Take My Lead – Murisa Harba Ballroom Dance

Murisa was wonderful in helping my husband and I with our wedding dance choreography! I had a history of teaching dance myself and didn’t want to teach my new husband how to dance for our wedding. After doing extensive research, we found Murisa! We opted for several months of dance rehearsals (which I *highly* recommend, by the way, to help make you feel as comfortable as possible.)
Both my husband and I looked forward to each lesson. Murisa is such a kind and fun teacher and person to spend time with! Together we created a pretty ambitious dance to «Thinking out Loud» by Ed Sheeran with lifts and dips galore. At our wedding we shocked our guests with what we had created and we couldn’t have done it without Murisa’s awesome teaching.
Thank you so much!

My husband and I got married this November, and Murisa helped us to choreograph our first dance. Murisa was sOOoo much fun to work with! She’s funny, upbeat, and a great teacher. We’ve never taken any type of dance lessons before, but we felt comfortable with Murisa’ instructions. We really looked forward to each lesson, and had a great time working with Murisa!
Some advise:
**Take your dress into consideration when choosing your song!** My wedding dress was very difficult to move in (heavy, lots of volume at the bottom), and it was extremely difficult to do our choreographed dance. We wished we had either chose a slower song/​dance, or perhaps bought another dress for the first dance.
**Practice! You learn a lot in each 45 min lesson. You want to make sure you practice so you’re ready to learn something new for the next lesson.
**Book lessons earlier! We were glad to book lessons 3 months before the wedding, so we had plenty of time to practice.
With all that said, our first dance was a huge hit at the wedding! Our first dance is now a highlight of our wedding that we’ll never forget. My husband and I cannot recommend Murisa enough!

Reasons I worried about our wedding dance: 1) No dancing ability in either of us 2) Slow song! 3) Deeply unathletic, and the real kicker… 4) two women.
Murisa graciously put all of those fears to rest. She built a routine that was elegant yet manageable. We did a total of five lessons, and from the very first one we were sent out with new skills, homework, and excited to learn more!
She is a truly gifted teacher. As somebody who works in surgical education, I am familiar with education theory and best practices for teaching psychomotor learning. And she really practices all of them: first showing the moves, then breaking them down and demonstrating, finally providing directed feedback allowing deliberate practice, and then integrating. And while our experience proves her a great teacher for beginners, we also walked in on the tail ends of other couples’ dances and can see she knows how to work with the advanced folks as well!
The space she works in is nice, too! It’s a big dance studio and though sometimes other classes are taking place, most of the others are pros and so inspiring and respectful of space. Also free (w/​validation from coffee shop, etc) parking in the garage next door so takes yet another stressor off the table.
Last, not that this is uncommon in LA, but it was nice to see that she was excited to work with a same sex couple and liked that we wanted to play with lead /​follow roles on the dance floor. Bonus points to an already wonderful experience!
All in all, we could not recommend her more and are so grateful we found her.

Oh Murisa, we’re so lucky we found you!
I happened upon Take My Lead via a Groupon deal and had planned to just check out the studio and Murisa to see if she’d be a good fit to help Chris and I tackle a surprise first dance for our wedding. Fast forward several months and we just got back from our wedding in Mexico where we totally surprised everyone with some awesome swing choreography complete with three (count them, THREE) lifts.
We couldn’t have imagined a better routine or teacher for us. Thanks for believing in us, Murisa — you’re our favorite cheerleader :).

My husband and I were looking for a unique way to spend a few date nights as we planned our wedding so we purchased a Groupon for four dance classes. Murisa made classes so much fun we ended up coming back nearly every other week for more than a year! Though I had some prior dance knowledge my husband had none; Murisa has an incredible ability to present the steps in a way we could both understand. She never made us feel dumb or let us be defeated if we were having trouble with a new dance step but instead worked out a new way for us to think about things in order to get it right. She’s talented, enthusiastic, and inspiring – and she choreographed an epic first dance for us consisting of our newfound skills in cha-​cha, hustle and swing (with a few of our own signature dance moves thrown in there, too!) to wow our wedding guests. It was one of the day’s highlights and a moment my husband and I will cherish forever. Whether you love to dance, want to learn, or are convinced you have two left feet, Murisa will guide you to success!

