Steps On Toes 714 Prospect Avenue, Oakland, CA 94610

"LaurieAnn is wonderfully calm and kind person, a very skilled dancer (especially lindy hop!), and an even better teacher. I've known the basics of east coast swing since I can remember, and yet in just the 2 hour free trial class she absolutely transformed me and my partner's ability to dance together and how much fun we can have doing it. She knows just how to tailor every minute of every lesson perfectly to you, will work with you towards your goals, and is very skilled at evaluating your skill level, understanding what is feasible to accomplish in any given amount of time, communicating and demoing complex moves, and catching the tiniest of mistakes that can trip you up down the road. It's not cheap, but you really do get what you pay for and it was worth every penny. If I could afford it I would keep going for years to come! Thank you for the help (and the fun stories) LaurieAnn!"

"My partner and I learned East Coast Swing and Lindy Hop from LaurieAnn for five months and we loved it! She teaches with a great balance of structured building blocks for the basics while also being open to go off the book to teach you moves you're interested in. Once we had the basics down she would teach us a move and then ask us if it was fun or not. If it wasn't fun we'd move on to something else that we could enjoy more! She helps you build a solid foundation and then gives you room to request moves you've seen others do or she has a whole range of moves that are fun to see her pull out of her hat on the fly. Since building our foundation with her we've started taking upper intermediate group classes and experiencing those has also reminded me that another strength of LaurieAnn's is her ability to identify and explain where you're going wrong. Many group classes answer questions like "just keep working through it till it feels right" which can be very unsatisfying answers when you're not sure why it's feeling wrong. LaurieAnn has great sense in just looking or dancing the move with you where she can pinpoint exactly if your arm isn't giving your partner enough space or if your hand is sending a confusing signal by being placed just too far to the left etc. Having that one on one attention and her natural ability to explain the nuances of the dance is a true gift and hard to find in group classes. Lastly I'll say that her knowledge of the Bay Area dance community and the history of the dances is so valuable! She'll encourage you always to go to social dances, and when you're just getting started that encouragement to go out and dance with strangers sooner rather than later is so key. At the same time she never badgers you or makes you feel bad if life gets in the way and you can't go to as many social dances as you should. She has a firm but gentle teaching style, she's patient, spontaneous, you can really tell she's a master at her craft, and most importantly that she loves spreading the joy of dancing and wants you to love dancing as well. She's not the cheapest if you're just looking to learn a new dance casually, but the foundational skills we both learned from her have helped my partner and I tremendously as we've moved onto more advanced group classes. Thank you LaurieAnn!"

"We had 8 weeks before our wedding, and we couldn't have met a better dance teacher than LaurieAnn. Even though neither my wife and I had any prior dance experiences, we never felt like the process was out of reach, and she never made us feel like we lacked the skills or potential to learn our dance. In the end, the dance went off without a hitch. The most common response we got from our friends was that it was "too short", which is much preferred to the much feared "it went on too long." One of the first questions she asked us was "do you want to learn dance just for the wedding, or would you like to use these lessons as a springboard into dance?" The latter! We replied. We hope to take dance classes with Laurie for the foreseeable future :)"

"Loved working with LaurieAnn! She made dancing a breeze when I took a lesson with my Dad for our "Daddy Daughter dance" so I signed up for dance lessons with my fiancé for our wedding. We learned how to do the lindy swing, and LaurieAnn was great with taking videos, being super detailed, and making the lessons fun! I highly recommend her!"

"LaurieAnn is amazing!!! My wife and I have been together for 12 years but finally decided to get married this past September. We wanted to do a first dance and a dance with our dads, but didn't think about getting lessons until about a month before the wedding. We found LaurieAnn via yelp and she was able to squeeze us in with about five lessons for our first dance and a practice lesson with our dads in the few weeks before our wedding. She is a miracle worker! While my wife is an incredible dancer, I have no rhythm and we had never really slow danced together, other than the slow dance shuffle that anyone who doesn't know how to dance does. In about five sessions, LaurieAnn taught us the Fox Trot, as well as an inside and outside turn and cute intro, which looked so elegant and as if we had danced together for years. The dance with our dads went equally well and everyone loved it. We bought a package of 15 lessons (LaurieAnn offers many different types of packages) and my wife and I have spent the past few months learning salsa. I don't think there's a dance that LaurieAnn doesn't know, and she is such a patient and skilled teacher. Finally, as a same-sex couple, we felt so comfortable with and embraced by LaurieAnn, who had clearly worked with same-sex couples before. LaurieAnn makes learning to dance incredibly fun and easy!"