Tips and tricks to boost your dance club’s mid-year revenue
Summer dance schools or workshops can help bridge the summer lull with a much-needed uplift in revenue.
Apart from boosting finances during the summer holidays, dancers’ fitness, strength and flexibility will all benefit from the continued provision you offer. In addition, your classes may attract new students who will then enrol the following term.
Read on to get ideas and new perspectives on how to boost your revenue with a summer dance club or workshop.
Planning is key for a successful dance workshop
While it may seem early in the year, now is the best time to start planning your summer sessions.
A summer dance club is very different from a weekly dance class, especially because you need to keep the children entertained for a much longer period of time. Which is easier said than done.
If the programme is not structured correctly, you may have trouble keeping those young dancers engaged.
Consider structuring your day around a variety of activities to maintain maximum engagement. You could include crafts, team building activities or games to give students a break in between the dance sessions.
You could also offer a variety of dance choices, or focus on a particular genre, such as ballet, tap, jazz or contemporary.
Our top tips for planning your summer dance club
Consider the logistics
Can you host this from your current location? Do you have the correct paperwork and procedures in place? Discover five effective ways to update your club policies.
Make registration simple
You should make it as simple as possible for parents to sign up. For example, LoveAdmin’s dance studio software makes it straightforward for parents to sign up for summer dance workshops with dedicated registration pages.
Create a varied and engaging schedule
Make sure activities cover warm-ups, stretching, games, corner work, technique, combinations and choreography. It is also important to offer some “quiet time” into the schedule for children to unwind and recoup.
Have incentives
Always have plenty of stickers or certificates to reward students for doing a good job or learning a new skill.
Timing is key
Consider what days/times you are going to run the summer dance school. Try and offer it at convenient times to parents – they may be more inclined to opt for your club if it alleviates the need for additional childcare.
Offer flexibility
Some parents will love the idea of a week-long dance camp, others will prefer a more flexible approach. One-day workshops are a low commitment way for students to join in the fun. Dedicate the day to improving a specific set of moves or skills.
Market your club wisely
Are you opening up your summer intensive to current students or to outside guests as well? Consider online advertising, social media, emailing your mailing list, informing local public groups, and printing posters to hand out to students and local businesses.
Get the parents involved
With consent, post videos and photos of their children. Hold a paid performance or open class so that parents can come and see what their children have learned. Hopefully, they will then spread the word!
LoveDance community ambassador, Emily Redding, says: “When considering the pricing of your summer workshops you need to look at teaching costs, studio costs, whether or not you offer food/drinks, resources you need (we do crafts after lunch so the children can have some quiet time), how much profit you’re needing to make it worthwhile, whether or not you’ve got other revenue streams such as a t-shirt or paid performance at the end.”
13 creative ideas for summer dance workshops
Due to so many options available, it can be difficult to choose a theme for your summer dance workshop.
To help you decide, consider the age of your students.
Younger dancers will enjoy Teddy Bear’s Picnic or Disney-themed sessions. Older students may enjoy learning dances from all over the world or from different time periods, such as the Charleston from the 1920s.
The themes below are some of our favourites:
- Encanto/Disney
- Princesses and pirates
- Strictly Come Dancing
- Exploring cultures through dance
- Heroes and villains
- Musical legends
- Nursery rhymes and fairy tales – tell the story through performance
- Musicals such as Grease, Hairspray, Matilda etc
- Cirque Du Soleil
- Mardi Gras
- Skill-based workshops
- Genre introduction workshops
- Choreography workshop
Three dance activities to help switch it up
Summer dance clubs call for a little extra fun. You can help new students fall in love with dance by welcoming them during the workshop.
Improvisation, games and creative activities can help students develop creativity, self-expression, collaboration skills, as well as performance quality.
The following dance activities can easily be adapted to fit students of all ages, themes, skill levels and dance genres.
Alongside your normal mix of activities, you will likely benefit from adding in some more structured activities such as themed days or workshops by external providers. One popular choice in recent years has been a guest appearance from a Strictly Come Dancing superstar.
Here are just a few of our favourites:
Spotlight dance
This is a really fun way to get everyone involved in a game. It can be used as a warm-up or cool-down activity. Choose whatever music matches your theme.
Essentially, one student is the ‘spotlighter’ and has to catch the student dancing. This type of dance game can spark some real competition with students while they are trying to hold still and not be caught out.
The activities also helps children to build confidence, creativity, imagination and reflexivity.
Hero and villain improv
This activity is a nice way to teach dancers about spatial relationships as they dance both independently and with a partner. Dancers will learn about general space, personal space and negative space.
For this activity, pair off the dancers. One student from each pair will be “Team Hero” and one will be “Team Villain”. The “Hero” partner will dance around the “Villain” dancer’s negative space. They can crawl between their legs etc, whatever movements they want in the other dancers’ negative space. The “Villain” dancer must remain frozen the entire time until you say “let’s move”.
At this point, the “Hero” partner will make a shape in the negative space that complements the “Villain” dancers’ space. After they have remained frozen in this space for a while, the game will then start again but with the “Villain” dancer on the side waiting to join in.
Beach bag memory dance
This dance is a great way to improve students’ movement memorisation skills whilst also encouraging them to be creative and individual. To begin with, tell the students you are going to “pack a bag for the beach” and they all need to add an item to the bag and also remember each item in what order.
Every “item” should be represented by a movement. For example, they could add a pair of sunglasses. They then need to do a movement that connects to the idea of sunglasses – the move could be either literal or abstract. The entire class will repeat the movement and say the name of the item. The next dancer will then perform the “items” movements before them as well as add their own. The entire class will then repeat the sequence.
Boost your revenue with merchandise
Look for profit-making opportunities to maximise your summer camp revenue.
Advertise your camp by selling branded merchandise to your students. Students love merchandise, especially when it is connected to something they are passionate about.
Here are a few merchandise options to consider selling:
- Clothing such as t-shirts, socks, hats, tracksuits or jumpers
- Keychains
- Water bottles
- Drawstring bags or totes
Improve your summer camp experience with LoveAdmin
Take the annoying admin hassle out of running a summer camp with the LoveAdmin dance school software.
The software has been specifically designed to help dance studios just like yours streamline their admin process.
Here are just some of the powerful features the LoveAdmin dance management software has:
- Parents can easily pay for both the regular lessons and the summer workshops through a single payment system
- At the touch of a button, you can access critical information such as attendance records, declarations, emergency contact information, photography consent, and much more
- Easily sell merchandise through your own personalised shop
- With the click of a button view the most popular and profitable summer workshops
- Easily assign staff to popular classes to ensure a proper teacher/student ratio
- The system automatically processes payments, so you don’t need to chase payments down manually
- You can see how many people have registered and whether they’ve paid via the bespoke dashboard. You can make contact with those who haven’t, so they don’t miss out
Looking for more tips to raise money? Discover the ultimate fundraising ideas for your dance studio.
