Your dance Journey Begins Here

Every partner dance has a starting pattern called the Basic.

Think of it as your "home base." As you learn new patterns, you'll almost always begin and end with the Basic before moving on to something else.

In partner dancing, each person has a different role:

• The Leader chooses which patterns to dance and uses clear movements to communicate them. 
• The Follower watches for those signals and responds by following the leader's guidance. 

Don't worry about being perfect. Right now, your goal is simply to become familiar with the movement and start understanding how partner dancing works.

There are many great dances to begin with, but we believe Rumba is one of the best.

Rumba is danced at a slower pace than many other partner dances, giving you more time to think about your foot placement, timing, and movement. That makes it an excellent dance for building a strong foundation.

Even better, many of the skills you'll develop while learning Rumba—such as leading and following, balance, rhythm, and body movement—will carry over into other dances you learn in the future.

Now, let's learn your very first Basic.

Now that you've learned the Rumba Basic, it's time to see how dancing begins to come together.

As you become a better dancer, you'll learn dozens of different patterns. The exciting part is that those patterns don't replace the Basic—they connect to it.

A social dance isn't one long pattern. Instead, it's a series of smaller patterns chosen by the leader and connected together to create a dance.

In this next video, you'll learn your very first pattern that connects to the Basic.

Congratulations! You now know two Rumba patterns: the Basic and the Side Rocks.

By connecting those two patterns together, you've already started building your first dance. As you continue learning, you'll add more patterns to your toolbox and connect them together in different ways to create a dance that feels smooth and natural.

But before we add another pattern, let's take a closer look at something you've probably already noticed...

You may have noticed that we counted our steps in the previous video.

Those numbers weren't just there to help you remember where to put your feet—they also represent the timing of the dance.

Timing is what allows your movements to match the music. Every dance has its own basic or default rhythm and learning that rhythm is just as important as learning the steps themselves.

The good news is that once you understand timing, you learn patterns much quicker and will stay in sync with your partner more consistently.

 Let's take a look at the timing used in Rumba.

Now that you've seen how Rumba is counted, let's compare it to a few other dances.

Although every dance has different timing, you'll notice something encouraging...

When you're first learning, the beginner patterns in each dance almost always share the same rhythm as the Basic.

That means once you've learned the timing of the Basic, you won't have to relearn the timing every time you learn a new beginner pattern.

Instead, you can focus your attention on learning the new footwork and movement while keeping the rhythm you've already practiced.

It's one of the reasons beginner dancing is often easier than people expect.