Cupertino’s Rick Greene was 19 years old and taking a short vacation after his first tour with the US Merchant Marines during World War II when he decided to enroll in ballroom dancing lessons. He had enough money left over after buying his first car and wanted to meet young ladies and accompany them to dances, he said.
So he learned to dance the swing, the rumba and the waltz. In his free time, he would accompany women to fancy dances to the music of big band stars such as Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey.
Eight decades later, in an interview just before her 100th birthday last December, Greene said she still goes ballroom dancing three times a week. Although she can no longer do certain dances — the Viennese waltz, the quickstep, the samba — because of what she calls a “gimpy leg,” she still learns new steps from Robin Horn, her San Jose coach of 37 years.
When I get to the dance floor, I don’t mind. I’m leaving! he said. “Hopefully I’ll be there at 102.”
Today’s Ballroom dance scene looks a little different. While it may be smaller than it was in 1943, it’s still thriving, with hundreds of dancers flocking to ballrooms every week to waltz, tango or swing. In retirement homes and senior centers, dancers gather in various locations almost every day of the week – some attendees throwing discos for fun. And a team of competitive and professional dancers train at local studios before jetting across the country — and the world — to pursue prestigious ballroom dance degrees.
Greene started dancing regularly when he felt lonely after his wife died in 1983, starting with ballroom lessons in Saratoga, he said. Now, she goes to a dance in Santa Clara every Tuesday, one in Sunnyvale every Wednesday and one at the Starlite Ballroom in San Jose on Saturday nights.
“I’m starting to go around,” he said. “I’m not lonely.”
“They’re small dorms, almost like a high school,” says Horn of the Bay Area ballroom community. Horn trained as a teacher after answering a newspaper ad in 1984 and has been teaching ever since – now at her studio Park Avenue Ballroom. “It’s clique-y, like anything. … Even the people who go to the Santa Clara dance don’t really go to the Sunnyvale dance, and there’s different people you see each place you go.”
Ballroom dancing involves a leader and follower dancing together in a “frame,” and often doing opposite steps, Horn said. As the leader’s foot moves forward, the follower’s foot moves back.
“It’s an international language,” said Joallyn Bohn, a Danville-based teacher who has taught ballroom dance for 30 years. “You hear the music, you can go up to somebody, kind of show that you’d like to dance with them, and then you get down, and you walk like you’ve been dancing with that person all your life.”
Scott Harrison, 70, from Dublin, knows that feeling.
“It’s fun to dance with someone and know that they felt that was the best dance of the evening or the afternoon, and sometimes they feel the same way,” Harrison said. “Things inspire you instead of someone you’re dancing with, and synchronizing with the music – it’s very rewarding.”
He said. When he found that no one seemed to be keeping track of local events on the scene, he launched a Bay Area ballroom dance newspaper and website.
Harrison said he joined his first ballroom dance class with his wife about 25 years ago. He said he is drawn to mental exercise as much as physical, although he prefers fancy footwork to lifting barbells in the gym.
“It’s the kind of exercise you don’t have to be sore the next morning,” he said. “It’s a challenge because, as a leader, you have to learn a step, plan a step, do a step, and think about what the next step is going to be. … When you change partners, each partner has a different skill, and if you’re at my level, you try to adjust your dance to fit your partner’s skill. It’s not repetitive at all.”
Louise Kirby, president and treasurer of Richmond’s Allegro Ballroom — a ballroom staple for more than 30 years — said people come from all over the Bay Area to learn everything from foxtrot to tango to cha cha to samba, and participate in social dances.
He said Allegro is also a hot spot for Argentine tango, with top dancers visiting as guest teachers and performers. That’s notable because the Bay Area has what longtime ballroom dancer and Allegro instructor Mark Novak calls “probably the largest area” of Argentine tango in the US.
The appeal, says Matt MaMoody, the Argentine tango instructor at Allegro, is that the style is so interconnected, it makes the dancers “two souls in one body.”
Competitive ballroom dancing has its own social rhythms, as dancers see the same faces and know everyone competing at their level as they travel to competitions across the country, says Monica Serpa, a former competitive dancer and now owner of Studio M Ballroom Club in San Jose. Studio M offers both competitive and community dance training.
The competitive side of ballroom dancing runs at a very different level of intensity than what attracts those in the scene just for fun and socializing.
“You can spend hours and hours doing one step,” says Serpa.
Dancers can compete every weekend, said Horn, who was in professional and novice competitions until he was 45 years old, and is coming out of retirement in January to dance with a student.
“When they got really popular, we’d go every weekend. And we’d go to every city, every place in the country, and go to a hotel and be in a ballroom all weekend,” Horn said. “It’s not really fancy.”
Dancers often choose to compete in a Latin or standard ballroom dance — although some compete in up to ten dances, says Polina Oddr, another Studio M instructor.
“When you’re at the professional level, you want to get a trophy — you don’t just do it for fun,” said Oddr, who started training at the age of six and won the World Latin American Championship three times in a row. “He’s hungry to get better.”
Both Oddr and Artem Shmigelyuk, another instructor at Studio M, have competed in the US and abroad, and now continue to do so with their students in professional and amateur competitions, where the student pays an instructor to be their partner and only the novice judges, Shmigelyuk said. But the pro-am is expensive, as the student only pays for his teacher’s fees and expenses. One weekend can cost $4,000 to $5,000.
Almost everyone in the Bay Area football scene agrees that its appeal is largely driven by the continued popularity of TV’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
“It made all the crafts good again,” Novak said.
Greene, who watches the show every week, enjoys seeing the professionals in action, he said.
“They got all 10, and it almost brought me to tears, because of the reaction of the audience and the judges and the contestants and everything,” he said. “It gets pretty wild sometimes.”
New dancers can find themselves not only connected to the social aspect of the ballroom, but also to the way it makes them feel.
“Community dancing is a fountain of youth,” said Bohn. “It’s great for you physically, mentally and socially.”
Greene, who has an extensive library of ballroom dance videos and chooses a few new steps to learn with Horn each week, said it keeps her mentally alert — and even helped her pass her driving test.
He said: “Robin and I are always moving on to new steps. “There are a lot of old ladies dancing in their 90s. The only problem is that most of the ladies I dance with are old enough to be their father, but they don’t seem to care.”
Horn believes it can have the same benefits for everyone.
“If you keep walking,” he said, “you can live to be 100 years old.”
