What Dance Sage is
Dance Sage watches you dance and tells you where your body went, using a skeleton — the moving stick figure it builds from your video. The skeleton is the whole point: it can be compared to another dancer's, drawn back over your clip, replayed at a quarter speed, and sent to a teacher without sending your video anywhere.
Everything that matters happens on your iPhone. Finding your body in a video, comparing you to a teacher, scoring you, choosing what to say out loud — none of it needs a signal, and none of it uploads anything. You post a clip only when you decide to.
Signing in
You can record, save and practise without an account. You need one to post, to share with someone, or to receive a lesson.
- Sign in or sign up with an email and password, or with Apple.
- Choose a handle. It is your address on Dance Sage — a teacher shares a lesson with @yourhandle, and your public page lives at that name.
Note — your handle is how people find you to share with, so pick something a teacher can spell back to you.
Recording a dance
Two ways in, from the opening screen:
- Record Live — the front or back camera, with your skeleton drawn over you as you move.
- Upload Video — any clip already in your phone.
Either way you pick what the clip holds:
- Styling — one dancer. This is the sharper of the two: it finds 33 points including your hands and feet.
- Partner — two dancers. It finds fewer points on each, because following two bodies at once is a harder job.
For the best skeleton — get your whole body in frame, keep the phone still, and dance somewhere the light is not behind you.
The review screen
When the clip is ready you land on playback. From here you can:
- Switch between Video and Skeleton — the skeleton on its own is easier to read, and it is what a teacher sees.
- Scrub back and forth, and watch the beat markers the app found in the music, with the tempo it measured.
- Save — keep it on this iPhone.
- Post — put it on your profile.
Saving and posting
Saving and posting are deliberately two different acts, sitting side by side.
Save keeps the recording on your phone. Nothing is uploaded and nobody else can see it.
Post uploads the clip and its skeleton to your profile, and asks one question — who can see it:
- Only me — nobody but you. You can change this later.
- People I choose — only the handles you add, and you can take access back at any time.
- Everyone — anyone can find and watch it, on the web too.
Sharing a video out
The share menu on the review screen makes a file you can send anywhere — Instagram, WhatsApp, your camera roll:
- Share Video — the original clip, untouched.
- Skeleton + Video — your skeleton drawn over the footage.
- Skeleton Only — the stick figure on a clean background, which is the version that reads at a glance and shows nothing of the room you are in.
The two skeleton exports come either silent or with the original audio. Silent is the default.
When someone shares with you
A share arrives as an offer, not as a fait accompli. It waits for you under sharing in the app, and on My videos on the web, with a count so you can see there is something to answer.
- Accept and the clip is yours to watch.
- Decline and it goes away — the access is revoked, not merely hidden.
- A series accepted once keeps delivering; Stop this series ends it and takes every clip it brought with it.
Making it a lesson
Watching a clip someone shared is not the same as learning it. When you want to practise a move, open the clip and choose Add to My Lessons.
That saves the lesson on your phone and online at the same time: on the phone so practice works with no signal, online so the same lesson is on the web with your attempts under it. A lesson you make from your own recording stays on the phone, since there is nothing posted for the web to point at.
Also — a lesson can arrive as a file. A .dancesage file sent by Messages or AirDrop opens straight into your Lessons, no account needed.
Three ways to practise
Open a lesson and there are three doors:
- Watch the Reference — just the teacher, as many times as you like.
- Dance With the Teacher — the live session, described next.
- Compare a Saved Recording — score something you already recorded against this lesson, with no camera involved.
Dance With the Teacher
This is the heart of it. The teacher's skeleton dances on your screen and you dance inside it.
- Find your starting position. The teacher's opening pose is held on screen before anything moves, so you can line yourself up.
- A three-count, and the teacher begins.
- Dance. Your own skeleton draws over you, and joints change colour as they drift from where the teacher's are — so you can see the arm that is late without being told.
- Listen. A voice calls the corrections that matter while you move.
- Stop and your score appears at once.
