At Hawaii Dance Bomb, students are urged to forget that anyone’s watching and dance to their own rhythm. Feeling good is the goal, not synchronized moves.
Miranda Rudegeair has been teaching kids to get their groove on since 2016, mostly in afternoon enrichment classes at a dozen schools, and is expanding to include adults classes at two new locations. Group classes for all ages are being held in her new Aina Haina studio in Glantz Hall at Holy Nativity School and at a private location in Kahala. (Her Manoa studio at Paradise Park recently closed for renovation.)
Besides styling and choreography workshops, Rudegeair offers kids’ birthday parties with hip-hop, games and music videos. These dance parties include “silent discos” with everyone wearing headphones, and the main selling point is that there’s no worry about making too much noise for the neighbors. They come with a silent DJ, who can play different kinds of music at the same time, and special lighting. People can sing along to the music and easily lose themselves in the experience, she said.
Before moving from Melbourne, Australia, in 2015, Rudegeair was a dance instructor and a personal trainer. In 2012, she’d discovered a style called “Groove” dance and became a certified master trainer under its creator, Misty Tripoli; now Rudegeair teaches facilitator courses worldwide.
“Groove is different from any other style of dance I have done before because it simply requires me to find my own style, explore it, make it feel good and have a good time,” she said.
She takes what she has learned from groove dance and applies it to kids’ hip-hop, break dancing and other styles of dance.
The philosophy of groove dance can be summarized in the maxim: “Your way is the right way. There is no right or wrong way to dance, find your own unique expression,” which is posted on The World Groove Movement website.
“We go into a class just petrified that someone is going to see us, maybe not looking good or not doing it right, and that fear of humiliation is stifling for people,” Rudegeair said, but she believes “dance is basically a psychology lesson that teaches people young or old that no one really cares what they look like.”
There are no mirrors in her studio because they tend to make people judge how they look and compare their dancing to others around them. She wants people to focus on dancing in a way that feels good to them. She said that it ends up being a better experience for people’s nervous system, mindset and judgment about themselves.
“For everybody to just feel better in their bodies is a huge deal,” she said.
“It’s really, really lovely. It’s come as you are, take whatever option you need and the truths in the class are: You can’t get it wrong; you should look different; and your way is the right way. We’re not all trying to do the same choreography and look the same.”
Rudegeair thinks older adults who have always wanted to dance but haven’t the courage to do it publicly may find freedom in classes like Groove Fit, which started in January. She’s received many requests from people in their 70s who want to get fit in a fun, low-impact way, and she helps them adjust the moves to accommodate stiff shoulders or knees.
For more active adults, she has classes such as Adult Booty Dance or Sexy Sneakers, 90s Hip-Hop/Pop and R&B Slow Jams, which would be perfect for girls-night-out gatherings, she said.
Teens are really loving the Korean K-pop classes, and she’s started hip-hop and break dancing classes just for boys, who have felt self-conscious about being the only boy in a class and have dropped out.
Rudegeair has future plans to hold a three-hour kids’ night on the last Saturday of the month, during which parents could use the time for a date night; she will be measuring interest in the concept on her website.
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Hawaii Dance Bomb
>> Where: Glantz Hall (Holy Nativity School), 144 Nenue St., Aina Haina
>> Cost: Kids classes are $10 for 30 minutes for pre-K; others, $20 for 45 minutes. Adults, $18 to $25, 45 minutes. Register on the website.
>> Info: 808-382-7467; hawaiidancebomb.com
