Arthur Calandrelli – Ballroom & Latin Dance Instruction

Arthur is a genius! He taught us our wedding first dance in August/​September of last year. We gave him the song, and even though he’d never choreographed a dance to it before, he very quickly and naturally figured out the step we’d do (an East Coast swing) and taught us basic steps, a couple of fancier steps, an entrance, and a finale. We met with him over the course of 4 Saturday mornings in a dance studio in Potrero Hill. He recommends doing at least 5 lessons with couples for a wedding first dance, especially if one or both don’t have dance experience, but he’s flexible about working with you on your timeline, which I think is also testimony to his fine teaching skills. We’d love to have a reason to go back. Maybe get married again?
He’s very responsive to email. Check out his website and you can find his contact info there.
Thank you Arthur, we had so much fun learning our dance from you, and our guests had a blast watching us perform it! Hope to share a video of the dance with you sometime in the near future :)

More 5 stars for Arthur. I’ve been treating myself to some privates so that I could learn the waltz properly. I had horrible confidence problems, which Arthur dealt with kindly and compassionately, and plenty of encouragement. Today, I am moving around the floor as I thought I never could. What a thrill. Our lessons are full of hard work and laughter. I’m so grateful to be one of his students.

Arthur is fantastic. My fiancée and I have taken 6 lessons with him, originally starting learning salsa as a birthday gift. We then transitioned to swing/​jitterbug to prepare for our wedding first dance — not choreographed. He’s a patient teacher helping us nail down the steps so we can have fun and think on our feet. It’s been an enjoyable experience working with Arthur. I highly recommend and will definitely be back in the future. Thanks Arthur!

Arthur is a very creative dance instructor. My wife and I were looking for a choreographer to help us with our wedding’s first dance, and we found Arthur on Unilocal.From the initial phone conversation, I can tell he is very passionate about dancing. What I really appreciated about Arthur is how transparent he is during lessons. He will not sugar-​coat anything in order to help me improve.
After the 1^st lesson, I’ve come to realize I dance with 2 left feet, and Arthur knew he had his work cut out for him over the next 7 weeks. We had a good feeling about Arthur, so we began with a 10-​lesson package. Over the course of the next few weeks, Arthur was very understanding and patient. He really took his time to help us nail any shortcomings I felt I had. By the end of the 7 weeks, Arthur helped get me dancing on both feet again!
As the wedding date drew closer, we began to easily stress out as most bride and grooms do. What I really appreciated about Arthur is that he took a few minutes for time-​out with us, and helped us remember why we are taking lessons in the first place, and that this should be a fun experience. That kind of compassion from Arthur is one of the biggest take-​aways from this entire journey.
What I really wanted to focus on for the first dance was the intro, crescendo, & outro, so we asked Arthur to get creative and help us choreograph. After the wedding, we received a lot of compliments on how beautiful and unique our first dance turned out.
Kudos to you Arthur !

My husband and I decided to take lessons for our first dance at our wedding. Since neither of us had any experience, we decided to go with a 10 private lesson package since we wanted the dance choreographed and special.
The ballroom was spacious and had plenty of room even on days with other instructors and private lessons. On our first meeting, we played Arthur our song and described the «type» of dance or look we were going for. After listening for only a moment, he explained the type of dance that would go with the music and showed us a few steps. From there our lessons progressed and more steps were added at our own pace. Arthur was EXTREMELY patient and encouraging even though there were times we failed to practice and didn’t improve much from our previous lesson.
On the actual day, everyone commented how unique and pretty our dance was! Many even said they never saw or expected a routine as detailed as ours even though we repeated a few moves. I highly recommend Arthur! You won’t regret it. :)

Arthur is an amazing instructor that is patient and can quickly identify problematic areas with each student and change his coaching to maximize lesson effectiveness.
I hired Arthur to choreograph and teach my husband and I our first dance for our wedding and he did an amazing job. We had a super limited amount of time and he was able to get us ready in just 2 lessons.
His prices are very reasonable and he is very flexible as well. Please give Arthur a call if you are looking for a dance lesson :)

Arthur is amazing. We took five classes with him to shape up a nice first-​dance routine for our wedding. Arthur was fun to learn from, creative, knowledgeable, and we felt turned us into total pros on East Coast Swing (in our case) within just these few hours. And that is because of HIS talent, not ours.
In fact we had so much fun with him that we are thinking of picking up ballroom dancing, and hope that he’ll keep working with us.
Arthur rocks!

