Yes, AM stinks!! I was involved for 2 years at an AM, and wouldn't step foot in that studio again if you paid me. My instructor lied to me about so many things.... There are so many other dance options out there, and I'm glad to see that other people have stopped "drinking the AM kool-aid!"

Oh, I do laugh!

America - just what makes the place tick? Here in the UK the overwhelming majority of dance studios are privately owned, and in my region, the going rate for a class if around £5/hour, and you just turn up and pay. If you don't like the teacher, the studio or the other students, you go where you like and pay about the same.

The price of private lessons can vary widely (as you would expect), but £18-25/hr is typical at beginner/intermediate level. There are no chains: I don't buy crap food at McDonalds, and I don't buy crap coffee at Starbucks - why on earth would I want to buy franchised dancing?

You get what you deserve. If customers didn't flock to such outfits, they would fold.

dancing is much more affordable in the uk....in the us, you can easily spend over $5,000 per year just taking one lesson per week. if you want to compete, it could easily be three times that..... the industry is just different here...it's aimed at fairly well to do people with a fair amount of discretionary income.....it's ridiculous, but that's the way it is....

Arthur murray is money maker but also very smart. As age restrictions apply at international studios for example age 35 is the breaking point between amatuer and masters! Also not everyone is considered competition material so people who want to dance and compete have no choice but to turn to studios as the like. Be very careful when signing contracts and also be strong don't let your emotions/desires run away try other studios like salsa they run comps and look around many social dance studios do allow students to compete and much lower fees. The staff at AM are so under experienced just give the teachers are hard time by throwing technical questions at them constantly eventuelly their true experience or lack of will come through.

Hi, i just wanted to say i am a student at an AM, and i really do love the studio, and you really sound like all of my instructors, i love dance and i do not think i would take it anywhere else. The instructors are great and the friends i have made are awesome!

But - it's nive they are nice people - but can you DANCE yet?

Although I do support the suppression of sales before dancing tactics, I must toss in my two cents here.

I see a lot of people complaining about instructors who learn from videos, and at the same time they complain about the high prices of lessons. Surely you know that if you learn from sources other than videos, you will be either taking lessons which cost money, or receiving professional coaching which costs more money.

I see people wanting professionally trained instructors (trained by professionals I assume) but they want the rates lowered. Now, while I am in agreement that some rates are very high, if you want a professional instructor, be prepared to pay for it, because it isn't cheap for them to get where they are at.

Just had to toss another viewpoint in there. But let it be known, I am against those instructors who try to "suck the money right out of you" because they give those of us who actually love to teach a bad rap.

Turning Point,

My husband and I started with AM in January. We have the same program $125 per unit (1 private, 1 group, 1 party) but have found that in some of the dances, we are becoming limited because we haven't paid for the next level of learning (we are in bronze 1 - AM breaks bronze up into 1, 2, 3 and 4) For us to continue all the way to bronze 4 it will cost us an additional $18,800! We learn pretty quickly apparently and when we ask questions about technique or something, we often get told that is later on in bronze. So basically, if we want to "know" we have to fish over $18,000!

We were going to order some videos from ballroomdancers.com to give us a few ideas since we can't afford that. What do you guys think?

$18,000 to learn bronze?

I've just done bronze & silver international ballroom on the back of six months of private lessons at £12/week, so that's just over £300. I passed with HC, so the teacher wasn't cutting corners (and, for example, my Waltz routine included 15 figures, when the syllabus required a minimum of just 6).

Are the US dance studios run by the mob? Do privately owned schools just "disappear"? Why do you pay such silly money?

Which means they (the teachers) haven't learned the step yet.

A friend, a former chain studio manager, and now a Fellow ISTD says the instructors were often just being taught the next step before the class started where he worked.



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OB