Last week, I went to my first ever L.A. dance class. You’ve seen the videos before: dimly lit dance studios, the sound of people hyping each other up, baggy sweatpants, oversized t-shirts (though usually tucked into a sports bra or thrown over a shoulder carelessly) and dancers that make some of the most insane choreographies look so easy.
The two most viral dance studios in L.A. are Millenium Dance Complex and Playground LA. Both of these studios garner over millions of views on social media via YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for their high-quality choreographies, dancers, and videos that they produce.
I’ve been watching videos from these two dance studios since middle school, where I would teach myself choreographies from these videos and practice them in my basement. Watching these videos was a big part of my dance journey. I always found them so fun and cool to watch — imagining what it would be like to be in that space and experience that energy. So when one of my teammates on my dance team (shoutout ACA All Day) asked me if I wanted to go take a dance class at Playground, I was immediately on board!
I took an intermediate/advanced heels class with Beaulexx. Going into this class, I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I’d watched lots of videos from them before, but I never knew what the experience was actually like. I ended up deciding to wear sneakers because I’d never danced in heels before, and also thought the choreography was a little bit more hip-hop.
The class started at 8:00PM. We got there at around 8:05, but the first ten minutes or so were for stretching on your own. The class officially started at around 8:15PM, when we started learning the choreography for the next hour or so.
What I wasn’t expecting was how crowded these classes could be. The studio itself isn’t huge, and they really pack people in there. I didn’t grow up doing dance conventions or dancing competitively, so this was my first experience in a big class like this. Because of that, it was sometimes difficult to see what the choreographer was teaching. But she was really accommodating for questions, like clarifying timing, certain movements, and footwork.
We finished learning the choreography, and then went into performing in groups. Even though I didn’t exactly have the moves down yet, we got to do multiple rounds to both get the moves down and focus on our performance. We then went into performing in select groups chosen by the choreographer.
Performance was something that was heavily emphasized in this class — how do you want to execute each move? How do you want your facials to look? I usually don’t put that much attention into these things, but this class made me think a lot about performance and its importance in my dancing.
That being said, it felt very “LA” to focus so heavily on performance. Once we started filming groups, it was like a switch was turned on, and everyone was giving 120% at the camera. I don’t say this as a bad thing — watching people perform like that was insane! But I think there can be a balance between performing to impress and performing to express. I dance because I feel like I’m expressing myself through movement, and with that comes a certain performance aspect — one that has the natural ability to “impress”.
All in all, I had so much fun at this class, and I would totally take one again! I really enjoyed learning difficult choreography in such a short amount of time, and then performing it for everyone and taking fun videos. If you’ve never taken an LA dance class before, I would absolutely recommend it!