Murisa is such a cutey! It was my idea to take lessons for our upcoming wedding and my fiancé was the hesitant one. After the first trial class he was the one who wanted to do it more than me! Murisa made us super comfortable and went at our pace. We ended up loving going to class each week! We did the 10 class special and mastered out first dance! With Murisa’s encouragement we even were able to do a lift where he spun me in the air! With no previous dance experience, I was pretty impressed with us. it was so much fun and our first dance was so memorable because of it. Thank you Murisa!

This review isn’t for the actual dance class services provided, since we didn’t even make it that far.
There was a miscommunication about times/​dates, and we got rude/​terse attitude on the phone when we called to clear things up. There was a promise of a callback to reschedule, which never happened.

My wife Jane and I decided we wanted a fun first dance to wow our
guests for our wedding. We picked the classic song Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey because it was something we both grew up belting out in karaōke rooms
and the title reflected how lucky we felt to have found our partner after waiting so long. We looked up reviews on Unilocal and picked
Murisa because past students were so enthusiastic about her.
We were not disappointed. Murisa was on-​board and excited about our
ideas from the first try-​out lesson. She was a fan of Journey as well
and loved the idea of choreographing a dance routine for us. Jane and
I were both impressed with how quickly she came up with the first
steps of our routine — a simple tango — and how well it fit to the
beats of our song. In later lessons, we added cha-​cha and west coast
swing to our routine and then flourishes like dips and lifts. Murisa was
full of enthusiasm and encouragement each time we saw her. She truly
loves what she does and it’s hard not to get infected with her love of
dance. We were able to laugh at our mis-​steps as we learned and
celebrate our successes together. Jane and I looked forward to every
lesson. She was also very professional and accommodating — setting up
a schedule that worked with our busy lives and quick to respond to our
needs to make changes.
We actually invited Murisa and her amazing co-​teacher Amy to crash the
wedding to see the dance. Despite some scares from some last-​minute
wedding dress pinning and a slightly slippery floor from the fog
machine (yes, of course there was a fog machine), we were able to get
through the dance to a roaring response from our guests. We found some seats at the reception for Murisa and Amy and they stayed
to help us celebrate; which seems appropriate since they had
become our friends over the course of our lessons together.
Without Murisa we wouldn’t have had one of the highlights of our
wedding. Jane and I can’t recommend her enough. We had such a great
experience with her that we’re planning to take future lessons with
her as we continue to explore our new-​found love of dance.

I don’t know where my wife found Murisa, but I’m GLAD she did! We took the 10 lesson package from her and it was a lot of fun. We always looked forward to our lessons. She’s patient, sweet, and an awesome teacher. It was bittersweet after our last lesson, but I must say my wife and I will forever remember the dance moves we learned. Thanks Murisa!

Fun, friendly, accommodating, patient, understanding and a great sense of humor. These are some words to describe Murisa as a person.
We went to Murisa for our very first lesson (and first date …) about a year ago, just to see if dancing was for us, but we soon realized with Murisa as a teacher we had nothing to worry about and we could knock it out of the park. She showed us the tango, mambo, east coast swing and salsa, and came back every week with new moves just challenging enough to make sure we progressed to the next level. She could fulfill the role of both male and female in every dance move with great ease and always tried to explain what was going on in a way we could both relate to. We will always remember the «momentum vectors» Murisa :-).
We recommend Murisa as a dance instructor to anyone who wants to take dancing just for fun or as serious business. It doesn’t get any better than Murisa, and you will have fun and learn a lot!!!

Murisa is the BEST!!!
We started off taking her class as way to learn some moves for our upcoming wedding. Since my wife and I have (very amateur) dance backgrounds we thought we could get away with learning a few moves and winging it the day of.
Murisa was so much fun during our class that we decided to sign up for a pack and learn a whole routine for our dance. She quickly found our strengths and choreographed something amazing to our music. We even ended up with 2 LIFTS! Everyone was totally impressed and it was all thanks to her.
Did I mention that Murisa is the BEST!!! Just had to say it one more time.

My husband and I started our «first dance» lessons with Murisa only a few weeks before our wedding. I am known to be a horrible dancer and was already stressed out even before the first lesson, especially since we were trying to cram a respectable routine within a short time frame. Despite my fears, Murisa was like a magician who made everything super fun. We truly enjoyed our lessons with her. Murisa is a wonderful person and she was so patient and spent extra time with me so I could understand the moves easily. The result? Our dance was perfect except for a very minor mistake (we were pretty nervous) but people loved our song and the dance was overall super cute. There were two little whimsical steps/​moves Murisa added to our dance and they were the highlight of our dance. We are planning on taking more dance lessons from her as we truly enjoyed our dance lessons, not to mention how fun and great of a work out it was! We highly recommend Murisa!