My husband and I took private lessons with Arthur before our wedding in May and we loved them! Not only did he help us look good in front of our family and friends, we had so much fun practicing during the lessons. We went into the first lesson with just a song picked out. And we aren’t dancers per se. It is not your traditional song or necessarily an easy song to choreograph to but he quickly came up with a few steps for us to begin with. Once we had the fundamentals down, Arthur introduced some more fun and more interesting moves. He built up our confidence and with only 5 lessons (plus practicing on our own), we were able to put on a good show, feel good about it, and have fun doing it! We highly recommend Arthur!

Arthur is so great! My husband and I took a few dance lessons before our wedding. We didn’t want choreographed dance, but we also didn’t want to be lame and just sway. For people with no real dance experience, and really a lack of coordination, Arthur was patient and really focused on the basics. He also made it fun and light hearted. I really recommend taking a few private lessons with him — it’s certainly worth it!
Arthur is also super flexible and can do weekends which I found great!

I came to Arthur looking to get back into Ballroom after 3 years of having not done it much at all. He’s an impeccable instructor — he’s able to clearly break down the technique involved in complicated steps. And just as importantly, he also knows when to tell you not to overthink it and encourage you to just figure it out by dancing.
This teaching by doing was especially helpful when he’d lead me into new steps before explaining them to me since it showed me with good following skills you don’t have to know everything. I still wouldn’t call myself a dancer but I can now follow pretty confidently. I even got to pick up a few leading skills as well.
Overall, Arthur is a lovely and patient teacher and I highly recommend him to anyone looking to improve their social dancing skills while also having a lot of fun.

I would highly recommend Arthur to all of the engaged couples out there looking for a dance instructor in the city, available after work, at a reasonable price, on short notice & easy to work with. With zero dance experience & a short time frame, Arthur gave my husband & me a crash course in 5 lessons. Arthur makes novice dancers feel comfortable, at ease & instills confidence with easy to follow lessons & practice. We had chosen the song we wanted to dance to for our «first dance» & Arthur helped choreograph the dance. Arthur consulted with us about how much we wanted to choreograph & how much flexibility we wanted, we opted to choreograph the entry & finale to give it some umph, but decided to learn a handful of basic foxtrot steps to fill in the middle, this gave my husband and I the ability to relax & enjoy our dance without having to worry at every moment. At our wedding, the spins & twirls that Arthur taught us wowed the crowed & were received by cheers & applause, our finale dip was welcomed with a standing ovation, definitely a great decision to take dance lessons.

My fiancée (now husband!) and I hired Arthur to choreograph and teach us a first dance for our wedding. We bought the 5-​package deal, but ended up buying an additional class to wrap it all up. It was SO FUN and I’m so sad we aren’t taking classes with Arthur any more. Arthur was very patient although we both are terrible dancers, and offered several options for each step of the choreography. In the end, the first dance turned out great! Arthur was definitely one of the best decisions of our wedding.

My husband and I took two lessons with Arthur to learn some moves for our first dance at our wedding. Arthur taught us some great moves that we were able to learn and practice during our lessons with him. We really liked his style and creativity, and he made everything comfortable (learning to dance two-​step can probably be pretty awkward for some!). He was worth every penny, and now even beyond our wedding we have moves that we’ll be able to use forever!

My wife and I wanted to do a bit more to impress our wedding guests, and dance to the tango that appeared in Scent of a Woman (Por una Cabeza). Given that we are not into dancing at all and a week away from the wedding, we sought an instructor who could teach us the basics and throw in a few moves in there. The goal was not to blow away our guests but to leave a pleasant impression. We managed to do more than that, thanks to Arthur.
we had only 5 hours of lessons. In the first lesson we were able to choreograph most of the dance (it was 2 mins 38 secs). In addition to the a few nice moves, he also instructed us on the posture, body movement and other technical stuff.
Come wedding night: The dance was a big success. Except for a few real dancers, all our guests were impressed and thought we have been regularly dancing.
I recommend Arthur as your first dance instructor. He was very punctual, and was constantly evaluating our dance, correcting as needed.

