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What our students love about MLD
Students of ALL levels love, love LOVE performing at our annual MLD Showcase! You will too! ;-)
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Welcome to Melbourne Latin Dance

Welcome to Melbourne's home of Latin Dance.

Founded in 2005, MLD is one of Melbourne's longest running, most established and most experienced Latin dance schools in Melbourne. The founding director Liz was a pioneer of both LA Salsa and Bachata in Melbourne.

At MLD, we're all about teaching our students the correct technique from the start with lots of attention to detail.  It's our thing. But beyond being meticulous about teaching our students well, above all, MLD is a super friendly and fun place to learn Latin dance in Melbourne! We are so proud of how uber lovely and friendly our students are and the fun, warm and welcoming family vibe at the studio!  

The main styles of dance we offer are Salsa, Samba and Bachata.  We teach all levels of these styles, from absolute Beginners (we LOVE absolute beginners BTW!) all the way through to Advanced and Squad levels.  We also offer students the opportunity to perform at all of these levels too!

Our classes are taught as 8 Week Courses because organized syllabus courses have proven to us to be a far more efficient and effective way for students to learn and retain what they learn with revision and repetition, as compared to casual classes. 

Our classes are taught by our team of friendly and well trained instructors at our stunning, huge and freshly renovated studio in Richmond.  

We welcome students of all levels from absolute beginners to advanced dancers!

Come with a friend or come alone – you don’t need to come with a partner!

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Dance Styles

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What we offer

8 Week Courses in Salsa, Samba and Bachata

At Melbourne Latin Dance we specialize in Salsa, Samba and Bachata and we teach all of our classes as 8 Week structured syllabus courses. 

After years of teaching Latin Dance, with constant attention to honing and refining both our skills and teaching methods, we have come to the conclusion that running 8 Week Salsa Courses as opposed to “Casual” or “Drop In” classes really is the best way for us to most effectively and efficiently teach and respectively the best way for our students to learn.  

Being part of an 8 Week course also means that you really get to know the people in your course as you all go through term after term together, forming awesome friendships and bonds as you go! :-)

Liz first started teaching Salsa in 2003, even before MLD and back then even she, like many dance schools today, used to only run casual classes. This meant that every week, or every other week new people would come to the Beginners Classes, often never having danced a single step of Salsa in their lives (which incidentally, we love!) however, this meant that she would have to go back to the very beginning for these new comers meaning that the people in the class who had been coming along for the past 3, 5, 10 or however many weeks would understandably become quite bored. She overcame that by running 8 Week Courses where everyone starts together at the beginning of the course and progress together as a group each week.

At MLD, way the 8 Week Courses work is that at Week 1 we teach the first move of the syllabus.  Then the following week we do a quick revision and correct anything that needs “cleaning up” and then add need next part of the syllabus.  Every week after that for the entire 8 Weeks we continue to revise, clean and add, steadily building as we teach the entire routine. 

We have found that by doing this, students progress at a much faster pace and actually retain what they have learnt and therefore are able to actually use it when dancing socially, which of course is what it is all about!  Too many times students doing casual classes complain that they keep attending classes but can’t remember the turn patterns/moves.  Syllabus courses overcome this. 

The basic structure of all our partnered classes is at the beginning of the class the men and women learn their footwork separately so they know what they are doing independently of each other, then everyone partners up randomly in a big circle, rotating partners every few minutes.  At the Intermediate and Advanced levels, there is also a 5 - 10 minute isolations warm-up followed by shines before we move on to the turnpatterns (the actual salsa or bachata dance moves!) :-)

Courses also mean that we have much greater control of the ratio of men and women in our partnered classes.  That is, we limit the number of men and women who can join the course and if the numbers are even (or relatively close to even) we can invite people into the course either from higher levels or other courses to balance out the numbers.

Free Revision Videos with 8 Week Courses

Every week in our 8 Week Courses as we teach new moves, we film these and upload them to a private Facebook group for each dance style.  On the first week of our 8 Week Courses we offer our students free access to this Facebook group and the weekly revision videos. 

