Arthur Murray Dance Centers Central New Jersey - Highland Park

We have loved our classes at Arthur Murray! My husband and I have always wanted to be able to dance at weddings and now we can and do! We enjoyed our beginners program so much that we signed up for the next level as a 30th anniversary present to ourselves. The teachers are all wonderful and so are our fellow students. Highly recommend!
5 8 years ago (27-04-2018)

After searching through many websites for a place to continue my dance education and dance with my partner, I came across the Groupon for Arthur Murray! It had been a while since our last class, but we weren''t too out of practice and really wanted to get back into salsa. This Groupon sounded perfect: three private + three group lessons. We thought we would get back on track and challenge ourselves with the private and then practice in the group classes. My dad warned us not to go there after his experience, but I thought surely it couldn't be that bad! Once we took the first class, however, it became clear that I was wrong. The teachers all follow a strict curriculum, defined in little boxes on a sheet of paper. When I told them "Salsa" what they heard was "All the latin-style dances" and proceeded to teach me the very very most basic steps for many different dances, making no progress on any single one of them. It didn't make any difference that I had a lot of dance experience; they still followed the same order and would not stray from that. So really, despite paying for private lessons, we had no say in what would actually be learning, nor was it tailored to our skill level. All lessons also take place in the same room, at the same time. You are more likely to be learning salsa to swing or tango music than to actual salsa. How on earth can one learn salsa to the wrong music!? They also cut the private classes short. In the Groupon it offers 3 30-minute private classes, but at the studio they said they would only be 25 minutes long. However, despite all of these disappointments, the group classes were by far the worst experience. They stuck us in their "fundamentals" class, which doesn't specify which dances you will learn. We ended up doing 10 minutes of swing, 10 minutes of foxtrot, and 10 minutes of another dance. The last 7 minutes of class, we spent boosting each others' morale by sharing our "take-aways" from the class and encouraging each other that we are all winners! What a waste of time. I just wanted to dance. It seems clear that their strategy is to keep people at a basic level for as long as possible - they even repeated MULTIPLE times that "Practice makes progress" in the context of "keep taking the fundamentals class, because you can never practice fundamentals enough." I can only be thankful that I paid for the Groupon, and not for their $500+ beginner package. Please don't go here. If you want to learn how to dance, go literally anywhere else.
1 9 years ago (20-05-2017)

Great place, awesome people.. You will love it there..!
4 11 years ago (05-02-2016)