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Last updated: November 06. 2006 9:53AM
Shall we dance?
Ballroom, two-step, tango, foxtrot, swing - how to reinvent yourself on the dance floor.
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Then, it’s her turn. 87
Hammond pulls on high heels, reluctantly stands and stretches to touch her toes as if she were a runner preparing for a race. A dark, handsome man in a shirt unbuttoned to his navel comes to her side. Hammond takes his hand. The music starts, and the transformation begins. This woman who just minutes ago was too shy to stand around in her strappy little ruby dress is suddenly a hot blond immersed in her partner, and from the pair flows a sexy salsa that silences the crowd.
“Dance,” Hammond says, “will change your life.”
For anyone who saw shows like Dancing with the Stars and wondered if they, like NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice and rapper Master P, could learn to glide across the dance floor need only watch Hammond.
“I was shy,” the 58-year-old says. “To walk into a group of people that I didn’t know and to talk to somebody, nevermind interact with someone in a way that you don’t even know what they’re going to do, was very difficult.”
When one of her children decided to marry, Hammond, of Wilmington, knew she wanted to dance at the wedding. She paid a few bucks for an Elks Club class. The instructor was an older man who taught requisite social dances such as waltz and foxtrot. The classes ended, both of Hammond’s children wed, and she kept dancing. “The more I did it, the more I loved it,” she says.
“Now, I’ve gone on vacation and walked into dance places all by myself and had a good time.”
Hammond’s experience is not unusual, dancers and instructors say. Many people with no prior dance training gain the confidence to step onto the dance floor after learning a few basic steps, no matter if they are 25 or 65. Some of them, even in their 70s, go on to vie in formal competitions in cities like Atlanta and New York. And with the release of various dance-themed movies this year and the debut of television shows such as Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance? more people are hitting the hardwood.
“I love the people who think they could never do it,” says James Williard, Hammond’s Airlie partner. The Wilmington native teaches dance in Largo, Fla., but visits his hometown often to lead dance workshops.
Successful dancers at all levels practice, Williard says, but more importantly they relax. “Don’t try too hard,” he advises. “It’s a positive energy. ... It’s a type of therapy that can be physical and mental once you get into that roll of positive energy.”
After Williard and Hammond’s dance, Wilmington instructor Babs McCullen-Welker gets the Airlie crowd into the groove, inviting them to learn salsa. Without hesitation, about 100 attendees circle McCullen-Welker on the dance floor. She teaches them the basic four steps she says are the elements of every dance: the walk, the side step, the triple step and the rock step.
McCullen-Welker shows how to put it all together, and in less than 15 minutes, hips are swinging and dancers of all ages are doing their new moves, switching partners – dancing with strangers – at the end of each sequence. “All those dreams people have of being on the ballroom dance floor and the feeling of your body taking flight and then, oh my god, it’s happening!” McCullen-Welker says. “And it doesn’t have to be toward that other person. It’s actually something for you and it can be shared with whoever you happen to be dancing with.”
Sometimes dancing with your regular partner can be just as or more intimidating than dancing with a stranger. Mike and Laura Hunter, of Wilmington, have been working on Argentine tango during Wednesday night lessons at downtown’s Bijou. The dance is less formal and more improvisational than formal ballroom tango. “I’m trying to make her look good and it’s frustrating,” Mike Hunter says, admitting that he is not as fluid as his wife. “She gets bored doing the same steps over and over again so I want to try and change, but it’s hard to remember.”
Laura Hunter, of course, thinks her husband is a fine dancer and that she must be the problem. “When I watch him dancing with other people he doesn’t look as nervous as when he’s dancing with me. I think I put pressure.”
“That’s true,” Mike Hunter says, and they both start laughing. Feeling their way through the amorous dance and trying to please each other is part of the fun.
One-time and short-term lessons are a good, inexpensive way to pick up a few steps and build your confidence, Hammond says. Area studios offer public dances once a month. The Azalea Coast Chapter of USA Dance, an organization that promotes ballroom dancing, hosts a monthly lesson followed by an open dance at Lion’s Gate Clubhouse in Wilmington. “In the beginning, I didn’t have the dance shoes. I didn’t have ‘the look,’” Hammond says. “The only way you are going to do it, is to go and do it with other people.” It’s a leap Hammond took against the odds of her own shy personality. “I’ve always been defined by somebody else. I was Jimmy’s mother. I was Suzy’s mother. I was somebody’s wife. And I was OK with that because I didn’t want anyone to notice me.” she says. “Now, I’m me.”
Perhaps, Hammond’s greatest reward came after the Airlie salsa dance with Williard. It was the first time Hammond’s son had seen her dance. “Later that night, he said, ‘Mom, I’m really proud of you,’ because he knows that’s a struggle for me to do that kind of thing,” she says.
“And he says, ‘tonight, I was your son.’”
So, I thought I could dance
Editor’s Note: Wilmington Magazine contributor Liz Biro recently took the I Just Want to Learn to Dance Class for Beginners offered at Babs McDance Studio in Wilmington. This is a diary of her experience.
