The sound of Latin music and students dancing now can be heard every Friday night in the University Recreation Center.

The Latin Dance Club had informal get-togethers last semester, student teacher Amandine Preaux said. As interest rose, the club decided to become an official TCU organization and to publicize to students.

“There’s just so much need for it because people like Latin dance, and there’s so many different styles, and nobody knows the technicalities of it,” student teacher Nishant Maller said.

Graduate student Anastasiia Riabinina said her background in ballroom dancing was much different than the Latin dances the teachers in club taught her.

“These dances are more living,” Riabinina said. “They’re more about moves, more about relationships, more about fun.”

After his friends introduced him to Latin dance, Maller, a graduate student, said he wanted to learn more about it by practicing and taking lessons.

“A lot of my friends were doing it, and we’d go out to parties. We kind of fell in love with it from there and just picked it up,” Maller said. “And I went back to India for lessons also, so it’s kind of a learning experience.”

Preaux, a junior criminal justice and Spanish double major, said students can learn dances including salsa, bachata, samba, cha-cha and merengue this semester.

The majority of students said the favorite dance they learned so far was bachata.

The lessons are free when the class is student-led, but the club also brings in professional dancers to teach students for a fee, Preaux said.

The club is open to all students and meets at 7 p.m. every Friday in Multi-Purpose Room 2 at the Rec Center. The week’s lessons will be publicized through Facebook and direct emails to students.