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My wife and I are looking to move up to Seabourn for our next cruise. We love to dance. Those of you who dance and have cruised with Seabourn in the past, would you please give me your opinions as to how good the dance bands are on the ships and should I be looking at the smaller or larger ships if we want the best dancing. Thanks for your information. Jerry of Jerry and Kathy

We love dancing and cruising is good as we can dance after eating all the gourmet food. Are there professional dance couple onboard? Also is smoking allowed in public area ? We can’t stand smoke so this alone would drive us away. Anyone who can comment on the dancing, and dance music, onboard the Seaford Sojourn? We want to do our homework before we book our cruise, thank you in advance

For those who knows Mambo, Salsa, the Cumbia music is great :-)

Just returned from a holiday sailing on the QM2, the QRO Andrew Hiller, together with the vocalist Alberto Bernet, did a wonderful job. Its Alberto’s first contract, and he is just so wonderful, we all wrote to the cruise line and hope they will hire him back. Not only is his voice very good, he is so friendly, talk and smile to passengers, and even got on the dance floor once or twice (same as Andrew Hiller who went on the dance floor twisting with us for about 20 seconds and nearly broke his hips ....) Their music is very clear, and although not 100%, but close to 90% great dance music, and on a cruise shhip, that was phenomenal

We are part of Vivian’s group (about 35 of us), most are dancers, and many accomplished, both international and American styles. We met so many familiar faces, some remembered me on the QV or QE, its like a big family reunion. Some even told me I should be the social hostess :-)

A couple of nights they scheduled sequence dances but no one showed up. Ballroom dancers were usually there just to keep the seat warm so they got an early start :-)

All is good, one tea dance, better than none on the QV and QE.

I think I was the unofficial dance hostess on that sailing :-) and I am with Vivian’s group. To add on what was missing from other comments, yes they played WCS, and yes it was good WCS, not just a foxtrot turned WCS and they actually told us its a WCS. Most of the time when they said they play a BasoNova, to me it is s slow Rumba or a Bolero. When they played a very slow tempo piece for the non ballroom dancer, we could do a Nightclub 2 Step. The QRO played some good and popular pop music that one can easily hustle with. Furthermore, when they played a Samba, I got asked by passenger for a hustle and it was so good (for someone who is not very fluent in Samba, take note :-)

During the 14 days we danced every night, when they scheduled a sequence dance at the Queens Room, its our night of shorter dance time but no complain as we need to share the floor and let my feet rest a bit that evening. One night I even got in and tried a few Sequence dance and it was fun. I run ballroom party at home where I DJ and most people love my dance music. I have given the DJs on all three queens many of my good collections, and they do have a lot more from other contributors. The DJ on our sailing, Chris, knows me well but I did not have to talk to him at all this time. He play many good dance music for our dancing pleasure every night (some I noticed were from the songs I gave him). Over the 14 nights I only counted about half a dozen songs that were not to my liking, what a good job he'd done for the recorded music.

A passenger told us that other lines (such as RCL) has formally abandoned ballroom music. Keeping my fingers crossed that Cunard will not follow this trend.

Bob’s comment on G32 is very valid, unless you are brave enough to go through the crowd during the reception and you are not stopped by the staff (reception usually by invitation only) then you can go to G32 to practise your dance moves but the floor size is odd, and G32 has SMOKERS.......In that regard the QV and QE are much better, having their Hemisphere/Yacht Club on deck 10 as an alternate dance venue whenever there is a reception or a seq dance in the QR.

Sergey and Olga are excellent teachers, all international style, the dance floor was always packed whenever they are giving lessons. And their performance was fabulous.

Finally, Tea Dance is almost non existence in the QE and QV.... we had two tea dances in 14 days (possibly due to the two seven days segments).

Historically, during the first US Latin craze in the 1920's and 30's, virtually all Latin music was referred to as mambo whether it was mambo-tempo or not. As music got slower sometimes extra steps were added (this became triple-mambo, later renamed to cha cha) and sometimes the dance was just danced slower (this became bolero, then English-style bolero, later renamed to international rumba). As a result, a lot of dances were identified as mambo tempo that shouldn't be. Bosa Nova is officially 30-40 MPM - a far greater range than any other style - which gives it a bit of overlap with American rumba at the slow end and not quite as fast as samba at the quick end.

 

 

 

That would be Vivian. She's got her ballroom dance group on board and had a fantastic offer that we alas were not able to take advantage of.