Sam Nguyen (she/her) spent 18 years of her life believing she could never be coordinated enough to dance until she got hooked onto swing dancing at UC Berkeley. She quickly fell in love with the improvisation and partnership of the dance, and she danced probably waaaay more than she should have during her college years. Sam has since continued the entire gambit of dance, from teaching to organizing to traveling and competing. Currently, her big passion in dance is mentoring new dance teachers, creating curriculum for venues in the Bay Area, and learning more about the history, roots, and values of this Black art form.
Sam loves to incorporate silly playfulness, responsive partnership, and you-know-every-beat-in-this-song-don’t-you musicality in her dancing. Coming from humble beginnings of gathering in random hallways and learning through YouTube videos, her dance teaching often emphasizes the tools needed for how to learn and how to take inspiration from an idea and make it your own. Sam’s endless lesson planning experience from being a high school teacher translates to even more endless lesson planning for dance; her lessons are crafted to emphasize partnership, connectedness, and having a blast while dancing. You can find her leading and following out on the social dance floor ’til the end of the night despite having to wake up at 7am to teach high schoolers.