Students learn new dance steps

By Jessica Hoover, COM 301
Edited and posted by Amanda Griswell, COM 303

Ballroom dance classes will be off rotation next fall, but students at Berry College will still have the opportunity to dance.

With the ballroom dance class, Health and Physical Education 123, not being offered again until Spring 2009, the student-led Ballroom Dance Club is learning dance moves in preparation for offering campus-wide dance workshops in the fall.

Group members are also learning dance steps now in order to help with the “Dancing with the Staff” event next year. The club members hope to offer more ballroom dance workshop lessons for students who may not be able to take the class in the spring, said junior Ashley Roberts, club president.

The Student Life Council approved the club in February after Roberts, disappointed in not being able to get into the quickly-filled HPE 123 class, started teaching herself ballroom dance in order to offer lessons to Berry students.

“We’re not really trying to be ‘Dancing with the Stars’ material,” Roberts said. “Even if all the moves aren’t necessarily perfect, we’re mainly here to have fun, and we certainly have a lot of that.”

The club consists of 10 or 12 regular members who meet every Monday night in the Cage Center multi-purpose room. Each week, they choose a different dance to work on, such as the popular waltz, foxtrot, tango, cha-cha, rumba, samba, swing or Viennese waltz.

Roberts said about four males come out of the regular attendees, so many women have to take turns dancing the lead role to make up for the lack of male partners.

“I tried to recruit some male members by posting some signs around campus showing what a great work-out ballroom dancing is,” Roberts said. “I even included a chart showing how many calories you burn, in hopes of getting more guys to come if they know it’s good exercise.”

Teaching the steps
Roberts said she learns the dance moves from some friends at a studio near her home and then teaches her boyfriend, junior Michael Ballew, on Sunday nights. On Monday nights, they both teach the club members.

Junior Ashley Roberts and her boyfriend, junior Michael Ballew, dancing with the other club members.
Photo courtesy of Ashley Roberts.

Despite Roberts’ challenge of having to learn both the lead and follower roles in order to teach the club members, junior Kathleen Higgins-Thomas, vice president of the club, said Roberts is a good teacher.

“Ashley is really great because she teaches the dances systematically and step-by-step,” Higgins-Thomas said. “I would really love to be able to dance like Fred Astaire, but Ashley and I aren’t quite there yet.”

A new place to dance
The women may not be professional yet, but senior Jocelyn Bee said practicing in the Cage Center has enabled them to try more daring and complex dance moves. Bee said one of the more memorable moments of the ballroom dance club was practicing aerials, which are a type of dance move involving twirling the female partner in the air.

Roberts said the group should stay later and practice them one night after the club session was over, but she said Ballew did not think the moves were safe to do without mats.

“But we turned around and there was a pile of mats in one of the Cage rooms, so we had an impromptu aerials practice,” Roberts said.

The floors in the new dance rooms in the Cage Center are more ideal for practicing aerials and dancing in general. When she practiced with the Swing Club last semester, they had to dance in the Morton-Lemley basement, Bee said.

“We used to practice in the Morton-Lemley basement, but the floors were horrible,” Bee said. “The dance rooms in the Cage have floors that give and are actually made especially for dancing, which makes dancing a lot more comfortable.” Positives of ballroom dancing
The women gave reasons for why ballroom dancing develops social skills.

Roberts said weddings are the type of events where ballroom dancing is good to know, especially when it comes time for your own wedding.

“Whenever I get married, my husband better know how to waltz,” Roberts said. “We will not be doing the stiff middle school dance during our first dance at the reception. I also intend to teach my dad how to waltz, so we can actually dance during the father-daughter dance.”

If weddings are not in the near future for some students, Higgins-Thomas said there is still a benefit in knowing how to dance at school functions. She said that the ballroom dance club, in addition to the swing club, had a good showing of people who knew the right dance moves at Spring Formal 2008.

“Dancing to rap music just doesn’t cut it for us,” Higgins-Thomas said. “We had a good group of us who were actually dancing at formal, but hopefully we’ll see more ballroom dancers at school dances in the future.”

Roberts said the club will be more publicized in the future. She said she hopes that the club will be able to offer more opportunities for dance workshops and larger scale activities open to all students next semester.