DanceSport at Dupont Circle

Terry and Lucas work together as a perfect team. Techniques by Terry, execute by Lucas equal PERFECT!
The studio is a nice wide size, could use a little more update and decorations. However, it’s quite alright for taking lesson.
Again, Terry and Lucas are excellent coaches.
I look forward to my weekly lesson, always.

My fiancé and I decided to take dance lessons a few months back as a fun hobby. At first we had Terry, a world renowned dance coach. He was a great influence and instructor. However, he is definitely geared towards more advanced professionals. He recommended another teacher under his instruction, named Luca. Luca makes dancing extremely fun and is so patient and understanding when it comes to beginners. We decided at this point that we needed a first dance for our wedding. At first, he had us dancing to the Viennese Waltz but he soon realized that it was just too advanced for us. He choreographed a dance for us that were so perfect and beautiful, that everyone at our wedding loved it!
The best part about this studio was that they allowed the students to use their facilities to practice. Luca would always chime in during our practice runs to be sure our footwork was correct. The teachers are caring, helpful, and passionate about dancing. This studio is very reasonably priced and it’s not pretentious at all.
I highly recommend this studio if you want to learn how to dance and have fun while doing it. We loved it so much here that we decided to continue weekly group lessons once a week. Thank you Dance Sport for giving us this amazing hobby to share and love together.

I didn’t even take a class here because the customer service was so disrespectful. I emailed an inquiry about taking a class with my fiancé to prepare for our wedding. In the email I mentioned: «We have 2 expired Living Social deals which we will use towards the lesson, and we will make up the difference in price.»
Instead of a respectful, professional response, I received the following email (4 days later):
Hi, that time slot is avail, however as indicated on all of the ads as well on the voucher in several places, only one voucher can be purchased and used per individual or couple. If it wasn’t expired, LS may have refunded one of them, however you can contact them directly. I could also check with the teacher who is open then and see if he will honor one form each of you in different appointments. He is the one who is giving up income during that prime time, sat afternoon time slot, so would be the one to make the final call.
Let me know if that would even be of interest to u before I even check with him.
Take care,
~ Terry
I had misunderstood the fine print and would have happily only used one expired voucher towards the class. However, the email was so disrespectful, I will instead happily take my business elsewhere.

My fiancé and I just came back from our first lesson. We don’t dance so we were starting from zero and working with Terry was just such a pleasure. We now have some moves to practice and we are excited about the dancing. Also, he very sweetly gifted us two small houseplant cuttings on our way out.
It was a Dance-​at-​Your-​Wedding workshop, but we were the only people there so it turned into basically a $ 24 private lesson. It’s in a church basement, but it’s a perfectly nice and useable space. The vibe is definitely more grassroots community center than super-​polished commercial studio. It was PERFECT for us. As we were leaving a group was arriving to practice their dance performance for Pride and I think Terry was participating in that.
Other reviews here had the valid critique that they didn’t get a call back. We didn’t get one either. I just sent an email RSVP and didn’t hear back, but we went anyway and we were so glad that we did. I totally recommend this.

I bought a LivingSocial deal for Four Dance Classes…
Every attempt to schedule was difficult. You are required to email in order to set up a time, but all the emails back from Terry were super confusing and he did not answer my direct question of whether or not I was confirmed. Finally, after months of trying to schedule, I received an email with my confirmation. When my boyfriend and I arrived at the confirmed location (church basement in Dupont) Terry was not there. Someone else was on site giving a private lesson and said Terry would be back soon and that he went to get food (side note: who goes to get food when you are suppose to be instructing a class??). The class I picked was suppose to be a group class, but apparently no one else signed up for that day. I emailed Terry that we were there and after waiting the full 45 minutes (class was 5:15−6p), we left. I never heard back from Terry via email so I called LivingSocial to follow up. They reached Terry and he said I was never scheduled for a class.
It worked out okay, because LivingSocial refunded my money to deals bucks but if you are considering purchasing a Groupons or LivingSocials for this place I would steer clear. Not professional and certainly not worth your time dealing with his shenanigans.

I bought a Living Social deal to take a few private pre-​wedding dance lessons and every attempt to schedule was thwarted by Terry’s disorganization. He ignored all of the information in my emails and asked a lot of already answered questions and then tried to dissuade me from only taking 2 classes, saying there’s no way we’d be able to accomplish anything in time for the wedding. I wasn’t trying to memorize a freaking «Dancing with the Stars» routine just a nice first dance sway for my fiancé and I to practice.
After that conversation, I’d get these random morning messages along the lines of «I have time to teach you today at 1pm» crazy last minute shenanigans. I asked if there was a way to schedule an appointment in advance and he disappeared. Instead of harassing someone to give me what I paid for, we allowed the LS deal to expire and free styled the first dance at our wedding. Still fun.

