Feb 13, 2025 •6 min read

Hosting A Dance and Karaoke Party: How to Entertain Friends This Christmas

How to make your party bright, fun, and unforgettable? Include dances and karaoke in the program. These activities are perfect for any group and are budget-friendly. All you need is good music, enthusiasm, and a few contest ideas.

In this article, we'll share how to organize a karaoke dance party so that everyone feels like a star this festive night.

What Are Dance Battles and Why Add Them to Your Party?

Dance battles are competitions where participants take turns dancing, and the audience or judges choose a winner. Unlike professional competitions, a skill isn't the key factor at a friendly party—it's all about the atmosphere.

Benefits of dance battles:

Extra physical activity—you can burn some calories right after the holiday meal and not worry about dessert.
Bringing friends closer—letting loose with dance brings people closer together.
New experience—non-dancers rarely get to try something like a dance battle. With a creative approach, it can become an unforgettable experience.

How to Organize a Dance Battle?

To set up a dance battle at a friendly party, you don't need to hire a team of professional trainers and lighting experts, like on TV. Just take some time to understand the process once using our tips.

Choose Your Format

Decide how your dance battle will unfold. Or maybe you'll try out all the formats in one evening?

Solo Battle. In solo battles, everyone dances on their own. Dancers need to win over the crowd to succeed.
Couple Battle. To ease nerves among newcomers, form teams of two. To win, you and your partner must move in harmony without getting in each other's way.
Team Battle. Host a team battle to embrace the vibe of 70s street dance duels. Your goal is to learn a few basic combos so your dance looks synchronized and impressive.

Improvisation or Preparation?

Freestyle is dancing without preparation, while a set involves choreographed moves.

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For a house party, there's no need to gear up for an intense battle by drilling moves. Freestyling is fun, creative, and engaging for all skill levels.

Prepare the Dance Floor

Clear the space of unnecessary items so no one gets hurt. Floors shouldn't be too slippery—shoes need to grip well.

Create a stage effect using available lighting. Let table lamps or small LED flashlights stand in for spotlights. Aim their beams in various directions or bundle them for effects across your makeshift platform. This will add a show-like atmosphere.

String lights provide a beautiful, diffused light. They're especially fitting if your party is celebrating the holiday season.

Create a Playlist

Compile a mix of dance tracks everyone knows. They're great for warm-up rounds because moves to familiar tunes are intuitive.

Continue the contest with movie soundtracks from dance films, hip-hop, or niche songs to up the challenge for participants.

Ideas for Dance Contests

Here are some exciting ways to host a dancing competition.

A Dance Battle—akin to ancient duels, each team sends one dancer to the dance floor. Style and charisma will be the deciding factors. Use this concept for the entire program or as a final round.
No-Rules Dance—a fun idea for a dance battle where no one will end the night upset. The key here is originality. Experiment with interpreting the same song using different movements and surprise the audience.
Dance Fever—one by one, tired dancers step out. The goal is to stay in motion the longest without stopping. The team of the dancer who dances the longes wins.
Freeze or Dance—dancers must freeze on command, even if they were just moving energetically. The winner is the team or dancer who pauses promptly and doesn't budge during pauses.
Repeat the Move—a social media trend where people are asked to perform something the questioner can't replicate. Here, the task is similar. The dancers show each other doable moves at a fast or tricky pace. The aim is to imitate accurately without big mistakes.
TikTok Formats—audience or judges play popular TikTok sounds and dances that have gone viral. Dancers must recall and mimic them faster than the opponents.

How to Keep the Battle Fun for Everyone?

Let the audience vote. At a friends' gathering, the crowd will likely support everyone equally, avoiding hurt feelings.

Don't treat the battle as a real competition. If someone dances better, let them teach others. Freestyle, dance based on emotions and how the songs make you feel. Pretend you're dancing alone at home. This practice will bond you with friends even more.

For a twist, include themed props. Think wide-legged jeans, bandanas, jingly bracelets, sunglasses, and belts with oversized buckles. It'll be a blast.

Come up with symbolic rewards. A holiday souvenir, box of chocolates, or a gift card can do the trick.

Movie-Inspired Dance Contests

We've included classic dance movies and musicals blending both song and dance styles. Use them as inspiration for your party.

West Side Story, 1961

Chicago, 2002

La La Land, 2016

Rocketman, 2019

Hosting a Karaoke Night With Friends

Home karaoke is a beloved tradition, not a TV singing contest. Singing solo, whether you're an adult or a kid, in the friendly company of people you don't need to be shy around is an incredibly enjoyable activity. Let's dive into how to throw the best holiday karaoke party.

How to Host a Karaoke Party at Home?

This section covers how to set up karaoke for any home gathering, including equipment, what contests to create, and where to find songs.

Equipment

It's great if you have a ready-made setup—a karaoke system with a song library, microphones, quality speakers, and a large screen for lyrics. But if not, and you dream of singing like Madonna, there are budget-friendly options.

Computer or TV with YouTube. Launch songs via the YouTube app by searching "song title karaoke" and sing along.
Phone and Bluetooth speaker. Use song lyrics on your phone and play the instrumental. Sing without a mic, loudly, and from the heart.
Bluetooth microphone and phone. The perfect pair for an affordable, fun karaoke evening at home. Play YouTube videos with your favorite song lyrics and sing into the mic. The sound comes from its built-in speaker, loud enough. For a more immersive karaoke club effect, pair it with a quality wireless speaker for enhanced sound.
Computer, mic, and free karaoke software. Download any free karaoke app, load backing tracks and text, connect a mic, and play sound through the computer speakers.

Where to Find Karaoke Tracks?

Finding karaoke tracks today is easier than ever—no need to buy discs or download files from torrents.

YouTube—a simple and free option. Just search the song title with "karaoke." Many dedicated channels offer quality instrumental versions with lyric displays on-screen.

Karaoke Apps—perfect for those wanting extra features like auto-tune or performance scores. Karaoke apps with free functionality: Smule for Android and iOS, StarMaker for Android and iOS, Yokee for iOS, and more.

Karaoke Players and Song Libraries—if you already have a karaoke system, it comes with a built-in song library you can update.

Streaming Services—to try new songs, search for instrumental tracks on streaming platforms like Apple Music or Spotify, which have playlists featuring instrumental hits.

Combining Dance and Karaoke

Alternate or combine these two activities to pack your evening with events. Here are some ideas.

A participant or sings and dances simultaneously. For example, one player might sing if that's easier, while the other entertains the audience with dance moves to the song. To win, embody the melody and fully express it through both dance and vocal performance.
A random track starts, and the person or team must either dance or sing—determined by chance. Participants need to adapt quickly to unexpected styles. Awkward pauses are inevitable; the key is to handle them creatively.
Inspired by charades, a participant sings a song line, and another mimics it with moves. Or one player hints a song line to another, who portrays the song's meaning without words, while the rest guess the track being referenced.

Dance or karaoke—the choice is yours. At a friendly pre-holiday party or even a family gathering, we suggest trying both. The priority isn't competition but joined participation and shared fun.

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Author:

Hazel Matthews

Author and editor of MySanta blog. Hazel shares tips and secrets of playing Secret Santa in person and online, and explains how to choose a perfect Christmas gift.