Try to remember the moves individually.

Although the lessons on this site teach moves in sets of 3 try to remember the individual moves rather than the routine as this makes for an extremely long set of instructions to remember. The advantage of remembering individual moves is that you can then forget the ones that you don't like leaving your mind free to remember the ones that you do like. When you have mastered 3 or 4  individual moves go to our How to Link Moves page and we will explain how to link them together in almost any order you wish. Once this has been accomplished you are well on your way. All you then have to do is learn the rest of the moves as and when you want and add them into the repertoire of moves that you can already do.

Men lead and ladies follow.

It sounds obvious but it is not as straight forward as it seems, especially if you are just beginning. Naturally enough when you first start to learn to dance you are a bit unsure of yourself which means that the men have a tendency not to lead, because they are not confident in what they are doing, and the ladies have a tendency not to follow, because they feel that they need to be doing something all of the time, and so add in extra spins and turns etc of their own accord. This of course feeds on itself when you are two beginners dancing together because the man may not lead very assertively so the lady does her own thing, the man then looses confidence even more because it is not going as it should and the ladies have even less of a lead so they do more of their own thing and so on until nothing works.

If you are a couple who are learning to dance together the best way of proving that the man is leading and the lady is following is to try some moves with the lady blindfolded (obviously one to practice in the privacy of your own living room rather than on a packed dance floor). This way the lady will have no idea what move is coming so will have to follow her partners lead.

If you are learning on your own it is best not go around blindfolding strangers so men, make sure you make a point of leading and try not to be put off if something doesn't go right. Ladies, if you are not lead then do nothing rather than make up your own.  
(ps if you keep your blindfold  in the same box as your whip, handcuffs and nipple rings put it to one side, you won't need the rest of the items until the very, very, very advanced moves.)

Learn to do a few moves well rather than a lot badly.

Don't be tempted to move on to harder moves too quickly because this will ultimately be counter productive. A large number of intermediate moves are based on the beginner moves so make sure you can do those well before going on. It looks far better if you can do 5 moves well, in any order, than if you do ten moves badly. The biggest problem people have is trying to remember all of the moves that they have learnt. To avoid this just focus on the ones that you particularly like and then forget the rest. It is better to remember all of two moves than bits of four moves

Ladies always offer your right hand.  

Be it at the start of every move or midway through when your partner has let go to spin you when you take hold of each other again it will always be with the ladies offering their right hand to the man.

Don't grip to hard. 

Your hand hold should remain as loose as possible unless stated otherwise within the descriptions of the moves. You may find that you will naturally grip your partners hand without even realizing it especially if you have done other forms of dancing before so try and be aware of it at this early stage and correct it before you move on to more complicated moves. Try to keep your thumbs away from the back of each others hands.

Don't presume that you will be able to do it.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that just because you may have done other forms of dance such as rock and roll or standard jive before that you will  just be able to do it. While it is true that Modern Jive is easier to learn than other forms of dance it is also true that it is completely different from other forms of dance. For example people who have done standard jive before, which is quite dependent on the footwork, find that they don't know what to do with their feet when doing Modern Jive classes because there the emphasis is on the upper body. Being able to dance already will undoubtedly help you speed through learning Modern Jive but it does not mean that you should miss out the basic bits and beginner moves because you assume that they will be the same as you already know.