Dance enthusiast Marilyn Melton, a chemist from Bloomingdale, relocates a lot, and for her, the local Fred Astaire studio is something like the Welcome Wagon.
“When I move to a community, the very first thing I do is go to Fred Astaire and take the introductory lesson package. That’s how I break into the dance community.”
Now she spends much of her limited leisure time dancing at Burnett’s Ballroom in Villa Park.
“I’m a workaholic,” she said. “This is the only exercise I get.”
Rosalyn Lopata and Don Richey, amateur competitive dancers from Naperville, take private lessons from Willowbrook Ballroom’s resident professional Greg Gale, and practice the samba, merengue and other dances almost every day near the vending machines in the cavernous West Commons at College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn; they bring a boom box and go to it, attracting little attention from the slouching, snacking students nearby.
“You’re always happy when you’re dancing,” said Lopata.
Amateur competitors Bob and Nancy DuCharme of Aurora dance from 5 to 20 hours a week and see dancing as a sport.
“It’s exercise, it’s a social activity on the weekends. It’s in lieu of golfing, going to a health club or the movies,” said Nancy.
Ballroom dancers inhabit a parallel universe, supporting a network of studio dance parties, dance exhibitions and dance instructors unknown to the uninitiated.
“They’re a little subculture nobody knows about,” said Gale.
“What happens to people,” said Claudia Seversen of Wheaton, president of the Chicago chapter of the United States Amateur Ballroom Dancers Association (USABDA), “is they take a few lessons and then they get hooked-for life.”
That’s how it happened to Kenny Malyszko of Chicago, who said, “Dance is the greatest thing I ever got involved with. I used to think dancing was the dumbest thing in the world, but I just got sucked in. Now my social life is totally where the next dance is at what studio.”
People involved in the ballroom-dance scene disagree whether interest in it is waxing or waning. The Fred Astaire studio in Naperville reports a phenomenal enrollment in 1993, but other studios have closed down in recent years.
Most dancers think that ballroom dance is bigger on both coasts, and Melton said her former ballroom group in Austin, Tex., attracted 500 dancers every Saturday night.
“We will be trying to quantify interest a little more. I feel we should know what age groups are dancing and where they’re coming from,” said Seversen, adding “You would think that this area would support more dancing. I don’t know why it is so low profile.”
Gale thinks ballroom dancing has suffered from an old-fogey image: “People don’t realize you can ballroom dance to contemporary music.”
True ballrooms are scarce; there’s Willowbrook, of course, in Willow Springs (see accompanying story), Chevy Chase in Wheeling and Glendora House in Chicago Ridge.
You have to be in the know just to find Burnett’s Ballroom, a former warehouse turned chic dance studio and dancers’ hangout that offers drop-in group lessons and weekend public dances (with Dick Elliot’s band on Saturdays) as well as private lessons by appointment.
Hidden away on a nondescript residential street in Villa Park, it offers 3,000 square feet of dance floor in an airy, high-ceilinged room with soft pink walls, mullioned windows and large mirrors for admiring or critiquing oneself.
Owner and dance enthusiast Rich Burnett, a building contractor from Lake Bluff, calls his decision to open the ballroom a year ago a totally non-business decision.
But he did know his clientele, dancers such as Malyszko and his partner of the evening, Marion Wishnow of Addison, who say flatly, “We will go absolutely anywhere there’s dancing.”
Wishnow and Malyszko are skilled social dancers who’ve paid their $5 on a Sunday night to practice to taped music. They share the floor with a few others, including amateur competitors the DuCharmes and Tom and Lynn Anderson of Naperville, couples who have competed in the Ohio Star Ball. The Ohio Star Ball is a five-day ballroom dance competition, the finale of which is televised yearly on WTTW-Ch. 11.
Nancy, a special-education teacher, and Bob, a stair builder, met a few years ago while taking a group lesson at a lounge called The 19th Hole in Lyons. By the time they bumped into each other again a year later, both had decided to be more serious about their dancing.
Their wedding in October at Willowbrook Ballroom, at which they performed a specially choreographed dance, was the talk of the local dance community. Now they are building a house featuring an elegant basement ballroom.
Nancy’s competition dress is pretty standard stuff as competition dresses go. Costing $2,400, it’s a brilliant blue, with a shirred bodice, three petticoats, each with a wired ruffle hem and a knife-pleated skirt accented with two rows of ostrich feathers.