Your video is deleted. The camera recording exists only long enough to pull the skeleton out of it, and is then removed. What is kept is the skeleton.
The front camera mirrors you, which would otherwise make your left look like the teacher's right. The app works that out and grades you correctly either way.
Your score
When you stop you get:
- A score out of a hundred for the whole attempt.
- At most two things to fix, spoken aloud. Two, because nobody improves six things at once.
- A mark per part of the body — arms, legs, and so on — so you can see whether it was your feet or your frame.
Scoring is strict on purpose. It forgives being slightly late, since a dancer following a reference always reacts a beat behind, but it does not flatter you. Every attempt is saved under its lesson and can be reopened any time.
Watching it back
From a result, or from any past attempt, open the replay — both skeletons on one screen, the teacher's in cyan and yours drawn over it. Each dancer's switch carries their name, not "Teacher" and "You", so at a glance you know which body is whose; turn either one off to watch the other alone.
- Slow it right down, to a quarter speed, or run it at double.
- Scrub anywhere in the attempt.
- The error timeline — a strip showing how far off you were at every moment, so the bad half-second is visible rather than remembered.
- Jump to your worst moments with the arrows either side of play.
Sending it to the teacher
Attempts are private. They live under My lessons and never appear on your profile.
When you want a teacher to see one, send it. No offer is needed — a reply is an answer — and it travels back the way the lesson came, including through the group. It lands in their class with your name and the time on it.
You can also keep an attempt back, send it later, or delete it. If you delete one you already sent, the teacher loses it too.
Teaching
Anyone who shares a move is a teacher, so there is no separate teacher account.
Share one of your clips as a lesson and it appears under I'm teaching in Lessons, with the students you shared it with, how many have accepted, and every attempt that has come back — each saying who and when. Open an attempt and you get the same replay the student got.
Sage, the teacher built in
Sage is Dance Sage's own teacher — the one you dance with when you have not got one. Its classes work exactly like a lesson from a person: add one to your Lessons, dance it, read your score.
There are four courses — Salsa, Bachata, West Coast Swing and Ballroom — each starting at the first basic and going up through the levels. The first classes of every course are free, and the rest of a course opens when you subscribe to that dance. Subscriptions are not on sale yet; the free classes are real classes, not clips.
Using the website
Sign in at dancesage.com with the same account and you get three places, as a row of buttons on the page:
- My videos — everything you have posted, your series, who you shared with, and any offers waiting for you.
- Lessons — what you are learning and what you are teaching, with attempts under each, and the same graded replay in the browser.
- Sage — the courses.
What the website cannot do is record or practise. The camera, the ghost and the scoring are on the phone, which is where you are dancing.
What leaves your phone
The short version: nothing, until you post or share.
- Recording, analysing, practising and scoring all happen on the device. Airplane mode changes none of it.
- Practice video is deleted as soon as the skeleton is out of it.
- Posting uploads the clip and its skeleton, because that is what posting means. Who can then see it is the choice you made when you posted.
- Signing in creates an account with your email. Without one, the app never talks to us at all.
Deleting things
- An attempt — swipe it away in the lesson. A copy you sent goes from the teacher too.
- A lesson — removing it takes its attempts with it. Your own saved recordings are untouched.
- A post — deleting it removes the video, the skeleton and every share pointing at it.
- Your account — from your account screen in the app. It takes your posts and shares with it.
When something looks wrong
The website shows my face instead of a Sign in link
Your browser remembers you were signed in. The page now checks with the server and puts the Sign in link back when the session has expired — or click your face and choose Sign out. You can always go straight to dancesage.com/signin.
A lesson is on my phone but not on the web
Its online half did not get made — usually it was added with no signal. Open the Lessons tab while online and the app registers it for you.
A lesson someone shared is not in my Lessons
Accepting a share only gives you access to watch it. To practise it you also have to open it and choose Add to My Lessons.
My score says nothing
A score needs a lesson and an attempt of the same kind — a partner lesson cannot be graded against a solo attempt. Dance the lesson as it was recorded.
Still stuck
Email [email protected]. A real person reads every message.