This review is long overdue… My fiancé and I were searching for an instructor to teach us the basics and choreograph our first dance. We called several instructors and Arthur was by far the most flexible about our options. He was also the most engaged and interested in making sure we were ready for the big day.
Due to a little mixup on our end we hadn’t sent Arthur our song in advance of the first lesson. But it was amazing to watch as he listened to the song and began to string together various steps, starting with the basics and slowly incorporating additional components. After a few sessions and some practice at home we were ready for the big day!
Arthur is a great teacher — he has a passion for dance, along with an easygoing style and ability to guide you through the proper technique. Highly recommend giving him a call if you’re looking for an instructor.

As my fiancé puts it, he didn’t want just a hug and wiggle for our first dance, so he sought professional help. He called 5 instructors and Arthur was the best in terms of price and availability. He was great. For our homework, we sent him a couple songs and he chose the best one to dance to. During our first lesson he already taught us 3 different steps to incorporate in our song.
Throughout the lessons, he honed our technique and answered all our questions. We would practice and forget the exact steps to take. He’s very patient, graceful and understanding. I would come back again and learn more steps to show off at other weddings =P

My fiancée and I signed up for the 5 lesson package (Best deal) of all. Arthur is the first Salsa instructor we’ve ever practiced with so unfortunately I cannot compare with other s. However, I assure you that our experience so far is nothing less but amazing.
Arthur is friendly, punctual, patient, knowledgeable, and passionate about dance. My favorite part is that he focuses on the fundamentals and proper technique. For someone who does not have any dance experience, I believe this is essential.
Don’t expect him to give you a routine and leave you alone to practice.
I can’t wait until my wedding day to share with our friends and family what we’ve learned in the 2 weeks with Arthur.
I highly recommend!

I love taking the lessons with Arthur.
His extensive knowledge in latin dance and teaching is undeniable, he’s also got a great personality, patient, flexible and very easy to work with. He’s teaching me tango and salsa, only a few classes I’ve already improved a lot. I brought a friend last time to our class and we had a lot of fun.
Highly recommended!

This is an overdue review for Arthur.
And like the others who worked with Arthur, I also highly recommend you to consider taking classes from Arthur to help with your wedding dance choreographing. For two people who have no basis in dancing, Arthur worked diligently and patiently with us through our 5 sessions and helped us to achieve our envisioned piece (include quite a bite of fox trot and twirling). With practice, we accomplished it. Thanks to Arthur, the piece added an additional charm to our elegant wedding.

I love this guy!
I have to tell you that were very adamant about not having a cheesy choreographed dance for our wedding. We just wanted to learn a few steps and learn how to piece them together.
We first bought a 4 pack lesson with another dance instructor (whom i won’t mention) and it was just awful. The steps didn’t go with the music and insisted on us having a planned dance. Needless to say, we just called that a total loss and thought we’d give another teacher one more try and only do just 1 lesson this time. After the first lesson with Arthur, we wanted more and wish we would have called him first! Here’s why:
— Flexibility — By the time we called him we only had a month left till the wedding and Arthur already had a vacation planned. EEEK! We managed to squeeze in 3 lessons with time to spare!
— Patience — Arthur is soooo nice and encouraging. He would correct us in a way that never made either of us feel bad. After each lesson, we would feel so positive and excited to practice!
— Ability to dance as a lead or follower — this one is KEY. Arthur would sometimes dance the lead and have my fiancé follow so that my fiancé could feel how he should be leading me. As someone with some dance experience, this was invaluable! Sometimes you just have to feel steps to understand and he was able to do that for both of us!
— Range — Arthur would always show us a move and then ask us if we were comfortable with it. If I thought it was too cheesy we would work with multiple variations till we liked it.
— Detailed — He knows his stuff. He taught us basics steps and how to move between them so we could just dance naturally. But he also taught us how a slight move of a hand or a shoulder could make a big difference and look more polished.
All in all, we had such a fun time with Arthur and would recommend him to anyone. He really listed to what we wanted and worked with us patiently till we got it.