Editor’s Note: Wilmington Magazine contributor Liz Biro recently took the I Just Want to Learn to Dance Class for Beginners offered at Babs McDance Studio in Wilmington. This is a diary of her experience.
June 7: Since I dream of one day dancing in the middle of an Italian piazza, I figure it’s a good idea to know a few steps beyond the shag routine I taught myself with a scarf tied to an East Carolina University dorm room doorknob back in 1981. I don’t want to look like a two-by-four as I dance under a Naples full moon. But the block of wood in the mirror at Babs McDance studio last night was me, teetering among the other timbers trying to imitate the sway of instructor Babs’ impossibly limber hips without tipping over. In the floor-to-ceiling mirrors surrounding the room, I looked like a Panthers linebacker in concrete Mary Janes attempting to imitate Don Corleone’s gawky first-dance with his newlywed daughter in The Godfather. Yeah, that’s the problem: my shoes. Look at how they massacred my groove.
June 14: “Come on! Put some Cuba in it,” Babs McCullen-Welker told me tonight as she tried to bend my stiff frame into something that resembles salsa. My hips stayed in Castro’s Cuba. They don’t move unless forced, while Babs’ hips swing as if they’re dangling from a spring. She doesn’t even have to think about it. At one point she was doing a merengue and scratching her left shoulder with her left hand while staring out the window, as if dancing was an afterthought. This will never work, I thought, as Babs thrust me into the arms of a stranger who began the dance with an “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Amazingly, we danced, and when we screwed up – fell – guess what? No one got hurt.
June 21: I decided tonight would be a good time to tango – Argentine style, slow and fluid and sexy. So what if I skipped a desperately needed formal dance class to do it. You only get one chance to be flung about with abandon. So I took it, and I found out I can dance – I can dance so well, after just two lessons at Babs McDance studio that the bartender at Bijou’s tango night wanted to know if instructor Kent Boseman was my regular partner. “You looked great,” she said. “I thought you had been dancing for a long time.” I guess in my mind, I have.
June 28: So it turns out I don’t know how to shag. Well, actually, I didn’t know how to shag until Babs taught me the dance tonight. The steps I thought I had taught myself were not the steps that real shaggers do. I guess my dad was being nice when he told me I jammed at shag. Sort of like the time, I guess, when I was 4, and he told me I could really dance, even though I was standing on his feet the whole time. Well, I dance OK now – a little tango, a decent fox trot and my personal best: the box waltz. Ciao Napoli. See you under the moon.
MOVE TO THE BEAT: THE TOP DANCES FOR THE AGES
Arthur Murray Dance Studios lists definitions for 132 different social dances at its Web site, but some of the categories, such as Latin American Dances include several subcategories. The list, with entries like the Fish, Grizzly Bear and Hesitation Waltz is fun to read, but these are among the most popular dances.
Carolina Shag: Swing style runs from Virginia down through the Carolinas into areas of Georgia. Most often danced to ‘beach music’ performed by such groups as The Embers, The Drifters and a wide range of Motown recording artists. The music tempo is slow to medium and can be danced by all ages.
Country Western Two-step: The two-step originated in the 1800s by people who came to America from Europe. It was an offspring of the minuet. In the Old Western days when women were not allowed to dance with men, men danced together and that is the reason for the hand on the shoulder (holding a can of beer and the other hand to the side). The only women who danced with the men were Native Americans, which is where all the turns came, because the women loved to spin.
Fox Trot: Said by some to have been originated by Harry Fox (1913). It is now a standard ballroom dance the world over and serves as a good foundation for social dances.
Jitterbug: A toned-down version of a Lindy hop.
Lindy Hop: Named by Ray Bolger, after Colonel Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic, this is grandfather of all forms of swing. The dance originated at the Savoy ballroom in the 1930s as a modified form of The Charleston.
Latin American Dances: Popular Latin dances embraced by cultures other than Hispanic. Dances include the Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Bolero and Mambo. Choreography varies, but it is possible to indicate principal types, some of the most popular being the ‘amorous dances,’ such as merengue, tango and rumba, in which the partners hold each other closely.
Salsa: This is a favored name for a type of Latin music, which for the most part has its roots in Cuban culture and is enhanced by jazz textures. Salsa means sauce denoting a ‘hot’ flavor.
Swing: An ever popular blend of several African-American dances, which include Lindy and ragtime jazz and blues, as well as all the other dance music to accompanying dances of the past 90 years. Today, it generally refers to the ballroom and night club version, which is based on two slow and two quick counts or the slow and two quick counts of rhythm dances.
Waltz: The origin of the waltz is obscure, but a dance of turns and glides, leaping and stomping appeared in various parts of Europe at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century. In Italy it was the volta; France, volte; Germany, weller; and Austria, landler. These were round dances, but at the end there was a short period in which the circle would break up into couples who would whirl madly around and finish with a jump in the air. The Austrian landler hopping gave way to a gliding motion – considered the forerunner of the waltz.
Source: iDance.net (www.idance.net), Arthur Murray Studios (www.arthurmurray.com)
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