Where to Shake It

There are no wallflowers at this salsa dancing venue. Whether women can dance or not, there are more than enough willing partners ready to twist and twirl around. The expertise of the dancers varies, although sometimes it takes just one more mojito and sugar cane stirrer to push dancing skills to the next level. The place is always hot, so regardless of what time of year, it's always appropriate to wear that twirling skirt or roll up the shirt sleeves.

Flamenco dancers and tappers, hip hop aficionados and ballerinas?all these dancers mix in the studio of DCDC. This place offers classes in all types of dance for kids and adults, including several that might ring a bell from childhood (but no Irish dance, sorry, Mom). The flamenco dancers stomp their heels with an intensity that looks almost like siphoned anger, but the hula dancers flow with an ease that immediately evokes Hawaii. Students can sign up for basic classes as a whole or attend drop-in classes. Enthusiasm for dance is probably more a requirement than skill, but that comes later, after classes.

The amount of butt-shaking and hip-swiveling in this zumba class could give Hugh Hefner a heart attack. The teacher, Diego, brings his sassy attitude (and music selection) from Colombia and gets the class to go low, low, low as he yells at them to stick their butts out. The moves?borrowed from salsa, samba, rumba, merengue, and cumbia?are fairly repetitive and easy enough to follow if attendees can get the hang of the choreography. With all that dancing and fun, loud music, it's easy to see why the same girls show up week after week: addiction.

Break out that funky leg-kick style of dancing and bring it on down. No one cares how you dance at the Black Cat, which is awesome for all the times that a random song is being played and no one can figure out quite what the beat is. By far the best nights for dancing are the Dancenights, themed Britpop or on face-offs between artists like Prince and Madonna, but that's not to diss the Mainstage dance opportunities (depends on the band). Unlike a lot of other dance-option spots, there are a lot more sneakers than heels being worn, which means women can save themselves Achilles tendon pain and guys can escape the pointy-heel-on-your-foot syndrome.

It don't mean a thing if you can't go out and swing. The Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo fills with live, big band sounds on Saturday nights as couples jitterbug, swing and lindy hop through the night. A beginner's lesson is offered before the dance officially starts, refreshing what most of us fuzzily recall from the late-90s Gap commercial. Friday nights are Contra dance nights, where lines of dancers follow calls and work up a better sweat than thirty minutes on the elliptical. Contra might call to mind visions of plaid shirts and barns, but it's a fast-paced dance to high-spirited music. Each set starts with a walk-through (lucky for the beginners), but the slow part is over quickly as callers tell dancers to pass their neighbors, do-si-do and balance and swing. It's a fantastic way to get dizzy.