Ballroom dancing for you
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By Chang Se-moon
I am a ballroom dancer. When I am outside my home and need to kill some time alone, I usually find a rather quiet place and practice my steps. Otherwise, I forget my precious few steps. I am not really that good. I may be an average among all dancers in our local dance club with over 100 members, which is not bad.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to wait alone for some time inside a shopping mall. Since it was early in the morning, there were not many people walking by. I began my usual step practice. A gentleman was passing by, doing his morning walk. When he saw me, he stopped and asked me whether I was a ballroom dancer. I answered yes.
He then asked me what I thought of Dancing with the Star on TV. My answer was that it was not really dancing, definitely not the type of ballroom dancing that ordinary ballroom dance lovers dance. Dancers in the Dancing with the Star are mostly scantily dressed, meaning that they have no class. Young or old, all ballroom dancers are neatly dressed.
Today, I would like to introduce you two annual dancing events in the United States that any one from all over the world can attend and will be more than welcome. Both usually have 100 to 200 participants per event.
One is the Southern Rhapsody Dance Society, which is run by an elderly couple for the love of running. This Society meets twice a year, usually in Nashville (Tennessee) late in May and in Indianapolis (Indiana) later in August. Typical schedule lasts Saturday to Monday. The schedule includes three dances, dinner &dance exhibition, twobreakfasts, and one group dance lesson. Total cost is usually very reasonable because organizers are ordinary people who just love dancing and thus do a good job of negotiating price with the hosting hotel.
We have attended one in Nashville several years ago, and it was excellent. There was no pressure to dance and all participants who were total strangers were very friendly and nice. We all dressed well and danced. The floor was all wood, and the big band was really good.Dancers of Southern Rhapsody are mostly baby boomers, who are social ballroom dancers borrowing a term printed in the American Dancer magazine.
The other of the two is the Independence Day Ball (IDB) Dance Camp, organized by professionals annually during the first week of July in Washington, DC. It features numerous ballroom and Latin dance workshopsfor beginners to advanced dancers such as dance instructors and those who want to compete at the global level. These workshops are taught by US, UK, and World Champions. The list of instructors is impressive, including World and US Mambo Champion, World Professional South American Showdance Champion, World Professional Salsa Champion, 4-time US Professional Latin Champion, and more. Even the website is called championshipdance.com.
We were a little crazy to attend this year’s event in Washington DC. We went there, not because we are good dancers, but because people become more courageous when they are ignorant.IDB is for millennials who aspire to become professional ballroom dancers. Out of well over 100 participants, I noticed no more than 10 baby boomers. All others were millennials in excellent physical shape.
There were three concurrent sessions at anytime during the 5-day camp. Most sessions we attended were designed to teach fundamentals to become competitive ballroom dancers. Some sessions had professionalism that could easily be transformed to dancing by baby boomers. One particular instructor comes to my mind. Lauren Schelfhaudt, who taught some steps of mambo and cha cha, was a very good teacher. IDB is a learning camp. At the IDB level, dancing is an art. Millennials who want to be ballroom dancers beyond the level of social dance should benefit from attending the annual IDB camp.
I tried to find public ballroom dance places in Seoul (Korea) and also in Houston (Texas) through websites that are not run by private dance lesson places. I have no doubt that there are many, because even a much smaller town where I live has several that welcome everyone to dance with only a small fee. Somehow, I was not able to find any in either place. It would be nice to have websites in large cities that can easily be found by visitors who just want to enjoy dancing.
Finally, there is a saying that you dance as if nobody is watching. Actually, most ballroom dancers do not care about how others are dancing. Although most social ballroom dancers do not even change partners during the entire evening of dancing, there are ample opportunities for those without partners to dance through whistle dance, chair dance, and dancers who enjoy changing partners.
Chang Se-moon is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies. Write to him at: changsemoon@yahoo.com.