Everyone says this when they write a rave review, but I really DO wish that we could give Murisa more than 5 stars!!!
My husband and I started taking dance lessons loooong before our wedding because neither one of us had any experience dancing and were very nervous about doing our first dance. Murisa was always SO encouraging and SO patient, that dance lessons were always fun… not the fearful chore we were anticipating.
She is able to break things down so that even the most uncoordinated person (that would be me) can understand, but she somehow does it without making you (me) feel stupid: D
When you are certain that there is NO way you can do a particular step, she steps in with her tiny frame, and whips you around the floor without any effort whatsoever, proving to you that, yes, you WILL move that way! (I’m still mildly baffled by this…)
There are SO MANY wonderful things I could say about Murisa! Just know that if you are lucky enough to study with her, you will have an amazing and patient teacher, a skilled dancer/​performer/​actress, and an all-​around awesome person to help you make your wedding (or any) dance the best it can be: D

I grew up dancing however had very little training in ballroom. When I got back into the dance world after being away from it for many years, I decided to expand my horizons and try ballroom. I contacted Murisa and met with her for lessons. She is a truly gifted teacher, working patiently and steadily to make sure you know which step is which along with ensuring you feel comfortable and confident! I highly recommend working with Murisa, she is the best!

My husband and I knew absolutely nothing about ballroom dancing and within just a few classes we were twinkling and shassé-​ing like pros! We had so much fun learning the waltz for our upcoming wedding with Murisa, she made it seem so easy and was incredibly patient and knowledgeable. Hoping to take some extra classes with her in the future after the wedding!

My husband surprised me with private ballroom dance lessons as a gift, and we absolutely loved Murisa! Neither one of us had ever ballroom danced before, so we didn’t even really know what we wanted, but Murisa made us super comfortable right from the start. After describing what kind of feel we were going for (we wanted to be able to have a great go-​to dance for weddings and the like), she helped us pick out a great dance that would give us what we wanted and be straight-​forward enough for beginners! She is so patient in explaining everything and switches back and forth between the male and female roles beautifully, which makes learning all the easier. She’s professional while also being fun and very enthusiastic when you get the steps down! The pace was also great — if we were picking up a move faster than expected, she would move along at a faster pace, allowing us to learn more. All in all, we are so happy with our experience with Murisa and hope to return again in the future!

We worked with Murisa for about 6 sessions before our August wedding and had such a blast with her. She is so encouraging and such a great teacher. She knows the dances so well and was easily able to give both of us tips to make the moves smoother.
We mainly wanted to take lessons so we didn’t just sway back and forth for our first dance but never expected it to be so fun. I highly recommend Murisa and taking dance lessons before your wedding. With all the stress that comes with planning a wedding, it’s nice to have time for just you and your fiancé that isn’t all about making decisions for the wedding.
Thank you so much Murisa! You’re awesome!

Murisa was such a pleasure to work with for almost the ten sessions we had with her. She’s very professional. She really knows the dances. I mean, she could switch back and forth from the girl and guy parts so smoothly. Definitely helped out my fiancé.
In addition, she totally keeps it light and fun and gets you excited for your dance.
I really appreciated her teaching analogies like the elevator, beach ball and so forth. Helped me to definitely understand how I should be moving or standing. I think she definitely has the gift of teaching. This is coming from a former teacher.
All in all, we loved Murisa. She’s a beautiful person inside and out!

I had purchased a Groupon to use for my fiancé and I to take a dance class before our wedding. When I had called to schedule the class, Murisa was extremely helpful, gracious and accommodating with my schedule. Once at the actual class, Murisa was not only extremely patient, but she was very clear and simple to understand. Her illustrations were helpful and we both quickly picked up the steps with ease, thanks to her instructions! I would absolutely return to her in the future, as both my fiancé and I were impressed with her! Highly recommend her to those seeking help with even just being more comfortable on the dance floor for your wedding.

I surprised my fiancé with lessons for his 30^th birthday and Murisa was GREAT! She was really thorough– asked questions about our experience to get a sense of our abilities, then chose a dance she thought would be appropriate for us. We’re both mostly untrained dancers, so she was good about explaining things in a way we could understand, and was very patient. =) We both had fun, learned some new things, and will definitely be going back for more, when we’re not in the middle of wedding craziness!