2000s hen party dance class Leicester [ chart era · leicester revival ]
A private room, a decade nobody in the group has to be taught to love, and the chorus routines you half-learned off the telly finally drilled properly. £185 for the full ninety, plus the venue cost of the hired central room — one figure covering everyone present, all on one written quote. Tighter day? The sixty is £160, again plus venue.
Eighteen people,
one sixth-form disco
The second the intro lands and the whole room remembers it knows this — the loudest fifteen seconds of any booking we run.
Get the afternoon held before the plan mutates
A rough date and a rough headcount gets this moving; nothing else is needed yet. A phone call comes back within the day with honest availability and a single written figure that already has the hired room inside it, so there is no second number waiting behind the first. This is the theme that settles arguments — where most hen party ideas split a group down the middle, a decade everybody was a teenager in tends to get unanimous.
Flexibility survives the booking. A hen do dance class can be swapped out entirely, a dance hen party answers to its date rather than its soundtrack, and the decade itself can narrow to one artist or widen to the whole chart whenever you like. No dance experience is expected from anybody either, which is more than most hen party activities can honestly say.
A decade, recut for the room in front of you
Nothing is prepared beforehand except the music. The teacher arrives, spends a few minutes working out who is already singing and who is standing near the door, and the routine is composed live around that — so a party of eleven who want it sharp and a party of eighteen who want it loud get noticeably different sessions out of the same decade. The chart is the raw material; the edit belongs to your room alone.
What makes the noughties the easiest theme on the programme is that the choreography was built to be copied. These were routines designed for teenagers to learn off a music channel in a bedroom, which means big readable arms, a repeating chorus, and almost nothing that requires a functioning knee. The teacher pulls the real moves out of the videos, drills them slowly, then puts them back together at speed once the room can hold them.
Ninety minutes is the version we would book: a chorus routine learned properly, room to wander into a different corner of the decade if the party is keen — the glossy pop end and the R&B end are quite different animals — and time for a bit of staging before an unhurried closing run somebody's phone can catch clean. Sixty keeps it to the one chorus routine and a finish everybody lands together. Nobody is picked out, nobody has to solo, and sitting a track out then rejoining for the ending is entirely normal.
Noughties choruses are busier than they look on the telly — the hand on the hip, the shoulder pop, the little half-turn when the key changes — and those are precisely the bits that need a second pass. The extra half hour is where that second pass lives, so the flatmate who only came for the singing has caught up with the rest by the time phones come out.
Five tracks in the running, the room picks
Crazy in Lovethe brass intro does half the work; the arms are famous for a reason
near-certainCan't Get You Out of My Headsmall, sharp and hypnotic — the one that makes a group look choreographed
likely leadHey Yapure tempo; impossible to perform badly, impossible to stand still through
strong contenderDon't Chaattitude over footwork, and the section that photographs best
if the room asksReachthe arms-out closer nobody admits to knowing and everybody does
the encoreRead it as an audition list rather than a running order. Sugababes, Girls Aloud, Destiny's Child and early Rihanna are all regularly in the mix; casting happens on the day around the group in the room.
[ one song that defined sixth form? ]Add it to the notes and it gets a hearing.
Back to the front desk ↑
Where the revival sits in a Leicester day
Central, which mostly means nobody has to organise transport twice. Shopping around Highcross in the morning, class in the middle of the afternoon before anybody's coordination is negotiable, then out along Granby Street with a chorus routine the whole group can still do badly at midnight. Parties travel in from Loughborough, Melton Mowbray and Hinckley without a convoy, and summer bookings often end up in Victoria Park purely to film it once more on grass.
Dressing the decade is your job, not ours. Velour tracksuits, butterfly clips, trucker caps, low-rise anything — none of it is supplied, lent or hired out by us, and half the pleasure is the fortnight of charity-shop photographs in the group chat beforehand. Jeans and trainers get the identical class; only the group photo notices.
The room is central, hired for your slot alone, and its address goes out in writing at confirmation rather than the night before.
Two stubs from the revival screenings
"Eighteen of us who last danced properly at a sixth-form disco, and she had the whole room doing the same chorus inside fifteen minutes. The screaming when the second track started was probably audible from the car park."
"We booked it because nobody could agree on a decade and this one covered everyone's teenage years at once. One figure in writing with the room included, and a routine we did again in the taxi queue."
Six questions, straight answers
The seventh is always whether one specific 2004 single can be banned — ring 07535 351968 and a human will note it down.
So what does the whole decade cost? +
The ninety is £185 and the shorter sixty £160, with the hired room's venue charge added onto the same written quote — one figure for the lot of you. Hire varies date to date; the written quote settles it.
Which acts realistically make the cut? +
Crazy in Love, Can't Get You Out of My Head, Hey Ya, Don't Cha and Reach are the regulars, with Sugababes, Girls Aloud and Destiny's Child close behind. Nothing is promised; casting happens on the day.
Do we have to dress like 2003? +
Only if you want the photographs. Tracksuits, butterfly clips and trucker caps are not supplied, lent or hired out by us. Jeans and trainers earn the identical class, minus the group photo.
What if we hate every boy band? +
Say so on the form and the decade goes another way. A whole session of chart R&B, one of glossy pop, or one artist throughout — a direction for the teacher, never a fixed order.
What sort of room are we booked into? +
One of the rooms we hire in the middle of Leicester, private for the whole slot, with floor space and a system that copes with a shouted chorus. The address follows in writing the moment the date is agreed.
Nobody here has danced since school — fine? +
That is the standard booking. No dance experience is expected from anyone, the routines were built to be copied off a television in the first place, and the material is composed live around the room.