We are so pleased that our students have found this to be extremely beneficial especially if they have to miss class on a given week or just as an invaluable reference for practice and revision at home each week in between classes.

Spinning Workshops

The  2 hour Spinning Workshop will cover spinning technique literally from the ground up.  We will go into great detail about the all the technical elements that need to come together in a spin to make it work.  We will drill all of these elements separately and then put them all together as we drill various types of spins.

This workshop is a pre-requisite for anyone doing Bachata or Samba and should be done within the first 2 terms of Beginners.  For those doing Salsa, you will cover all of this material in the second half of your Salsa Fundamentals 8 Week Course.  You should ideally then continue to practice your turns and spins by revisiting this workshop as often as possible.

The 2 hour Spinning Workshop will run once per term, usually on the first Sunday of each term from 1.30 - 3.30 pm and is $30 if paid by the Early Bird Cut Off or $40 thereafter

In term 4 of 2019 it will run on Sunday the 14th of July from 1.30 - 3.30 pm.

 

Free Social Dancing Every Thursday Night at MLD

Every Thursday night (starting 4th July 2019) we will be running SOCIAL DANCING at MLD!  

This will be free for any students currently registered for any 8 Week Course at MLD or $5 entry for anyone else.

This is the time for the MLD Fam to hang out, have a dance together at the end of our school week and put into practice everything that you've been learning and just flat out have FUN!!! :-D 

 

Also, our studio really is the perfect venue for social dancing - it would be a shame not to!

- Our polished dance floor is 20 x 10 meters

- We have a super strong, industrial ducted air conditioner

- awesome party lighting 

- great sound system

and above all, an AWESOME group of humans we are proud to call our MLD Family, who are just the best fun to hang out and have a dance with!

MLD Showcase

The MLD Showcase is an opportunity for our students to challenge themselves to learn a choreographed routine in our Showcase Term and perform it on stage.

In 2019, Showcase will run in Term 5 which starts on the 26th of August and will culminate with the Showcase performance on Saturday the 19th of October. 

Showcase is the most anticipated term of the year for our students who each year look forward to being able to showcase what they have been learning to friends and family who love to come along to the MLD Showcase and watch proudly!

Unlike our regular 8 Week Courses which are one hour per week for 8 weeks, our Showcase Performance Courses are 2.5 hours per week for 8 Weeks and during this time, an entire performance choreography is learnt.  

Showcase Courses run for all levels and all styles of dance at MLD.  This provides a fabulous opportunity for students to accelerate their learning and to strive for something more.  If “dance on stage in front of an audience” isn’t on your bucket list yet, it should be!  It really is an extraordinary experience.

For full details about Showcase click here.

Private Lessons

Private lessons are available at the studio by appointment for any of the dance styles offered at Melbourne Latin Dance. The benefits of learning to dance with private lessons are numerous.  Obviously the convenience appeals to many people as private lessons are arranged at a time that is convenient for you rather than being locked into a fixed timetable.

Beyond convenience, privates are beneficial as you are learning one on one with your instructor and all of their attention is on you rather than being shared with 40 or so other students as is the case in a class scenario.  In this way, instructors are able to delve into far more detail than is possible in a class scenario, and are also able to tailor lessons to suit your needs, thereby targeting and developing your weaker areas specifically and developing your strengths.

Additionally, with partnered dances such as Salsa and Bachata, feeling connection through technically correct and effective lead and follow is crucial and privates enable your instructor to not only see if your dance technique is looking correct, but equally importantly to feel that your lead / follow connection and technique is correct.

 

Private lessons should be considered very early on in your dancing journey as even a few private lessons will help to prevent you falling into bad habits which you may not even be aware of.  Such bad habits, over time become ingrained in your muscle memory and then become increasingly difficult habits to break.

