Simply Dance Studio

I can’t speak for the lessons and instructors but I will say that their studio is nice for the social dances they organize. I attended their first West Coast Swing night events that are held the second and fourth Friday of each month. The night starts with a basic lesson, not provided by the studio instructors though, and the DJ (one of the evening’s instructors) plays music until 11:00 pm. It is strictly West Coast Swing though so don’t come thinking it’s variety music.
They have great seating, enough dance space, and nice people.

We were lucky here. The class started at 8:15, we were running late and ended up showing up around 8:25…happy to find that the class wasn’t going to start till 8:30. We entered the studio (it’s one flight up from the street and it has a large window which overlooks a downtown Spokane street). Chairs framed the entire hard-​wood-​floored dance area. There was an elevated DJ area, a «chill room» off to the side, and not as many fans as they should have had (it was a wee bit hot in there when the floor was packed with salseros).
Now, I can’t remember the name of the instructor (she’s the owner of the studio as well), but she was AWESOME. She had a full house (more girls than guys), and she started off the class with teaching the basic step, and the couple’s basic. After that, the majority of the class focused on going through a combo she came up with (1. cross body lead «plus», 2. Woman’s left hand turn, 3. short cross body lead, and finally, 4. cross body lead with a turn at the end). It was a cool combo, my fellow salsera & I got most of it.
But yes, the instructor was clearly really good. She pointed out the tough parts and really hammered through them. She was super efficient, since she only had an hour to get us going.
After the lesson, the DJ took over, the lights were dimmed and then we got to get it on to «applying» our studies! This is a great place for beginners. It totally wasn’t intimidating, and there were quite a few beginners out there. Don’t get me wrong though, there were also some pretty awesome dancers as well. So, you can definitely do some people watching. For example there is this one woman in blue, who was extremely creative with eye shadow (or face paint), that was fun to watch… heck she even watched herself in the mirror about every five seconds. Her lead was a master, too (and he looked all of 20 years old!).
There is no bar here, but they have a concession table with some basic stuff. Can’t wait to make it back here again!