Our goal is to provide you with thorough training so that you feel confident about teaching The Dancer's Workout®! We want to ensure you can reap the financial rewards of being a TDW-Certified Instructor as quickly as possible. Our online instructor training and certification program is designed for both veteran and novice instructors with outstanding ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance skills. 

The certification portion of the training will teach you how to teach The Dancer’s Workout® classes, with the goal of ensuring that you will be confidently prepared to teach these classes as soon as possible! Our certification training guides you through learning and practicing the choreography you'll be teaching for your first TDW class! We also teach you how to dance full-out while teaching, a technique that ensures that both you and your students get an outstanding dance workout each and every class. Our certified instructors love this aspect because it gets them and keeps them in phenomenal dancer’s shape!

Beyond your certification, we'll be with you every step of the way! Our post-certification "launch" and "takeoff" modules provide you with the best operational business practices needed to manage your new business, along with the leadership skills you'll need to ensure both the short-term and long-term success of your classes. Our business tips, leadership training, student engagement and retention strategies, and successful student marketing programs were designed to help maximize your success post-certification! They will remain available to you throughout your Adult Dance Alliance membership to help maximize your student enrollment, retention, and revenue. 

We definitely want to help get you certified to teach The Dancer’s Workout® as easily and quickly as possible so that you can begin reaping the financial rewards of your certification! To get certified, you'll start by completing our Pre-enrollment Questionnaire. Once enrolled in the course, you will begin watching and dancing to your first assigned TDW masterclass. Additionally, you'll have coursework to complete, which you can do either online or during one of our in-person sessions. Some instructors buckle down and join our virtual FAST TRACK option where you can apply for certification at the end of an 8-hour day! Others take a few days or a weekend to complete the requirements. For more information, scroll down to find our FAQs.

Sara and I are so excited you are interested in becoming one of our certified instructors! We will provide step-by-step guidance to help you quickly achieve your certification and to help fully prepare you to teach your first TDW class!

Excited to join us? To get started, look for the "Let Us Get to Know You" link below or. CLICK HERE. This link will take you to our Pre-Enrollment (no commitment required) Questionnaire. It's a way for us to begin getting to know you as you learn more about the program.

Our choreographed masterclasses have been taught, finetuned, re-taught, videotaped, and teddy-bear-hugged by hundreds and hundreds of adult ballet, jazz, and contemporary dancers. Our paraprofessional dancers are enamored by our ability to weave original ballet, jazz, and contemporary choreography throughout each non-stop hour of fun! They love the way the choreography in each masterclass builds across its songs and enables us to move continuously throughout the hour. They also love that our TDW masterclasses are choreographed to our favorite pop songs!

Each TDW masterclass is structured to provide our students a safe, yet exhilarating total-body workout. Starting with a fun and effective warm-up, each TDW masterclass progresses into a cleverly crafted 4-to-5-song dance cardio arc (part of the TDW secret sauce) which culminates in our electrifying pull-together song! We next delve into "bikini bootcamp," the final 15 minutes of class, where we tackle our choreographed toning exercises before ending the class with a glorious stretch song. It's a dancer's bliss!

Within a given month, our dancers love coming back to repeat the same masterclass over and over again so they can experience the thrill of fully mastering it before tackling the next one. This means the time you spend investing in learning a single masterclass will get quite a bit of mileage! We generally teach one masterclass for four weeks, but often our new TDW-Certified Instructors decide to teach the same masterclass for ~8 weeks before they start teaching their students a new one. Our portfolio of TDW masterclasses, that is available inside our PLATINUM app, already contains enough new and different TDW masterclasses to keep you teaching new choreography content for up to four years, and we add even more TDW masterclasses on a regular basis!

Since each of our masterclasses are named, you and your students will begin referring to the masterclasses by name. Eventually, as the months go by, you'll inevitably overhear some post-class chit-chat about which masterclasses are their favorites! These discussions are always fun, lively, and heart-warming and, given our amazing class attendance, we take it as another sign that we've gotten it right!

Excited to join us? To get started, look for the "Let Us Get to Know You" link below.

Here’s the thing about our experience in this space.

We don't teach children, and we don't teach beginners. 
My team focuses exclusively on the commercial adult market. (We always have and always will.)

