It`s 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night. Dancers in suits, shimmering finery and casual frocks head to the Chevy Chase Clubhouse in Wheeling to spin across the wood dance floor to the melodies of the Freddy Mills band.
Or they travel to Knickers in Des Plaines, where Dick Kress and his 16-piece orchestra work through ”In the Mood.”
If it`s Tuesday, you`ll find them at the Hob Nob in Crystal Lake, stepping to the tunes of Vito Buffalo and his band.
And come Friday, the dancers head back to Knickers or to the Antique Village Ballroom in Union or to any of a number of dance floors located in clubs and restaurants throughout the northwest suburbs.
Many of these dancers have been making this trek for 40 years with varying turns in their quest to find the likes of their now-closed dance club favorites, Elgin`s Blue Moon or Chicago`s Satin Doll or the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Others, far younger, have just caught a touch of dance fever.
Whatever their age or destination, they`re all going out to dance.
Just note the number of dancers showing up at clubs and ballrooms throughout the northwest suburbs for a night of Big Band dancing or jitterbugging. Or check the lineup of park district classes, where dance sessions teach everything from swing to wedding dances.
And talk to musicians who perform the Big Band sound, who say they are getting lots of gigs again.
Take Dick Kress, the orchestra leader who was a member of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and now heads up his own band that plays the first Wednesday of the month at Knickers, with singer Gloria Van embellishing the sound. Kress said the dance revival started about 15 years ago.
”We`re playing everywhere-for Big Band theme dances, at colleges like Valparaiso and Notre Dame, and particularly at weddings,” said Kress. ”Kids are really starting to dig that music.”
Knickers` owner Nickolas Mitchell would agree. ”Originally, we marketed to a 50-plus crowd,” said Mitchell, who began presenting this style of entertainment about eight years ago. ”But now our base has broadened and we see many patrons in their early 30s.”
Which is just what happened when Mike and Randy Donley-the brothers who run Union`s Antique Village Hall and schedule dances there some Fridays saw the crowd grow.
Mike said he noticed the trend one night as five new under-40 couples joined his clientele that had been made up primarily of former customers of the shuttered Blue Moon.
”The surprising thing is that when you have 300 people in the hall and the music starts up, no one is seated,” Mike said.
Jammed on the floor to jitterbug is the situation at the American Legion Hall in Franklin Park, where Chicago`s Windy City Jitterbug Club holds dance parties. Said Gerri Orseno, the club`s treasurer: ”The hall really only holds about 225 people, but we were getting between 300 and 400 people at these dances.”
And at Crystal Lake`s Hob Nob on the second Tuesday of every month, the banquet room is transformed into a supper club to dance to Vito Buffalo and his orchestra, with Vito doing his convincing Jimmy Durante rasp: ”Let me hear those saxophones.”
Some 200 people regularly vie for space on the dance floor. Which is why Doug Watson, who calls himself an under-40 swing dancer from Palatine and disco king in college, said simply: ”We just take small steps and don`t do as much traveling.”
”One of the neatest things we see,” said Orseno, ”is that many of our members, primarily in their mid- to late 40s, are now bringing their own kids to the dances. Because many of the places we dance are nightclubs and serve liquor, members have to be at least 21.”
The reasons for the revival of interest in couples dancing and the Big Band sound are as varied as the dancers.
”I like the kind of dances where we still hold the girl,” said 70-year-old Dave Jacobson, a veteran public relations man based in Arlington Heights. He speaks with authority as he is also a tap dancer, a musician and winner of the jitterbug contest at his 50-year reunion from Chicago`s Marshall High School in 1989.
Janis Kenyon, Illinois coordinator of National Ballroom Dance Week, Sept. 11-20, embraces the revival of romance and the dances and music that inspire it.
”Ballroom dancing offers a prescribed way of getting to know each other,” Kenton said.
An instructor of swing, mambo, merengue, and wedding dance classes, Kenyon teaches privately as well as through District 211 in Palatine, and the Mt. Prospect, Arlington Heights and Buffalo Grove Park Districts.
”Ballroom dancing offers a prescribed way of getting to know each other,” Kenton said.
Kim Cashmore, recreation supervisor for the Buffalo Grove Parks District was glad to find Kenyon.
”In 1989, I offered one adult ballroom dancing class and it was very, very popular,” said Cashmore. ”When that instructor left, I had trouble finding an instructor who wanted to work with adults. Janis found me, and we offered Simply Swing this summer and had 18 people, ranging from their early 30s to age 73 sign up.”
