Hen party themes · Chicago
Chicago Hen Party Dance Class Sheffield
Slow, angular and all attitude — a chicago hen party dance class in Sheffield swaps sweat for swagger, inspired by the musical and built from hip isolations, a long low walk and a final pose held two counts longer than feels comfortable. Ninety minutes with your own choreographer is £175 for the entire group, or £150 for the hour.
Check your date
One date, one room, one very good photograph.
Send the weekend you're holding and roughly how many are coming. We'll tell you what's free, which room we can get and what the whole thing costs, with nothing hidden underneath.
Held two counts longer than comfortableWhere the class happens
Two rooms we hire in Sheffield city centre, or we come to you.
- Bailey Street, S1 4EHHired studio near West Street and the Devonshire Quarter
- Surrey Street, S1 2LGHired room beside the Peace Gardens and the Crucible
- Your own venueHouse, cottage or hotel space across Sheffield and the Peaks — clear the floor and we travel to you
Why Chicago works
It looks expensive and barely raises a sweat.
Every other theme on our hen party dance class list asks the group to move faster. Chicago asks them to move slower, and that turns out to be the trick. The angular, hat-tipping jazz style the show made famous is built on stillness: a shoulder rolled deliberately, a wrist flicked late, a walk that takes four counts to cross a metre of floor. Nobody is out of breath, nobody's knees complain, and yet the footage looks like something rehearsed for weeks rather than learned over a Saturday afternoon.
The class is sultry and completely clothed — closer to a jazz club than anything anyone needs to feel awkward about — which makes it a safe pick when the guest list runs from the bride's best friend to her future mother-in-law. A typical session builds a short number in the style of the show's big set pieces, so a chair-back attitude, a smoky group entrance and a held final tableau are all likely, but nothing is written down before we meet you. Groups drawn to the same decade with more bounce and less menace usually end up on our Charleston hen party class, and those who want the confidence work turned up a notch look at burlesque, which stays every bit as clothed.
Sheffield suits it. Book the ninety-minute slot in a studio we hire in the city centre, then walk down to Kelham Island or one of the older bars off Division Street still dressed for it, and the theme carries on for free all evening. Fedoras, fishnets, black slips and long gloves make the pictures, and every item of that is yours to sort out — we bring the choreographer, the music and the sound system, and supply no costumes, props or shoes at all. Groups that enjoy the technical side often turn up afterwards in one of our weekly dance classes to keep the habit going, usually with two or three of the hens still texting about it a year later.
Included, not extra
What £175 buys the whole group.
Ninety minutes is the popular choice here, because attitude takes longer to drill than steps do. The venue is the only cost on top, and we book it and confirm the figure with you first.
What's included
- Professional dance instructor
- Chicago choreography built for your group
- All music and sound equipment
- Warm-up and cool-down
- Beginner-friendly instruction
- Photo and video opportunities
- Help picking the theme and the song
- Group coordination beforehand
- A spotlight moment for the bride
What you'll experience
- Choreography in the show's style, set to a track chosen with you
- Isolations taught slowly — shoulders, ribs and hips, one at a time
- A held group tableau at the end if the room takes to posing
- Styling notes that make the same step look far more expensive
- A front-and-centre count or two for the bride, if she'd enjoy it
- Low cardio throughout, so conversation survives the whole session
Perfect for
- Hen dos with tickets to a show later that evening
- A bride who'd rather be sultry than bouncy
- Groups that want something grown-up on the itinerary
- When several guests are recovering from the night before
- Parties already dressed in black and unwilling to change
- Anyone who'd like the photos more than the exercise
Hour by hour
How the Chicago session runs.
The warm-up is unusually quiet for a hen class. Rolling shoulders, opening ribs, finding where a hip actually moves from — the isolations that everything later depends on, taught at half speed with plenty of laughing at the mirror. Most people discover they can do far more with their upper body than they assumed, and that discovery is what carries the rest of the session.
Then the number itself: a group entrance walked in unison, a short phrase of angular jazz, a couple of styling moments where the choreographer stops the music to fix wrists and chins, and a final tableau everybody holds while somebody counts down from three. With ninety minutes there is space to go through it twice with the lights low and phones propped up. None of that is timetabled in advance — your choreographer shapes the time around the group standing in front of her, and no track or move is guaranteed before the day.
Curtain down
What they said afterwards.
Chicago was the right shout for us because two of the group were in their sixties and one was seven weeks post-op. Everybody danced, nobody was wrecked, and the final photo could genuinely be a poster.
I had assumed it would be cheesy and it absolutely was not. Our teacher spent ten minutes just on how to hold a hand and it made everything else look ten times better.
Slower than expected. Far cooler than expected.
We went straight from the studio to dinner still in the fishnets and got asked three times where we'd been. Worth the £175 on its own.
Chicago questions
Asked before most Chicago bookings.
1Is the Chicago class connected to the musical or the film?
No — we're an independent Sheffield dance school and the session is simply inspired by the show's style. There's no affiliation with the production, the film or anyone who owns them. What you get is the angular jazz vocabulary the show is known for, taught by our own choreographer.
2How revealing is a Chicago hen party class?
Not at all. It's sultry in attitude and fully clothed in practice — nothing is removed and nothing is expected of anyone. Groups often turn up in black with fishnets because it photographs well, but leggings and a T-shirt work exactly as well for the dancing.
3Can we wear heels for the Chicago routine?
You can, and some of the group usually do, though we'd suggest bringing flats as well in case the floor is unforgiving. Nobody is asked to dance in anything they're unsteady in. Shoes are your own — we don't provide footwear, costumes or props.
4Will Chicago work if the group has almost no dance experience?
Yes, and often better than a faster theme would. Slow choreography gives everyone time to see the shape, copy it and be corrected before the count moves on. The measure of success here is attitude rather than accuracy, which beginners find much easier to deliver.
5Is there time to film the Chicago routine?
There is, particularly on the ninety-minute booking — we run the number more than once so nobody has to choose between dancing and holding a phone. Ask the choreographer to set the last run from the front and you'll get one usable wide shot of everyone.
6Whereabouts in Sheffield does the Chicago class run?
In a studio we hire in Sheffield city centre — a short walk from the station and from most of the hotels, with the exact address sent once your booking is confirmed. In practice that means one of two hired studios — Bailey Street, S1 4EH, or Surrey Street, S1 2LG — and your confirmation names the one you've got. If the group has a house or a Peak District cottage with a clear floor, we'll travel to you instead.