adult beginner wanting to do it professionally as a living.
The college route of doing 2 - 3 years is something that should be looked at by someone looking to do it professionally. But even they have to begin somewhere often learning part-time to begin with in order to audition successfully for a dance college.
So if you're a beginning adult looking to learn for fun or with professional aspirations, to begin with you should look for either a part-time dancing school for adults or a dance studio. There aren't many dance schools that operate part-time for adults so you may have to look into dance studios.
You should try to find your nearest dance studio that offers top level instruction and a range of classes that are near to you. The better the quality of instructors, the better prepared you will be for what's ahead. Even if you're doing it for fun it makes sense to have a good dance teacher, you'll learn how to dance properly then!
If you want to dance for a living you should try and do a variety of skills from commercial and hip-hop to the core college subjects such as ballet, jazz and tap as well. If you're doing it for fun you can do whichever dance classes take your fancy!
The problem for adult beginners is because naturally there are fewer dance schools for adults, they have to go to drop-in classes at studios where the training isn't so gradual. So it is very hard to begin with when they're finding their feet which can become discouraging.
So to summarise find a good dancing school or a dance studio with good dance teachers and dance classes that will continue to inspire you even when the going gets tough!