Start with the Right Search
The most common class-planning mistake is starting from memory. You pick dances you already know, and the set ends up unbalanced— too fast, too slow, all the same level, or all the same style. BootStepper's dance search fixes this by letting you filter before you commit.
Open Dances and set your difficulty level. If you're running a beginner session, filter to Absolute Beginner and Beginner. For a mixed class, layer in Improver. Use the counts filter to stay inside a comfortable range—most beginner sets work best between 32 and 64 counts. If you know your audience tends to follow certain choreographers, add them to the choreographer filter to surface dances they'll recognise.
Sort by Most Viewed or Most Favorited to see what's popular right now, or by Newest First if you want to introduce something fresh. The steps search filter lets you match specific step patterns—useful if you want a dance that includes a particular move you're building a technique segment around.
Use Favorites as Your Holding Area
When you find something interesting but aren't sure yet, hit the heart icon to save it to your Favorites. Your Favorites page is a personal collection that's always one click away. Think of it as a browsing basket: you can browse freely and pull candidates in without committing them to an actual class plan.
You can return to Favorites later, compare options side by side, and prune down to your final set before creating the actual collection for the class.
Build the Playlist Collection
Once you've settled on your dances, create a new playlist collection. Give it a clear name—"Tuesday Beginners May 2026" is better than "Class 3"—so you can find it later. Collections are persistent: you can reuse, clone, or update them across weeks without starting from scratch.
Inside the collection, add each dance in the order you plan to teach it. BootStepper lets you add notes per entry, which is where you can drop your cuing reminders, flagged trouble spots, or timing notes. These stay with the collection so you don't have to reconstruct them each week.
Set the Teaching Order Deliberately
Class flow matters. A common structure: start with a warm-up dance that most people already know, introduce one or two new dances in the first half while energy is high, revisit recent dances in the second half, and end with something upbeat and familiar. Your collection order enforces this—if you build it right once, you don't have to rethink it again.
If you're planning a progression across weeks, BootStepper lets you build multiple collections and attach them to separate events. You can also nest collections—useful for keeping a "master repertoire" collection that feeds into individual weekly sets.
Link to an Event
If you run regular classes or socials listed on BootStepper under Events, attach your playlist collection to the corresponding event. This surfaces your class set to any dancers who follow the event and gives them context about what to expect.
Run It as a Live Session
On the night, open the collection and switch it to a live session. A live session tracks what you're playing right now and what's coming up next. Dancers in the room can follow along on their phones, and if you've linked the session to a Discord channel, the bot can post now-playing updates automatically.
Live sessions also accept requests: if the crowd wants something not already in the set, it can be added on the fly through the request queue without disrupting your prepared order.
Export and Print
Collections can be exported to CSV or printed as formatted sheets. If you still want a physical backup on the night, print the set list directly from BootStepper rather than copying it manually into a word processor. The export includes the dance name, choreographer, difficulty, and any notes you've added.