A little background…  

Jules, our founder, trained in classical ballet for four years at the UNC School of the Arts, then left the dance world for 15 years and ultimately worked for 30+ years in Corporate America. Her unique background as a project management and operations expert, corporate executive, mother, and former dancer wanting to dance again as an adult defined and colored everything about The Dancer’s Workout®. Her personal experience of returning to the studio in her early forties as an overweight former dancer led her down a path of frustration, discovery, and ultimately triumph as she encountered the massive gap in the market for former dancers like herself. That's when she decided to address this gaping unmet need once and for all. 

Jules created The Dancer’s Workout® for adult former dancers who did not pursue a professional dance career but who, as adults, still really love dance and are more than happy to pay for us to teach them. Everything about the program (the class times, the class structure, the class duration, the marketing appeal, the retention strategies, the social elements of the experience, the level of dance technique required for the classes, the complexity of the choreography, everything) is designed with the adult "paraprofessional" dancer in mind.

Paraprofessional dancers are not beginners and not professionals. They are the adults who fall in that huge intermediate-level gap between beginner and professional. Our ideal students are looking for dance fitness classes, not dance technique classes. They want adults-only dance fitness classes that are NOT for beginner dancers but are instead for intermediate-level, current and former ballet dancers. Further, they want exciting and challenging dance choreography in the classes that is mindful of their aging joints. Think about it... There are MILLIONS of adults who took ballet as children, middle-schoolers, and highschoolers between 1990 and 2020, who have now grown up and created a massive market for dance instructors and dance/fitness providers.

We teach you how to reach them and how to give them what they want. We have learned the best times for adult dance fitness classes, the best trial class offers and class packages for adults, the most effective inbound and outbound marketing and recruitment strategies, and the best adult student retention strategies that will send your enrollment numbers through the roof - this is precisely what we teach in our program.

Excited to join us? To get started, CLICK HERE or look for the "Let Us Get to Know You" link below.

It's not easy to start an adult dance empire from scratch.
We know because we've done it.

From a dance point of view, we knew we were on the right track; but from a marketing point of view, we had to learn how to get the right words out to the right students at precisely the right time.

We made all the mistakes, and we fixed all the mistakes. We ran down rabbit holes, pulled our hair out, tweaked and tried again and again, but never gave up. For nearly 15 years we obsessed full-time over cracking this nut; and in the end we figured it out...
It came slowly at first (during the first 8 years), then steadily (for 4 years), and then like a floodgate <surprise face>.

We want you to get it right from the get-go.

Inside the Adult Dance Alliance, you’ll get all the videos, photos, ad campaigns, and landing page templates you’ll need to build your own thriving adult dance business. We’re excited to give it to you and to help ensure your classes blow up like ours have.

Excited to join us? To get started, look for the "Let Us Get to Know You" link below.

We're so excited to get to know you and to welcome you to our burgeoning community of adult dance stakeholders. 

We need outstanding dancers to join our network of instructors and are seeking pioneers, entrepreneurs, cutting-edge warriors, and glass-half-full energizers who love the excitement of being on the exhilarating ground floor of a team that is changing the world.

Our success is your success. Your success is our success.

The rising tide lifts us all, as millions of former dancers come crawling out of the woodwork to take The Dancer's Workout® classes and flush our bottom lines with their enthusiastic class fees.

You are invited to grab onto our coattails and reap the tremendous rewards that are in store for you when you join our movement. Together we'll roll out The Dancer's Workout® classes at gyms and studios across the country, support each other as we go, and fuel the biggest explosion ever experienced in the adult dance fitness industry for former dancers.

Excited to join us? To get started, look for the "Let Us Get to Know You" link below.

TDW certification is sponsored by The Dancer’s Workout® (TDW) ADULT DANCE ALLIANCE (ADA) and provides teaching licenses to current and aspiring dance instructors who want to learn how to teach The Dancer’s Workout® classes. As The Dancer’s Workout® classes may only be taught by TDW-Certified Instructors, our certification will authorize you to use our brand and our choreography to teach in-person classes to adult students with prior ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance training.

By becoming a TDW-Certified Instructor, you will become licensed to teach our classes at gyms, dance studios, community centers, and other fitness facilities.

Eligibility

The Dancer’s Workout® requires its instructors to have significant prior training and proficiency in ballet, in addition to an aptitude for jazz and contemporary dance.

Both experienced dance teachers and novice instructors with strong ballet technique are encouraged to pursue TDW instructor certification.

Prerequisites

The only prerequisite for enrolling in The Dancer's Workout® instructor certification program is related to your technical competency as a dancer, as demonstrated in an introductory video that you will provide to us prior to enrolling in the program. This video may either be a current video of you dancing or a video that was filmed of you years ago. Please note we are primarily interested in seeing you at your original, peak level of training, no matter how many years ago, as we know our classes will get you and keep you in dancer's shape.