To book a private lesson please call us on 0419 150 174 or email us at dance@melbournelatindance.com.au

 

End of Term Parties

At the end of each 8 Week Term, everyone who has been part of the school that term is invited to come celebrate at our End of Term Party. It’s an awesome night full of dancing, a chance to catch up with friends and other shenanigans and all in all a super fun way to end each term!

We usually start the night off with a Free Beginners Salsa Revision class so that our Beginners Salsa students get a chance to revise what they learnt that term.

We run syllabus courses at MLD so by the end of the 8 Week Term everyone in the various courses has a fairly substantial routine down. The End of Term Party is an opportunity for students to perform what they learnt during the term.  It's a really casual, relaxed and fun night.  The "performance" as such is a really relaxed deal - no costumes, no fuss just a bit of fun for everyone and great preparation for getting on stage at our end of year MLD Showcase.

Then we all play a game of “Salsa Bingo” where everybody has a bingo card and everybody is a bingo number and song after song, partner after partner, everybody is out to strike off all the numbers on their card and win the $50 MLD Voucher!

Entry costs all of $5 for MLD students and 50% of proceeds go to our favorite charity – for years this has been The Humane Society International, but as from 2019, we are now donating to Charity:Water

About Us

At Melbourne Latin Dance we specialize in Salsa, Samba and Bachata and we teach all of our classes as 8 Week structured syllabus courses.  

 

Our ‘thing’ is quality classes

MLD has been running successfully since 2005 and it has become well renowned for the extremely high quality of its classes and technique taught.  It’s our thing.  There are various contributing factors which all come together to make this happen:

  • above all is the high level of technique taught
  • limited class sizes
  • all our courses run at our own venue which is an actual studio with 20 meters of floor to ceiling mirrors so not only can you see what you are doing in the mirror as you learn - but you can also clearly see the instructor(s).  We do not jam pack our classes.   Our focus always has been, and always will be quality.
  • teaching 8 Week Courses rather than casual classes via tried and tested, organized syllabus so that you learn everything in a logical sequence with just the right amount of repetition
  • plus, our classes are FUN!!! You learn more effectively when you're having fun!

 

Apparently our students love the family vibe at MLD

After more than 14 years of MLD, this updated version of our MLD website was built in 2019, and it was only when putting together the testimonial videos of some of our students for this website that we realized what our students loved the most about MLD!  We were already quite aware of how much they love the high level of technique taught and how fun the classes are but until the editing process of the testimonial videos, where almost every single student mentioned how much they loved the “family” vibe at MLD – we really had no idea that so many of our students felt this way!! What a lovely thing to become aware of!  So there you have it – our students love that when you’re at MLD, you feel like part of the family! :-)

 

The Principle of MLD has been dancing for more than 20 years

Liz Conrado is the founder of MLD and she has been dancing since 1995! Do the math on that one!  She has extensive experience and disciplined training behind her. Beyond her extensive training here in Australia, she has also trained overseas. In terms of her LA Salsa training, Wikipedia mentions 10 people in LA who are credited with the development of L.A. Salsa - Liz learnt directly from 7 of these 10 while she trained in LA and consequently was one of the pioneers of LA Salsa here in Melbourne. She was the first person in Victoria to receive the Sydney Latin Festival award for "Contribution to the Latin Dance Industry." This could be in part because, being a pioneer and one of the first teachers in Melbourne to teach LA Style Salsa, in sharing her passion for Salsa over the years, many of her students went on to become teachers themselves, thus helping the industry to flourish into the full and vibrant latin dance scene we have today.

 

Speaking of being pioneers in the Latin dance scene in Melbourne...

- we were one of the first schools to teach L.A. Style Salsa in Melbourne

- we were the first to introduce Bachata classes to Melbourne

- we were the first to start teaching 8 Week Courses as opposed to just casual classes

- we were the very first school to run a Showcase for our students

....and we'd like to think that our passion for what we do will continue to have us lead the way

 

We’ve been around a while...

