Ballroom Stories

To "get the ball rolling" for the ballroom story contest, I'm going to share my own story of how I got involved with ballroom dance. Of course, since I'm the judge for the story contest, my own story is not eligible. :-)

My first experience with Ballroom Dance was as a required PE credit in college. Ballroom Dance 101 on the schedule at 7:15 in the morning, at the furthest east (and furthest uphill!) building at the University of Utah during Winter Quarter. Someone who put the schedule together really had a sense of humor.

We all showed up to class in waffle-stomper boots and parkas, rubbing the sleep out of our eyes and the snow off of ourselves. There were far more women than men, and most of the people taking the class were taking it for the same reason I was - they needed the PE credit and 7:15 was the only open slot on their schedule.

So it was not a terribly spellbinding experience, in spite of the instructor's best efforts at being cheerful and helpful.

I've always loved watching ballroom dancing - movies like Dirty Dancing, Shall We Dance, and even old movies like A White Christmas with Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney have always held a special attraction for me. But my actual experience left a lot to be desired, for at least another ten years.

John suggested we have dancing at our wedding, and I loved the idea. There was just one problem. I remembered very little except the basic box step for waltz. (And as it turned out in later instruction, I'd been doing that wrong as well.)

I was engaged to John for nearly two years. For 18 months of that, he was in on active duty at Fort Hood in Texas. I was very lucky, I got to see him every other weekend. (Many military fiancees didn't get to see each other for years!)

In any case, we had a limited amount of time to spend together. During that time, we took private lessons from Margene Anderson in Bountiful, Utah. Margene was great about scheduling around John's leave and was able to fit in a 2-hour lesson whenever John could get leave to come to Utah and we could manage the time.

John and I practiced in his tiny apartment in Texas whenever we could, and the rest of the time just practiced on our own at "home." (We probably would have looked silly to any bystanders, but that's not a problem in your own living room!) We learned a simple waltz and a tango for the wedding.

John was discharged in March, the wedding was in May, so we had a few more "crash" lessons.

One big obstacle was my dress, which needed to be shortened for the tango we were planning to do. Margene also helped us modify the steps to fit the dress and the concrete dance floor.

We had a great time, and really enjoyed the wedding. Our two dances are in the wedding video. We danced with each other a lot of the night, in between seeing family and friends who we were very fortunate to have attend. Margene also attended the reception and offered informal dance lessons to anyone who wanted them. Several people took her up on it, and the dance floor was full all night.

We wanted to get back into ballroom dancing but didn't see another opportunity until October of 2006, when we met Lois and Pat in Tooele. We had a ballroom class each Wednesday night with a few other couples. This gave us the perfect mid-week break to have a "date" with each other, get out, forget about work, and have a good time.

We're learning a two-step and another waltz, and are making a lot of progress. Given that we've had less than a year of practice, I think we're doing pretty well. Or at least really enjoying ourselves.