I honestly can’t speak to the dance lessons– this review is limited to my customer service experience. I received a livingsocial voucher as a gift because I was really looking forward to taking some dance lessons. Unfortunately I became really busy with work and was not able to attend the lessons right away. When my voucher was about to expire, I called the studio asking to schedule my lessons. The «fine print» in the voucher did NOT require me to schedule all the lessons before the expiration date– it simply said to contact the studio via email to redeem the voucher. I called the studio and emailed them asking to redeem my voucher and schedule my lessons. The person who called me back (I think it was Terry) said he would give me 2 weeks to take my 4 lessons. When I politely asked if I could have a bit more time, he said that I had already had the voucher for months. I then explained that I unfortunately had gotten really busy with work, so it wasn’t for frivolous reasons that I had failed to attend the lessons earlier. He then got an attitude and said sarcastically to me «yeah, it’s not like you had the voucher in your pocket or anything.» I was not rude at any point– all I wanted was an opportunity to try out their lessons. I’m very disappointed that I was treated this way and now won’t be taking the lessons I had really been looking forward to. I will not support a business that treats its customers this way.

I, like many others, purchased a LivingSocial deal for private dance lessons before my wedding. I emailed Terry to schedule this, but one week and many rude emails from him later, I have decided to request a refund from LivingSocial. He is extremely unprofessional and did not listen to what I was asking. I will take my money elsewhere, and would recommend that you do the same.

Do not discount because of previous reviews, that would be unfortunate.
Initially we were coming for the hand dance class, but due to low enrollment we attended swing dance instead. Terry is a very nice guy and very patient. I brought my 7 year old daughter who was hesitant to start. He was very friendly, not pushy, and my daughter warmed up quickly.
I am especially disappointed after meeting Terry to read the harsh reviews. Dancing should be light-​hearted, present/​in the moment fun, shouldn’t it?
If they were expecting rigidity and perfection, the «disorganized» website should’ve been their indication to move on. My suggestion would be to follow your intuition, then you will not have to be disappointed.
Even though I think I have pretty decent rhythm — I stumbled. But Terry will break down a step to ridiculous and practice it with you to make sure you’ve got it.
Hopefully, he will have a large enough group to do hand dancing, until then I would be willing to trek the 30+ miles again to come to a class.

I actually really like this place. Many of the reviews are bad despite not actually getting to try the class, which is understandably frustrating and was probably because the website and calendar were a little confusing (Looks like they updated the site).
For those who are actually curious about the lessons, I’d highly recommend them. I come from a family full of Reggaeon twerkers (I’m Puerto Rican). I’ve been to quite a few places to learn salsa, and what I’ve found is a strong basis on performance/​ballroom type that doesn’t translate well to social dancing (at least for me). I think the salsa lessons here are more likely to give you the ability to dance socially with what you learn. The instructors are well known in the area, know their stuff, and are great teachers.
So, if you can actually get there, I think it’ll be well worth the time and money (which isn’t that expensive compared to some other place).

My fiancé bought an online deal and we tried to redeem it by scheduling a class with Terry. He emailed me back asking for details that I had already offered in my original email. He then followed up with a phone call while we were out of town. I asked him if he could just answer my questions via email but I never heard back again. We didn’t like the disorganization and the way that our queries were handled, so we decided to let our coupon expire instead of incurring more headache.
The website is atrocious and disorganized so don’t waste your time. I know deals for DanceSport pop up occasionally, but I would stay away from them.

Unlike most of the other reviewers, I did not have a deal /​groupon for this place. I contacted Terry (willing to pay full price!) to have him help me and my fiancé work on some dance moves for our wedding. Terry responded to my email the next day asking me to let him know my availabilty and suggesting we get started right away so there was ample practice time before the wedding. I responded immediately providing my availability and also asked about pricing — I wanted to know how much a wedding dance was going to set us back. I never heard back!
What a way to run a business — especially when it seems he only gets clients from deal sites. Glad I didn’t actually work with him.

I also bought a Capitol Deal but could never get Terry to call me back to schedule my classes. Both me and the folks from the Capitol Deal tried to contact him multiple times to no avail. I told a dancer friend of mine and she told me she had gone before and it was not good anyways. Can’t believe living social is doing a deal now, I thought they did better screening of their companies.

I bought a Capitol Deal for four dance lessons. My fiancé and I used it for wedding dance lessons. We both did not know any type of dancing, especially with his two left feet :)
Terry was very helpful. He listened to our song, and he taught and showed us how we can move to it. He taught us how to enter onto the dance floor, exit, and several basic steps that we may be able to do. He was a very positive instructor and very patient, therefore, we enjoyed learning from him and taking his class.
The class is in the basement of a church. Kind of looks like you are entering into a dungeon, but it was a spacious area for dancing.
Overall, we enjoyed it and will definitely come back for more!