Melbourne Latin Dance has been around since 2005, however Liz, the founder of MLD was even teaching for years before that! 

 

Our legacy

The are a some individuals and salsa schools in Melbourne who have contributed a great deal to building a huge Salsa social dancing scene – this has been their forte and everyone in the Salsa scene today,including us, owe much to them. One Melbourne Salsa school in particular.  Cudos ;-)

At Melbourne Latin Dance, although we too have contributed to the social dancing scene, our forte and major contribution to the Melbourne Salsa Scene has been to create quality dancers through technical instruction and detail to the Salsa foundations, fundamentals and technique in our classes.   This is largely due to the extensive technical dance training and background of the principal of MLD.

As such, many students of MLD have gone on to become teachers in many of Melbourne's vast and growing number of schools, and some have even open their own schools.  We are proud to say that at least an estimated 90% of the known Salsa Schools in Melbourne either currently have or have had teachers on their staff who learnt at MLD, and in some cases even the owners/principles of those schools were trained at MLD.  We stand proud of this legacy.

 

We know our sh!t

The long and short of it is that while it is fabulous that the love of Salsa and Bachata is spreading and there are consequently a growing number of Salsa and Bachata schools and teachers in Melbourne, unfortunately to date, there is no accreditation system as such governing teachers.  This means that literally anyone with any level or experience can teach. While this scenario is hopefully only the minority in this industry and may well be driven by good intentions and passion for dance, we encourage you to please be sure to do your research when choosing classes and courses and wherever possible do trial classes.  Beyond giving you an idea of the skill level of teachers, trail classes will also give you a feel for the various schools and classes so you find the best fit for you!  We offer trial classes of all our courses.  Click here to book yours now! :-)

Testimonials

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Frequently Asked Questions

You are welcome to come with a partner but YOU DEFINITELY DO NOT NEED TO COME WITH A PARTNER! :-)  

Most of our students do not join with partners. 

Basically all of our partnered classes have a maximum of 40 students – 20 guys and 20 ladies.  At the beginning of each class all the students partner randomly and form a circle and then throughout the class the students rotate through the circle and change partners every few minutes.

Students who do join the course with a partner and do not wish to rotate with other students are absolutely welcome to dance only with their partner.

We allow a maximum of 40 students in our classes.  In our partnered dance classes such as Salsa and Bachata, we allow 20 men and 20 women.  This is again another benefit of courses versus casual classes as this means that  we can better ensure a more even ratio of men:women.
 

After years of teaching Latin Dance, with constant attention to honing and refining both our skills and teaching methods, we have come to the conclusion that running 8 Week Salsa Courses as opposed to “Casual” or “Drop In” classes really is the best way for us to most effectively and efficiently teach and respectively the best way for our students to learn. Also, having travelled throughout the Australian and world salsa scenes and observing their trends, it is clear that the best salsa schools tend to offer syllabus courses rather than just casual classes.

Liz first started teaching Salsa in 2003, even before MLD and back then even she, like many dance schools today, used to only run casual classes. This meant that every week, or every other week new people would come to the Beginners Classes, often never having danced a single step of Salsa in their lives (which incidentally, we love!) however back then, this meant that she would have to go back to the very beginning for these new comers meaning that the people in the class who had been coming along for the past 3, 5, 10 or however many weeks would understandably become quite bored. She overcame that by running 8 Week Courses where everyone starts together at the beginning of the course and progress together as a group each week.  This does mean that you may have to wait a few weeks until the next course starts, but it's definitely worth the wait, and far more beneficial than picking up bad habits.

At MLD, way the 8 Week Courses work is that at Week 1 we teach the first move of the syllabus.  Then the following week we do a quick revision and correct anything that needs “cleaning up” and then add need next part of the syllabus.  Every week after that for the entire 8 Weeks we continue to revise, clean and add, steadily building as we teach the entire routine. 

