We have been members of the Arthur Murray studio in Gaithersburg since Fall of 2011. We joined the studio with virtually no dance experience and true to the Arthur Murray pledge, they had us on the floor and dancing in our first class. It was pretty basic technique that first night, but we have steadily learned more and more and have completed two levels of instruction (a six week "Newcomer" program, and the Bronze I curriculum, which took about a year for us in all).
Why did we start? We had taken basic salsa lessons on a cruise and thought it would be fun to continue.
Why do we continue? We have made excellent friends; we have fun; we have become more agile and graceful; and we are learning how to dance. We have learned a LOT and although we are far from great dancers by studio standards, we are now Looking Pretty Good socially, in the context of a school dance or wedding.
Why Arthur Murray? Both of us are educators (I'm an athletics trainer, she's a primary school teacher) and so we can recognize the instructional methodology carefully incorporated into the enjoyable and "non-threatening" program plan. I won't go into the details here but the methodology and curriculum is very strong and the instructors are not just good dancers but good teachers who have been trained and certified by Arthur Murray. When I was certified as a trainer for youth sports, I was taught that a good training plan manages to "insert the instruction into the fun." AM takes the same balanced approach, and that has kept us coming back to the studio for the past year (that, and all the friends we've made).
We saw another post on Yelp regarding a different Arthur Murray studio in Virginia, from several years back. Although we don't question the accuracy of that reviewer's comments, we wanted to close here with a couple of our own comments on the other reviewer's experience with Arthur Murray events, and the fees in general.
Yes, there are many Arthur Murray outside events, and you are encouraged to participate. These can be expensive. An analogy you could consider would be participating on a competitive sports team: besides playing your weekly matches, you'd probably go to a tournament or two (and pay tournament fees) since that motivates you to improve your level of play. AM feels the various outside events are the same - chances to show what you can do, see what others can do, and generally accelerate your learning. We have not yet participated in one of these events, although we have gone to cheer for our friends a couple of times, and no one has tried to pressure us.
Regarding the fee structure: frankly we would not comment on this and let you work this out with the studio, but we were so surprised by what we saw in the other post... we can say that our yearly costs are no where near what the other post mentioned.
Here's what you really need to know about the costs: coming to visit as a guest to just watch a group class, to see how it all works, is usually encouraged. If you want to take the next step, most AM studios will offer some sort of promotion, such as two private lessons for a very low fee. If that works out for you, then NEXT step is a short curriculum called the Newcomer class, which has you in the studio for a few weeks in both private classes and group classes. The first time you are likely to be offered an annual contract is after all of that, and you will probably have options to scale the contract to fit your time and budget (based on how many private lessons you want each month). As part of the contract process, AM will work very closely with you to tailor the curriculum to your own objectives (for example, what dances you would most like to learn). Lastly, at least in our contract, we are paying AM quarterly, so we do not have a big prepaid balance hanging out there... and the studio was very accommodating when we had to take time off due to an auto accident. read more