The specific number of your years in training will not be a decision factor for us, but most of our instructors did essentially “grow up” in the studio, taking ballet classes (and other forms of dance) multiple days each week, over the course of many years. 

You do not need to be, or need to have been, a professional dancer to teach these classes, nor do you need to have prior teaching experience.

Additionally (and we do not assess this), our most successful instructors have cutting-edge entrepreneurial spirits and are "glass-half-full warriors," who love the excitement of being on a team that is changing the face of adult dance fitness for millions of ballet, jazz, and contemporary dancers. 

If this sounds like you, go for it! Here's our questionnaire

For those who meet the eligibility requirements, getting certified is easy!

Start by introducing yourself to Jules, Sara, and the TDW Headquarters team by completing a short questionnaire and providing a link to a video of you dancing (no matter how long ago). You will hear back from TDW Headquarters within 24 hours.

For those who are accepted into the program, our email response will include a link to enroll in our online Instructor Certification Course. Once enrolled, you may proceed through the course at your own pace and/or immediately begin our virtual FAST TRACK schedule, which is available any day of the year, and which will prepare you to apply for your TDW instructor certification by the end of an 8-hour day!  

As soon as you receive your TDW instructor certification, you are immediately licensed to begin teaching The Dancer's Workout®!

Access our questionnaire HERE

Absolutely! Submit your questionnaire and let’s get you started from the convenience and comfort of your own home! You’ll love how organized and straightforward our online course is!

As long as you have access to a computer, ipad, or smartphone; a stable internet connection; headphones; a device to video your certification videos; and a little bit of privacy, you’re all set! Our certification lessons, while beautiful to behold on a laptop, were specifically designed to listen on-the-go and/or to enjoy from your comfy chair.

Our class videos are filmed from the back of the studio so you feel as if you are stepping right in there with us – it’s a great way to learn choreography!

We offer in-person workshops for dancers who are affiliated with dance groups, universities, and other large-group institutions that train and educate dancers and dance instructors. Corporate discounts are available for the sponsors of our in-person workshops.

For more information, contact Jules directly ([email protected]).

We have two options: Our FAST-TRACK option and our ADA Curriculum Option, both of which are available when you enroll in the program and gain access to our online course.

With our virtual FAST TRACK option, which is offered any day of the year, you can submit your application for certification at the end of an 8-hour day and can expect to hear back from us within 24 hours. Most of our students submit their certification applications within this timeline. Others prefer to take a few days (or a week or two) to complete the FAST TRACK program. Our program is flexible and allows you to work through our lessons and homework assignments as you wish, as long as you complete your certification application within 90 days of enrolling in the course. 

There are a total of 6 main modules in the course, and our FAST TRACK students need to complete the first three modules, and the homework assignments contained within them, before they can apply for certification. After receiving their certification, FAST TRACK students are encouraged (but not required) to take advantage of the remaining course modules and lessons, as these resources will help secure your teaching employment at gyms, dance studios, and/or other fitness facilities and will provide you with the business tips and leadership skills needed to catapult the success of your adult dance fitness business.

While most of our FAST TRACK students immediately start the program in order to complete their certification application asap, others cannot start right away and instead need to plan and schedule their availability. For this reason, enrollment in the program provides all FAST TRACK students with access to the online course for a full 90 days. 

With our ADA Curriculum option, students enroll in the course for academic credit through their universities, and the duration of the course is one semester. During the semester, these students proceed through ALL of the modules and lessons in the course. Those who successfully complete the certification training are eligible to apply for TDW Instructor Certification at any time during the semester or within 60 days of completing the semester.

Your TDW Instructor Certification marks your successful completion of the initial training portion of the ADULT DANCE ALLIANCE program. Our support and guidance doesn’t end there. While you are welcome to immediately jump into teaching The Dancer’s Workout® at this point, you are also invited to proceed through the LAUNCH portion of the program (at no additional cost).

Our LAUNCH lessons cover the time period between receiving your certification and the exciting kickoff of your very first class. We provide guidance to help you learn any remaining songs you’ll need for your class, plus business tips regarding where you should teach and how to make those arrangements, how to advertise, what to charge for your classes, how to track your attendance and student payments, what waivers to use, etc. We have your back with an awesome set of lessons that are there to get your classes off to a great start!

