Smooth and Rhythm Competition Dance Lessons

Not only do you not need a partner, but the vast majority of our competitive clients come solo. Your dance instructor will teach you steps and techniques and act as your dance partner.

The scheduling manager pairs all first-time clients with the best teacher for your goals. After your first lesson, your instructor and Competition Manager may feel that you’d be a better fit with another instructor so they may recommend moving you to someone else. But, in the end, who you work with is 100% up to you.

Throughout your competition training with us, you’ll have one primary instructor, but the Competition Manager will recommend you work with different instructors, depending on what they see as the quickest path for your learning.

Our competition school teaches all of the American-style nine dances: waltz, tango, foxtrot, Viennese waltz, cha cha, rumba, East Coast swing, bolero, and mambo. We also have add-on options that include Peabody, Salsa, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing, Samba, and Merengue. We do not teach international styles.

Ballroom Dance Chicago as a whole teaches many more dances, including Texas two-step, bachata, jitterbug, and many more.

BDC’s competition school requires that you learn all of rhythm, all of smooth, or all of both. If you would like to focus on one style, we can arrange for that type of learning, but it would be through our main school, which focuses on social dancing.

Yes, our syllabus includes Bronze, Silver, and Gold. We require testing with the Competition Manager to graduate from each level. Usually, testing happens at half bronze, full bronze, and then full silver and full gold. We can also customize your testing if you’d like it to be more frequent.

In short, yes. The more complicated answer is that not everyone is ready for competition all the time. As a school, we only send our students to competitions when we feel that they are prepared to have a good showing and a good time (by “good show” we mean that our students can be proud of their accomplishments).

Your instructor can compete with you in the Pro-Am competitions; however, you will only be judged in the competition, not your instructor.

Our school, while based in a lot of traditions, is not traditional. We accept and love all. When you meet with an instructor and the Competition Manager, you can choose your preference for a main teacher.

We can train you in either the leader’s or follower’s part, no matter your gender identity. If you want to compete, we will find competitions that match who you are and your goals.

We’re very similar to other ballroom, Latin and swing dance schools in that we have highly trained staff who care deeply about our clients’ success. We’re different from most studios in that we have three branches to our school: competition lessons, social lessons and wedding lessons. While some studios might claim to have a similar setup, they have the same teachers teaching all of these very disparate specialties. At Ballroom Dance Chicago, our teachers focus on one of the three branches and build skills related to that specialty. Only our most experienced teachers teach in more than one branch.

Our competition school requires students to come at least once a week for a lesson. Other than that requirement, the frequency of your lessons is up to you; however, and this will come as no surprise, the more often you come, the faster your progress. Most of our competition clients come at least twice a week, some as many as everyday.

You can purchase as many lessons as you wish at a time. The more you purchase, the larger the discount per lesson. Your teacher and the Competition Manager will meet with you to talk about packages and how they relate to your dancing goals.

We teach competition lessons only at our Lakeview studio (Lakeview also has social and wedding lessons). Our West Loop studio offers social and wedding lessons only.