Students should be responsible for their own learning. This means that once you commit to taking a dance class, you are responsible for showing up to class and coming prepared with questions about the movements. We do not take attendance in our classes; if you do not come, you will not learn.

We encourage students to take a whole session at a time by having lower prices for pre-paying for a whole session rather than doing drop-ins. Keep your eyes out for pre-pay discounts and other specials. Again, this facilitates learning by immersing you in belly dance for a chunk of time. Pre-paying also reserves you a spot in the class (or you can put down a non-refundable $15 fee to reserve a spot, and pay the remainder of the class fee on the first day). When students pre-pay for a session but are unable to make it to the session due to an unexpected and serious life event or other major conflict, we will take out the $15 spot-saving non-refundable fee and save the rest of the course fee toward the next session that the student takes – IF the student communicates with Jeana about their inability to make it to that session and their desire to come to the next session.* We want to be flexible and help students to feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, but there are also studio rental fees to pay, and thus pre-paying is a commitment to being there and helping make rent.

Life gets in the way of attending classes sometimes, and so we appreciate receiving a heads-up about absences. We understand that this happens sometimes, and we make an effort to put on a low-cost dance event like a $5 drop-in jam session every so often in order to present accessible dance opportunities to offset the cost of missed classes.

For American Tribal Style® classes specifically, you should expect to take Level 1 at least twice before advancing to Level 1.5. Some students may move quicker than this, and others may move slower. Please keep in mind that this is not a competition. Learning ATS® is like learning a new language: you need to have a grasp of the basic vocabulary before you can start to learn the rest of the words. As FatChance BellyDance® member Wendy points out in this blog post, it’s perfectly acceptable to take the beginner levels repeatedly so that over time, your dance foundation improves. We go into more detail about the whole “levels” thing on this page.

*If a student pre-pays for a session and finds out that she cannot attend more than 2 weeks in advance, we will offer a full refund. Otherwise we will stick to our policy of taking out the $15 non-refundable spot-saving fee and reserving the rest for when the student can return to classes. A student could also choose to transfer her class fee to a friend/colleague as a gift or work out repayment between the two on their own terms.

This refund and pre-pay policy only applies to classes taught at the Carmel studio location (Core).