About Dance Reset
Dance should feel like something you get to do — not something you’ve got to be excellent at.
Dance Reset grew out of a simple truth: movement can be good for us without becoming another thing we have to perform, perfect or prove ourselves at.
I wanted to deliver classes to people who may love music and movement but might not necessarily think of themselves as dancers; people who want to get fitter, feel more confident in their bodies, switch off from the pressures of everyday life, and enjoy moving without judgement.
So, you don’t really need dance experience and you don’t need to be especially fit. If you can count to eight and you’re willing to move, then you’ll be perfectly fine.
About me
When I was 38, I went to university as a mature student to get a degree in Dance: Urban Practice. I’ve worked across all sorts of dance education, community practice and inclusive teaching. Academically, I approach dance from a socio-political angle and how it comments and reflects us, our values, and celebrations, rituals and the various ways in which it’s been appropriated.
In practice, I use dance to teach and mentor. I work with primary, secondary and SEND settings, as well as adults and young people through community and professional dance programmes.
My background is rooted in hip hop and Traditional West African dance practice, with experience across styles including Afrobeats, Commercial and Vogue since 1987. As someone who’s engaged in the Hip Hop dance since that time, I’ve understood how as form of Black art and expression, it’s important to educate myself on a cultural capital that’s outside of my own. Since 2011 I’ve been part of Semekor Dance, a Pan-African dance group led by dance and drumming master Semekor Dordoh, training in London and Ghana.
But I want to make this clear: the most important part of my work has never been about producing technically perfect dancers. It’s about helping people feel more confident, more connected to their bodies and understanding how creativity and dance are a kind of physical meditation. I learnt more about myself through dance than I ever did at school.
My approach
Good teaching starts with the person in front of you. Instead of putting choreography on someone else’s body, I realised when the dancer expresses what their body can do, enjoys doing, their experience is far more enjoyable, diverse and profound.
But, I do understand that participants do want choreography to work with. That means explaining movement clearly, offering different ways of approaching a step, and recognising that everybody and every body learns and moves differently.
In a Dance Reset class, you won’t be expected to copy everything perfectly or keep up at all costs. You can adapt movements, take things at your own pace and build confidence gradually.
The aim is to create a space that feels supportive rather than competitive.
While there might be mirrors, they’re not there to demand perfection. There’s no expectation that you already know how to dance, and no pressure to perform for anybody else.
Why Dance Reset?
A lot of adult exercise sits at one of two extremes.
There are traditional dance classes, where people can sometimes feel they need a certain level of experience — and certainly confidence — before they even walk through the door.
And there’s the gym, which works brilliantly for some people but leaves others completely uninspired; It’s hard enough to keep to a fitness regime if you’re bored, and besides, the measurement of your goals can be slow.
Dance Reset occupies somewhere else.
It is a proper physical workout, sure, but the music, rhythm and movement are central to the experience. You’re not pounding a treadmill and destroying your knees; pedalling while some super-fine, ultra-fit trainer bellows instructions at you.
What you are doing is developing other skills, making new pathways in the brain, helping stave off ageing and each time, you’ve got something measurable that you’ve learnt; that might be a simple step you’ve been struggling with, or a whole new combo, but the point is this: You won’t leave with some nebulous goal regarding weight loss or muscle creation that’s measurable only after weeks of work.
You’ll sweat. You might discover muscles you’d forgotten about. You might get a step completely wrong and laugh. That’s all part of it.
If your aim is to simply burn calories, you definitely will. But you’ll also leave feeling more energised, more confident and much more connected to yourself.
Dance for every body
All our bodies are different.
They have different strengths, different histories and traumas, different energy levels and different ways of moving. That understanding is central to why I wanted to offer dance classes like Dance Reset.
Movement can be adapted and choreography can be learned gradually. Rest is allowed. And nobody needs to look exactly like the person next to them.
The class is there to work for the people, the bodies, in the room — not the other way around.
The reset
All dance classes end with a short period to breathe, stretch and settle the body. What I’ve found over the last 20 years is what a good opportunity it is to check-in with yourself. I include a short visualisation on healing, self-acceptance and get perspective on what’s going on in our lives.
So, with the cool down, you can bring the heart rate down, notice how you feel, and leave the space with a little more space in your head than you arrived with.
That’s the reset in Dance Reset. It’s therapeutic.
So, come as you are.
Dance, sweat and reset.