Beyond the kick-off of your first TDW class, the ADULT DANCE ALLIANCE provides additional training (at no additional cost) to help your class attendance take-off throughout the year! Our leadership training focuses on best practices for attracting, inspiring, and retaining your students and are further supplemented by the support you receive from our online ADA community of TDW-Certified Instructors. All in all, we are behind you every step of the way and looking forward to welcoming you to our ADA family.

The Dancer’s Workout® (TDW) is our program of adult dance fitness classes for current and former ballet, jazz, and contemporary dancers. We offer in-person classes, livestreamed classes, and on-demand classes (www.thedancersworkout.com).

The Adult Dance Alliance (ADA) is the division of our company that focuses on training and supporting our network of instructors and dance studio owners through the TDW Online Academy. The Dancer’s Workout® Instructor Certification Program is sponsored by the ADULT DANCE ALLIANCE and made possible by the TDW Online Academy (https://thedancersworkout.mykajabi.com/academy).

Your first TDW masterclass is provided with your Instructor Certification course. Once certified, you will receive access to our ADA app which provides you with access to our additional TDW masterclasses. As long as you remain current with your monthly dues, as described in the "Cost to Get Certified and Post-Certification Dues" section, you will continue to receive access to the amazing TDW choreography. 

Inside the ADA app, the choreography is provided as “masterclasses,” which are sets of 13 to 16 choreographed songs that are designed to be taught together in a single one-hour class. The clever ballet, jazz, and contemporary choreography in each masterclass is choreographed to our favorite/beautiful pop songs and is integrated across songs within a masterclass so that the dancers can move continuously throughout the hour, building upon what they’ve learned as they go.

Each masterclass is named, and you will get to know these lovable masterclasses by name over time!

At headquarters, we teach one masterclass (over and over again) for 4 straight weeks before moving on to the next one. Most of our certified instructors teach one masterclass (over and over again) for 4 to 8 weeks before moving on to the next one. We don’t dictate the schedule for our instructors – we just make the masterclasses and our helpful guidance available (via video) so that you can decide when to begin teaching your students a new masterclass.

We add new masterclasses to the active portal on a quarterly basis. Based upon the masterclasses that are already available inside our portfolio, it would take you four straight years of teaching to get through all of them! In other words, there is more choreography than you could possibly consume in our portfolio of masterclasses! Our TDW-Certified Instructors absolutely love our treasure trove of choreography!

The FAST TRACK option costs $270 and provides students with access to the online course for 90 days. 

Once certified, you will begin paying monthly certification dues of $25/month. Keep in mind that once you have begun paying your membership dues, you'll receive access to the ADA app, which contains our active choreography, plus you'll receive continued access to the online course. 

We do allow one six-month reprieve on your monthly dues for extenuating circumstances, as long as you have communicated with us about it in advance. If your membership lapses again after your reprieve, you will need to re-purchase the online course and apply for re-certification.

The ADA Curriculum option, when offered at your university, is priced according to your university's policies. If your university dance department does not yet offer our "Adult Dance Fitness Instruction and Certification" course, you can always enroll into our FAST TRACK option. Please contact Jules at [email protected] if you are interested in helping us bring our program to your university.

Annual re-certification is not required. To maintain your certification, simply remain current on paying your certification dues of $25/month.

As mentioned, we allow a six-month reprieve on monthly dues for extenuating circumstances. If your membership lapses after your reprieve, you will need to re-purchase the online course and apply for re-certification.

It's not easy to build an adult dance empire. We know because we've done it. And we know what it takes. For the enrollment in your classes to really takeoff and to be in high demand, you’ll need to be armed with special leadership skills that enable you to lead such a large group. Think of yourself as the CEO of your dance fitness business and imagine yourself having the leadership skills needed to be the steward of this magnificent ship.

The ADULT DANCE ALLIANCE program is the gift that keeps on giving. At this point we will have taught you how to teach The Dancer’s Workout^® and how to run your TDW business operations. Now we’re going to teach you how to lead large groups of people (for no additional cost). We call it the TDW Secret Sauce.

Inside your course, our leadership lessons will give you the leadership skills you need to drive your business to the next level.

Wonder why we spilled the tea? I’ll tell you why…

By paying it forward this way, I feel worthy of my own good fortune; and I feel deeply satisfied knowing that, with your help, we are changing the lives of adult dancers all across this country. I also feel lucky that I worked in corporate America for >30 years and focused on business operations and leadership, and now have the good fortune of sharing these lessons and skills with the dance world.