David and Annette Haraburda of Algonquin frequent the Hob Nob, where their daughter is a waitress, specifically to hear the band. They hope to hear their favorite dancing tune, ”String of Pearls”.
”We`ve been married 24 years,” said David, ”and we have always enjoyed dancing together.”
Added Annette, the youngest of eight children who grew up in an Ohio family that loved dancing: ”We were always dancing, partially because there were so many places to go.”
Indeed, at one time there were numerous places to head for a night of dancing in Chicago.
”You could go out anywhere on a Saturday night to dance,” said Jacobson. ”And how they could dance! A guy`s popularity was based on how well he could dance. Listening and dancing to the radio were real popular.”
Until 1975, Schaumburg resident Victor Marasa, a professional musician, played both the stand-up bass and the electric guitar in an orchestra led by Jerry Keller of Niles.
”It was not uncommon for us to do four or five jobs in a night and travel 50 weeks a year,” said Marasa, recalling the early years.
Recording studios changed all that. ”But it was just never the same. As performers, the more fun the people had (dancing), the more fun we had,”
Keller said.
In fact, bandleaders today note that oft-requested tunes harken back to the Forties, the decade that yanked Americans out of the Great Depression and into World War II.
Favorites include ”In the Mood,” ”Chattanooga Choo-Choo” and
”Moonlight Serenade.”
As Marasa said, ”The lyrics mean something sweet, especially when you hear them with someone you care about.”
Robert Bryant, president of the U.S. Swing Dance Council, says that ballroom dance is the most popular form of dancing in the world. He cites the fact that 10 years ago there were only six major national swing conventions. Now there are 300 across the country, and swing dance clubs are forming in Germany, Russia and other areas of Europe.
Debbie Stein of the GCI Group in New York, a public relations firm that coordinates national Big Band Bashes, sponsored by Geritol to benefit national and local lung associations, said people flock by the thousands to their national dance contests.
Janet Williams, communications director at the Chicago Lung Association, helped coordinate Chicagoland`s Big Band Bash in May.
”It was a wonderful way for some of our patrons to get exercise for their hearts, as well as stimulate their ears and eyes,” Williams said.
Indeed. February`s Prevention Magazine cited a study conducted at the exercise physiology laboratory at California State University at Northridge that reported that even beginning dancers get an effective workout.
Researchers monitored the heart rate responses of five couples and found that the exertion reached the appropriate range for increasing cardio-respiratory fitness. In fact, dances requiring fast footwork, such as the swing or jitterbug, worked dancers into the 50 to 85 percent range of their maximum heart rate reserve.
A fancier of Big Band music and dancing herself, Williams entertained guests at her wedding with music from the era, having them play,
appropriately, ”My Funny Valentine,” and ”It Had To Be You” for her husband.
At Chevy Chase, one of the few remaining dance pavilions with a wood floor, the regulars vary in age, from 50 on up. The women wear chiffon, sequins and pearls on their flowing gowns and often choose flowers to adorn their hair. As couples, they make an elegant silhouette as they move. There are also younger people who say they love the music and, furthermore, want to return to dancing that requires touching and physical closeness.
Vic DeCola, manager of the Arthur Murray dance studio in Morton Grove, said that every time the ballroom dance championships that Arthur Murray sponsors are aired on national TV, people sign up for classes. ”In the last two months, 75 couples have signed up at our studio,” DeCola said.
DeCola said he always asks people why they want to learn to dance and there are myriad answers. ”Some of our older, widowed women still want to do social things but would never be comfortable in a bar.
”They can come to our free dances on Friday nights from 9 until 11:30, enjoy free parking, a great blend of music, and go home with no hassle,” he said.
Another couple, in their `60s, came in and said they wanted to learn to dance for a wedding. ”With the popularity of videotaping at weddings, couples want to look good on tape,” DeCola said.
Even Madonna takes dance lessons. She and several other cast members of
”A League of Their Own” spent several hours at the Morton Grove studio, learning the jitterbug for a hot dance sequence in the movie.
Arlington Heights resident Kenyon teaches eight-week courses at several local schools at the 6th-, 7th- and 8th-grade levels.
”Dancing helps boys learn what to say to the girls, how to ask them to dance, what to do if she says yes,” said Kenyon. ”I also try to help them learn enough steps to be at ease, thus making dancing yet another recreational sport. I also help all my students, young and older, learn to follow the beat of the music, but most of all to have fun.”
Which is the whole purpose of ballroom dancing, of course.
