The term Ballroom is often used to refer to all social partner dancing. In recent times, Dancesport organizations have divided the term Ballroom dance into two styles: American style and International style. Most dance educators agree that the American style smooth dances are waltz, foxtrot, tango and Viennese waltz. Peabody is an older dance that is seldom taught in American ballroom. The American rhythm dances include cha cha, rumba, mambo, bolero, samba and East Coast swing. Dance studios and educators usually consider waltz, foxtrot, tango, cha cha and rumba, the classic ballroom dances. These are the ones that are normally included in a ballroom dance program at social partner dance studios. East Coast swing is also considered a swing and included in the swing dance category.

The term Latin dance refers to the dances done to music from the Americas, especially South Amerian and Central America. These dances are also divided into several styles like International, American and club dancing. The club Latin dances include merengue, bachata and salsa. The club Latin dances have been very popular since the eighties, especially.

Pattie Wells’ Dancetime Center is the premier dance studio for American style Ballroom dance lessons in San Diego. We are Latin and ballroom dance experts and feature an innovative system of dance instruction called Core Elements Training, which is a conceptual method of dance instruction rather than the older rote pattern teaching methods. We offer weekly lessons in both Latin and ballroom dancing, which include waltz, foxtrot, rumba, cha cha and American style tango. We supplement our dance class lessons with private dance lessons, semi-private dace lessons and up to four dance practice parties weekly including two ballroom and Latin dances, three West Coast swing dances, two hustle dances, one blues dance party monthly plus a jitterbug & swing party every Sunday. Many of our dance instructors compete and have years of experience in both performance dancing and dance instruction.

For newcomers, the best place to start ballroom dance lessons is in our Ballroom & Latin 101 course. It consists of three parts a, b,c and covers the classic Ballroom dances: waltz, foxtrot, cha cha, rumba and tango. This class is a Limited Repeat class so each part is repeatable whenever it is offered for one year. The Pattie Wells’ Dancetime studio is the only studio that features repeatable classes. This is innovative system allows the student to get the repetition necessary to actually learn the dance fundamentals for each dance genre.