Info for New Members

Introduction

This page is designed to provide people who may be interested in joining Dance Club with all the information they need before coming to their first session. So if you feel it's lacking something, please don't hesitate to contact us!

Why Skate?

Why skate??!! What else IS there?! Okay, so some of us are a bit fanatical, but there actually are some good reasons to join Dance Club. Here's a few for a start:

• Meet new people
• Discover a new way to stay fit
• Improve your sense of timing
• Improve your balance, grace and flexibility
• It's a chance to get involved in a competitive sport, but it's friendly competition!
• We have a fair number of people (guys and girls!) looking for partners

Where

Dance Club is based at Cockburn Ice Arena, Barrington St in Bibra Lake. It's situated in a light industrial area so traffic's not a problem and there is ample parking at the rink.

When

Dance Club is on every Wednesday from 6:00pm to 7:30pm. It's always a good idea to get to the rink about 20 minutes before the session so you have plenty of time to get your skates on and stretch any muscles that might need it. You'll notice that some skaters will spend about 20 minutes warming up while others get straight on the ice. It's entirely up to you to decide whether you need to stretch or not. For some people, simply doing a few gentle laps of the ice before getting stuck into anything more strenuous is enough. It's a case of: you know your body, you decide!

Ability

As we're trying to encourage new members, we're not expecting you to be a great dancer already, but if you can't skate forwards and backward yet (nothing fancy, just moving!) it might be an idea to get to a few public sessions before tackling Dance Club. Most of our members were public skaters who found out about Dance Club, joined and then began taking dance lessons.

Gear

There's no denying that you need some special gear to skate, namely skates!! It's recommended that you have your own skates if you're planning on coming to Dance Club. You can actually hire skates from the rink, but obviously they aren't the best skates you can get! If you don't have your own skates and can't get your hands on any, come down and use the hire skates - at least you'll be able to blame any mistakes on the skates!!

There isn't any other specific gear that you need (although after the Exhibtion we're considering getting dressed up for every Dance club session!), but here's a few tips on what to wear:

• Wear long pants that aren't too loose but have some give. Trackies are fine. Avoid jeans unless they're the stretchy type because you're likely to split the knees or the bum!
• Most ladies wear leotards with a skirt or pants. If you're wearing a skirt, make sure you've got skating stockings (they're much thicker) or at least two pairs of normal pantyhose.
• You'll probably need several layers up top because you get pretty cold if you aren't moving much, but try not to wear anything really bulky or loose.
• Gloves are up to the individual - my partner doesn't like me wearing them because sometimes I go flying off and he's left standing there holding a glove!

Cost

It's Dance Club policy that the first session for new people is free. Yay! However, you still need to pay to get into the rink (~$10) and if you're hiring skates, that costs too (~$5).

Membership

We have three types of membership available: