At The Blues Room, our mission has always been clear: to make blues dance education accessible to dancers across the world, no matter where they live. We wanted to break down geographical barriers so that anyone, anywhere, could experience the joy of blues dance—even if they didn’t have access to instructors or dance festivals. But as we grew, we realised that another barrier still remained: language.
The idea for The Blues Room first came about when we realised that dancers in some countries were relying on random YouTube videos to learn blues dance. They loved the dance but had no local teachers to learn from and couldn’t afford to fly in international instructors. The quality of instructional videos available on YouTube 10 years ago was incredibly varied, meaning dancers in such communities often had a very confused understanding of what blues dance is and where it comes from. The Blues Room is one small way we’ve tried to help address this situation by providing structured, high-quality learning resources from a range of internationally renowned instructors.
Until now, all of our courses and bonus material have been taught in English. While this has allowed us to reach a wide audience, it has also meant that dancers who don’t speak English fluently have faced an extra challenge in their learning journey. Language should never be a reason someone feels excluded from the blues dance community. So, we knew we had to do better.
We’re thrilled to announce that The Blues Room now features specially curated subtitles in French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean across all our courses and bonus material! These languages were chosen because we saw the highest demand and need from our international students.
Why This Matters
Providing dance education only in English is an example of privilege—whether we realised it or not, we were creating an unintentional barrier. Many passionate dancers had to work harder to access the same knowledge, simply because of the language in which it was delivered. By offering high-quality translations, we’re taking an important step toward making blues dance education more inclusive.
The reality is that many non-English-speaking dancers are already at a disadvantage. So little literature about the history and cultural roots of blues dance and music are available in their languages. Most of the lectures and talks given about dance history and culture are only ever presented in English, limiting access to crucial knowledge about the roots and traditions of blues dance. Even understanding the deeper meaning and nuances of blues music can be a challenge when lyrics remain inaccessible.
By providing curated subtitles, we hope in some small way to help bridge this gap and give more dancers the opportunity to connect with the dance.
We knew that simply relying on automated subtitles wasn’t good enough. While platforms like Vimeo offer auto-generated translations, they come with too many errors—especially when dance-specific terminology is involved. And let’s not even get started on how they struggle with instructors who have a sexy accent (yes, Adamo and Edmilson, we mean you!). If two instructors spoke at the same time, the system couldn’t even recognise what to translate. This wasn’t the quality of learning experience we wanted for our students.
So, we spent the past couple of years searching for the best way to offer clear, accurate subtitles. That’s when we had the pleasure of welcoming Sergio Garnack from Valencia to The Blues Room team. Sergio has taken on the challenge of creating precise and reliable translations, ensuring that every dancer—regardless of their native language—can fully engage with our lessons.
We’re so excited about this step forward, and we hope it makes learning blues dance in The Blues Room even more enjoyable for dancers worldwide. If you’ve been waiting for classes in your language, we invite you to explore our courses and experience the difference these curated subtitles make. And if you believe there is a demand for us to provide subtitles and other languages too then please let us know!
A truly international community…
The below was video was created during the Covid pandemic in 2020. 600 dancers from across the globe joined us for an online workshop so we could dance together through this difficult time of isolation. 210 of those dancers, from 38 different countries, filmed themselves and this joyful video was the result! Enjoy!
