Blues Foundations: Every Thursday
New to blues dance? Experienced dancer trying to level up your dancing? We host a beginner-friendly foundations lesson at 8:15pm every week before the dance. Come try it out or refresh your skills! No partner or prior experience required. See more info below.
Special Event Thursday, August 27
Visiting Instructor Fen Lastra joins us to teach intermediate and beginner-friendly blues dance classes!
Dr. Fen Lastra is a full-time dance geek based in upstate New York, where they work as a dance professor and historian. They have been dancing Blues since 2010, supporting events as a competition coordinator, access and safety lead, and instructor. Fen’s classes are known for combining granular technique with a spirit of play and curiosity – they would love for you to ask them to dance!
Intermediate Class Topic: Recipes for Conversation
Blues is famously a conversational art, drawing on riffing, cutting, call and response, and other structures in both its music and movement. In this class, we’ll look at how to have connected conversations in our partner dancing, using our voices to shine for ourselves and inspire each other.
Access notes: For the intermediate class, you should be familiar with at least one Blues idiom dance (such as jukin’, ballroomin’, or Piedmont) and how to follow direction and momentum in it. Rotation will be scramble-style, with the option for different kinds of holds.
Intermediate lesson 7–8pm ($25 at the door, no pre-registration)
Beginner-friendly lesson 8:15–9pm ($10 at the door, no pre-registration)
Paying for either class gets you into the dance for free!
9pm–11:30pm Blues Dance DJ’d by Tom Corwin and Coriander Woodruff
Weekly Drop-In Foundations Classes taught by Capital Blues staff
Time: 8:15pm–9pm
Location: Back Room, Glen Echo Park
Cost: $10 covers admission to the class at 8:15pm and the DJ’d dance from 9pm to 11:30pm. No reservation required!
Wearing smooth-soled shoes that slide easily will help you dance comfortably and protect our wooden floors.
Instructors and topics rotate, so each class teaches something a little different. Several instructors also offer private lessons.
Occasionally we offer class series or one-off lessons with resident and traveling instructors that dive deeper into specific blues dance styles and topics. Some of these classes require previous experience.