In other words, we’ve got your back. You’ll see…

Once you have received your TDW Instructor Certification, you are licensed to begin teaching at gyms, dance studios, community centers, and other fitness facilities!

Inside the course we provide guidance on how to approach these facilities and how to negotiate your arrangements. As an independent instructor, you can set your own schedule and decide your own class rates. Our course provides guidelines and checklists that will help you make these decisions.

There are a few different payment models; and as an independent instructor, you can decide which works best for you. You can arrange for a gym or dance studio to pay you a flat rate per class, with the student revenue going directly to the facility. Or you can rent studio space and retain all the student revenue. Another option is to arrange for a studio to provide free studio space to you in exchange for splitting the student revenue 50/50. Yet another option is to become an employee of the gym (rather than an independent contractor).

Most newly certified instructors initially arrange to be paid a flat rate for teaching The Dancer’s Workout® classes and then transition, over time, to renting studio space so they can retain all the student revenue.

Some gyms, dance studios, and fitness facilities require you to have liability insurance in order to teach in their facility – others do not. In our course you’ll find our template waiver, which each of your students must sign, which holds harmless you, The Dancer’s Workout, LLC, and the facility in which you are teaching. Some facilities will waive their request for you to have liability insurance after reviewing your template waiver. Other facilities may insist that you need liability insurance and need to have your students sign their facility waiver in addition to your TDW waiver.

The question of whether you’ll need liability insurance to teach at a certain facility is among the various questions included in our facility checklist. Keep in mind that the decisions about where to work and whether to get liability insurance are ultimately yours. Liability insurance is not difficult to obtain; a simple internet search can point you in the right direction.

As artists, we feel strongly that songwriters, musicians, and music publishers should be appropriately compensated for their work. The US Copyright Law specifies that “…the owner or operator of an establishment where music is publicly performed” is required to obtain proper music licenses.” This means that if you own the business and/or the facility, you are responsible for obtaining the required music licenses. On the other hand, if you rent space from a facility, or simply teach at one, you are not responsible for obtaining the licenses.

The Dancer’s Workout, LLC recommends that you ask the manager at any potential facility where you might teach whether they have obtained the required music licenses. Performing Rights Organizations (PROs), such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC provide facilities, like the ones where you will teach, with the authorization needed for the music artists, publishers, and affiliated songwriters to be paid.

No, your TDW Instructor Certification does not license you to livestream The Dancer’s Workout® classes. It only licenses you to teach in-person classes at gyms, dance studios, community centers, and other fitness facilities.

In addition to offering in-person classes, The Dancer’s Workout® offers both on-demand classes and livestreamed classes via Zoom. We have a special app for adult, former dancers who have not been in the studio in years who are interested in starting back to dance slowly (https://bit.ly/TDW-WIZARD). We also have an array of additional on-demand options available at https://bit.ly/TDWpearl. Live classes via Zoom can be found at https://bit.ly/TDWmindbody.

Your certification entitles you to post up to two short videos a day (each less than 20 seconds in duration), as long as you tag The Dancer’s Workout® in the post.

You and your students may post/share photos of TDW students, as long as you have received student authorization (via our waiver) and as long as you tag The Dancer’s Workout® in the post.

Gyms and fitness facilities which hire a TDW-Certified Instructor to teach at their facilities do not need a TDW license for The Dancer’s Workout^® classes to be taught on their premises. Dance Studios which rent studio space to a TDW-Certified Instructor also do not require a license for The Dancer’s Workout^® classes to be taught on their premises. On the other hand, Dance Studios which sponsor their own dance instructors/dancers to become TDW-Certified Instructors must become designated as a TDW-Authorized Studio in order for classes to be taught at their studio and will immediately receive such designation as soon as one of their employees receives his/her TDW Instructor Certification.

Gyms and fitness facilities which hire a TDW-Certified Instructor to teach at their facilities do not need to pay TDW for classes taught on their premises – they only need to pay the TDW-Certified Instructor. Dance Studios which rent studio space to a TDW-Certified Instructor are also not required to pay TDW for classes taught on their premises. On the other hand, Dance Studios which sponsor their own dance instructors/dancers to become TDW-Certified Instructors must purchase an ADULT DANCE ALLIANCE membership, and keep it active, in order for classes to be taught at their studio.

We love questions! The quickest way to get in touch with us is to CLICK HERE and type in your question or comment OR email both Jules and Sara at [email protected] and [email protected]. Unless we’re dancing or sleeping, we’ll get right back to you.

Let us get to know you!

Click here to complete your questionnaire!