Dancing for Life

Kathy is a great dance instructor and a kind woman. We came to her for help with our first dance for the wedding as we were total beginners, and after about 5 lessons, we had the most beautiful first dance that shocked everyone at our wedding. Now we want to go back for more lessons just for fun!

Kathy is an incredible teacher who really knows her stuff! My fiancé and I really wanted to add a special touch to our first dance at our wedding and Kathy was able to choreograph a dance that fit our song and was fun to learn! Even if we weren’t learning a song for a dance, I would highly recommend taking a lesson from her!

I enjoy my weekly dance lessons with Kathy so much! I’ve wanted to learn the basics of east coast swing, rumba, mamba etc for years. Kathy is such a pro and so knowledgable, but she is also a warm, funny, patient and engaging teacher. She has been able to work around my schedule too, which I truly appreciate.

Kathy is wonderful and a great teacher. She has a ton of patients and brings such a calm energy to the room, because let’s face it learning a dance routine can be stressful at times! We had no dancing experience at all and by the end of 5 lessons we had our whole dance routine down for our wedding. Kathy is not only a great dance teacher but she is super fun and really loves to get to know her students, I feel like she’s my aunty and we often find ourselves having a good old chat and laugh after our lesson. We never feel like she’s rushing us out the door, she generally cares and we have thoroughly enjoyed our time with her! Thanks Kathy!

About half-​way through the wedding planning process, my bride-​to-​be had a mini-​nervous breakdown (or a well calculated ploy aimed at spurring me into action), and I was given a few assignments to complete. I turned my old standby, the internet, to find a reputable dance instructor to train us for our first dance. I saw a number of places that seemed larger, big studios, that were expensive and didn’t seem very personal. Then on Unilocal,I stumbled upon «Dancing for Life». The reviews seemed pretty positive, and her prices were very reasonable (especially since they’re private lessons!).
She exceeded expectations. Kathy is very experienced and organized, and not only helped us settle on a style of dance, but choreographed it to our first song. Word to the wise — if you don’t want to be stumbling around out there I would suggest setting things up a few months in advance to give yourself plenty of time for lessons. We started ~4 months before the wedding so we had a lot of time to practice at home, and arrange lessons with Kathy that didn’t conflict with our work schedules. If memory serves we ended up doing ~5−6 one-​hour lessons, and were well prepared for the big day.
What also impressed me about Kathy (besides just her generally pleasant personality), is her ability to tailor the lessons to the individual. My fiancée was a quicker study, whereas I was a little slower on the uptake. I have a background in music, not so much in dance, and she adapted her teaching style to be more «musical» which helped me out. She also strikes a good balance between being polite, while still being a stickler for detail. You don’t hire a professional unless you want honest feedback, so when my hand wasn’t in the right place, or there was too much bounce to my foxtrot, she didn’t hesitate to work it out and correct it.
Reading the other reviews, it’s great to see so many people having positive experiences with her as well. People like Kathy don’t have the advertising resources of bigger companies, but her passion and experience make her an internet «diamond in the rough». Thank you Kathy!

My (now) husband and I took classes from Kathy at Santa Monica College for a couple of years and she was so much fun to learn from. When we decided to get married, we went to her for help choreographing our first dance. She was wonderful. Her home studio is spacious and she is just really fun to learn from — she clearly really loves dance of all kinds and she was great at teaching us steps that would look great on the dance floor. I would definitely recommend. Also my 86 year old Papa said that our first dance was his favorite part of the whole wedding which is just a priceless thing to hear!

We love Kathy! She is a great teacher and a lovely person. She is very organized and easy to follow. She is friendly & not intimidating. She is flexible in her teaching style as well as in her scheduling. If, like us, you’ve always wanted to learn to ballroom dance, then she’s the teacher you’ve always wanted to find! It’s never too late to have fun!

Kathy is awesome. Unfortunately we procrastinated and our travel schedules didn’t give us more than 2 hours to take lessons the week before the wedding. Despite having limited instruction due to our scheduled Kathy made us feel better about the first dance. We are looking forward to taking classes with her in the future now that we don’t have any pressure. She was very friendly, funny and patient with me since I had zero dance history. She was very responsive via phone and email. Her rates are very reasonable and she even saw us on a Friday night. I highly recommend Kathy.

Kathy is such an amazing dance instructor! My dad and I took 3 private lessons from her for our father/​daughter dance and she was able to teach us the basic country two step and choreograph an entire routine in that short amount of time. My fiancé and I were also able to squeeze in 2 private lessons with Kathy a week before our wedding. We did not do a choreographed routine, but used a lot of the fox trot moves we learned during our first dance. Kathy is very talented and easy to learn from and I 100% recommend her to anyone looking to learn how to dance. Thank you Kathy for all that you taught us!

Kathy is an excellent instructor. She teaches steps in detail, hand position, and all the other details to make you look good on the dance floor. She’s patient & has a great personality. I highly recommend her if you want to learn different styles of dance.

I have always wanted to be able to dance but with two left feet and no rhythm I needed encouragement and a lot of «HELP». My encouragement came from the new love of my life and the help from Kathy the teacher of «Dancing for Life». Kathy teaches dance steps so that they are easy to follow and she also makes it a lot of fun. I have been taking lessons now for about 4 months and have learned the Foxtrot, East Coast Swing, Cha Cha and the Hustle. I will never make it to «Dancing with the Stars» but I will continue to enjoy dancing through Kathy of «Dancing for Life».

!!! With heartfelt gratitude and admiration for your masterful skill in sharing ’ Lessons in Dance ‚’ for those misstep, for those ’ slow-​slow, quick/​quick ’ dance lingo, and for those uncoordinated body movements … when we first started, they are now but a journey and a new rhythm, in our just found, ’ zest for life ’ Thank you Kathy Levyn !!!

We are in love with Dancing for life and the instructor Kathy. My fiancé found this place to prepare our wedding dance. We learned foxtrot on Bollywood song. We were apprehensive initially but Kathy helped us to learn the dance and it was a big hit :).
She is an incredible dance instructor and is also flexible with time, both of us are working professionals and we used to go late in night to practice our dance. I would definitely recommend this place if you want to choreograph your wedding dance, you will love it.

My fiancé and I were looking for dance classes so we could enjoy our first dance at our wedding. We had a trial lesson at Arthur Murray, and then they told us the prices which were insane! Then we found Kathy at Dancing for Life. She has a studio in her home. Kathy is very professional and her prices are extremely reasonable. When we began, we were beginners with zero rhythm. After about five lessons we already feel much more confident and have learned so much. More importantly, she makes sure you have fun too! We will most likely continue taking lessons even after the wedding. I highly recommend you try Dancing For Life for any occasion!