We have found that by doing this, students progress at a much faster pace and actually retain what they have learnt and therefore are able to actually use it when dancing socially, which of course is what it is all about!  Too many times students doing casual classes complain that they keep attending classes but can’t remember the turn patterns/moves.  Structured syllabus courses overcome this. 

The basic structure of all our partnered classes is at the beginning of the class the men and women learn their footwork separately so they know what they are doing independently of each other, then everyone partners up randomly in a big circle, rotating partners every few minutes.  At the Intermediate and Advanced levels, there is also a 5 - 10 minute isolations warm-up followed by shines before we move on to the turnpatterns (the actual salsa or bachata dance moves!) :-)

An additional benefit of courses v's casual is that because we repeat and add to the turnpattern over the 8 Weeks, we are also constantly "cleaning" the entire routine over the term.  This means that our students are far less likely to get into bad habits by learning the routine once, as in casual classes and then practicing it by themselves without the instructor to correct and guide them.

Courses also mean that we have much greater control of the ratio of men and women in our partnered classes.  That is, we limit our courses to 20 men and 20 women.  We know by the first week of the term what the ratio is and if the numbers aren't balanced we can take measures such as inviting students into the course either from higher levels or other courses to balance out the numbers.

Courses are definitely a win! :-)

 

 

 

 

 

Clothing for Salsa and Bachata
Anything you’re comfortable in is fine.  Many students come to class straight from work in suits, others in tracksuits or jeans.  Absolutely anything goes, but we also have change rooms if you'd prefer to change :-)

Footwear for Salsa and Bachata

The requirements for footwear are a little more specific.  For both men and women ideally dance shoes should be worn. However, when you're first starting out at the beginners level, it's not a big deal if you don't have dance shoes.  In this instance, until you get yourself some dance shoes (and we have them available at the studio at very reasonable prices) here are some guildlines:

DO WEAR

- shoes that are comfortable and preferably have a thin, flexible sole (ladies, they do not have to have a heel)

- shoes that fit securely and ‘hug’ the foot

- sneakers that have a thin sole and do not have much grip are a great alternative to dance shoes

 

DO NOT WEAR

 - thongs and other slip on shoes 

- runners as they usually have a very wide and sometimes grippy base which may lead to an injury whilst turning and spinning

- (for the ladies) wedges, platforms, pointy toed shoes and stilettos. (I know, they're super pretty, but just not great to learn dance in!)

- shoes with thick soles or a "lip" around the edge of the shoe (ie, the sole is wider than the upper of the shoe)

 

Once you've done your first term and you know you want to continue, please see us about getting some dance shoes or jazz shoes.  Unisex Jazz Shoes are available at the studio from $50 - $70 and latin heels for the ladies from $120 (and they are gorgeous and SUPER comfy!). There really is a VAST difference between dancing in regular shoes versus dance shoes.  If you're going to invest your time and money on the classes, we strongly encourage you get some dance shoes.  For those doing salsa, certainly by your second term when you do Salsa Tech concurrently with your second Beginners Salsa Course, you really should have dance shoes to gain the benefit of Salsa Tech. If you don't have dance shoes or jazz shoes by the time you do tech, socks may be a good option.

 

Clothing for Samba
Dress as though you are going to the gym!  Leggings, shorts, track pants and sneakers are the attire to go with.  Also be sure to layer tops - you're going to need to peel them off!  Samba can be quite a workout!

 

Footwear for Samba

In term of footwear, ideally jazz shoes or samba shoes.   If you are just starting out and would rather wait until you know if Samba is for you before you invest in dance shoes, then please wear sneakers rather than runners.  Then, once you've fallen in love with samba and you know you'll be continuing, we strongly recommend that you get a pair of Jazz shoes ($50 - $70 from the studio) or Samba heels ($150 - $170).

 

 

The minimum age for all partnered classes such as Salsa and Bachata is 18 and over.  The minimum age for solo dance styles and classes such as Samba, Salsa Tech and Shines is 15 and over.

Although the average age group is 20’s and 30’s, there is no maximum age at Melbourne Latin Dance! 

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