When do you start teaching your recital dances? We hold our recital at the end of May. I am particularly interested in the daddy / daughter and mommy dances - how much time I should give them to learn their moves.

We are way different than all the other studios around us. Most studios around us spend the entire 2nd semester (January-May/June) doing recital dances. We don't start til mid-march, usually the week after spring break. And our recital's the 2nd weekend in June.

Same with us ^^^

We start after Spring Break with a late June Recital. I just hate spending so much time on one dance.

Our recital is also at the end of May and I will be starting in a few weeks. We have to order our costumes by the beginning of December so I need to know what I am doing quite early in the year.

For a mommy or daddy/daughter dance, I start in April after spring break. I have found that keeping the time commitment short brings in more people than if I made them start practicing in January. My recital is in June so they have 2 months - 8 practices. The choreography is always simple.

I start in January, but we only use the last 15 minutes per class to work on the dance. We never stop regular class, just use the time we would work on different combos to work on the recital dance. For the father/daughter we work with the girls in class same as with the other classes and then in April start rehearsals with the dads on saturday mornings.

I do about the same thing as californiadancer.

We start in January when we get back from winter break.

January after winter break.

I generally start in January. It's nice because I have winter break to get my music together. Also, having that long to get the dances together means that I can dedicate less class time to it each week and still have a focus on technique.

I start in January actually putting the choreography together, but I start testing combinations as early as August. I put combinations together and then change them, just to see what looks good on my students. Having different age student sin the dame class, I like to see what works and what doesn't. Every year I find that my tastes change and I need to try different combinations. Hope this helps...

Recital in late June...

Older kids - January and done in April.

Babies - February and done in April.

I start in January or February. We work for 5-10 minutes a week until After Spring Break, if I need to spend a little more time each week I will. In the last month before our mid-May recital, we spend closer to half the class polishing dances. We never stop with technique work.


Father/daughter dances get no more than 4 practices, they can learn the whole thing in 2 practices.

I usually start in November. Like others have said, I only spend the last 15 minutes of class working on the dance so my kids still have a normal class the entire year instead of having class until January/February and then doing nothing but work on the routine the rest of the year.