The whole business is generously encrusted with aurora borealis stones. A chiffon float attaches to her sleeve on the left arm and a medieval-looking wrist glove is worn on the right.
“I’m still getting used to the float,” she said.
The DuCharmes, who are focusing on smooth dances such as the fox trot and quick step, are fairly new to competition, but they are beyond working on steps.
“We’re working on body projections and positioning,” said Nancy.
The movie “Saturday Night Fever” triggered Lynn Anderson’s interest in ballroom dancing. She, a social worker, met her husband, Tom, an engineer, at a studio, and eventually he persuaded her to compete.
“Before I met him, I never thought of competing; I was too scared. But it has helped my self-esteem immensely,” she said.
In 1987, the Andersons won the U.S. Amateur American Smooth Championship and now are competing in the international division.
Taking the floor-he in a tailcoat, she in a parrot-green eyepopper-they look magnificent, romantic and sexy. But this is illusion.
“It’s physics,” said Lynn. “How do you move two bodies down the floor as one. There are three blocks that have to line up: head, hip and the standing foot.”
“The man has to be completely balanced and have a strong frame,” said Tom, who Lynn describes as a taskmaster.
The frame is the foundation of ballroom dancing. Elbows are up, the man’s hand firmly underneath the woman’s shoulder blade, fingers together, pointed slightly down. The dance frame gives a couple formality, definition and energy.
A droopy dance frame says to the world, “Tried but couldn’t.”
The DuCharmes look blank when asked if they are having fun on the floor.
“It’s not romantic like it was when we initially met, although we do loosen up once in a while, like on New Year’s Eve,” said Nancy. “But if you get what our teacher calls lyrical and starry-eyed, your dancing starts falling apart. We’re working very hard and are very focused, but we aim to make it look romantic and very easy.”
Working on a romantic move, Nancy “falls” back into Bob, arms outstretched. He catches her, just so, near the elbow.
“This move is just to eat up time so we can begin dancing on the first full measure,” said Nancy.
Competing couples deal with a lot of stress, but dance teachers Andy and Karen Fuzak feel that social ballroom dancing is just the thing to put fun back into a marriage. They teach at a variety of places, including College of Du Page and area schools.
But when teaching under their own business name, We Move As One, they teach only couples.
“And we never make people switch partners,” said Karen.
Jan and Joe Kramer of Wheaton began taking lessons with the Fuzaks to learn to dance before their son’s wedding. Jan confessed she always tried to lead, “but I’ve been able to stop because Joe has learned to be such a good leader. You really do feel you move as one.”
Karen said the woman, “tired of doing the high school `hang and drag,”‘ usually initiates the lessons. “The guy is kicking and screaming, but as soon as the men start to feel confident they love it and do exceedingly well.”
To ready their students for dancing on a crowded floor, the Fuzaks make them dance all squashed together at one end of the dance floor.
When they go to a place like Willowbrook, said Andy, “they are going to see dancers who have been dancing for years. They are going to feel less accomplished and may even get run over.”
The skill needed is what dancers call floorcraft: being able to cut around other dancers and adjust to changes in the music.
Some students get run over and others freeze because they can’t quite pick up the rhythm on tunes other than the ones on which they learned, which are specially chosen for their dominant, danceable beat.
Bill Rautenkranz of Worth has been taking lessons at the Fred Astaire studio in Naperville for four years. He attends all the Friday night practice parties, and if he finds himself out of town, he looks in the Yellow Pages for a studio nearby.
A self-described shy person, he said, “I’ve made good friends here, the best people you’ll find.”
We Move As One and Fred Astaire both offer group and private lessons, outings with staff to local clubs and supervised group practice dances, where students with a wide range of skills dance together.
Masterminded by the charismatic Hazel Williams, whose husband owns the Illinois Fred Astaire franchise, a group practice is under way on a recent Friday night; 11 students, two instructors and Williams make a nice crowd.
A visitor at the practice can tell that skills range from pretty expert, like the tangoing Rautenkranz, to first-timers whose efforts could kindly be described as tentative.
Marie and Howard Stanley of Naperville are new students who decided they were tired of always sitting out the fast dances. And newcomer Dot Brown is starting a six-month stint of lessons.
Recently widowed, she says, “I was looking for outside interests. Being with the (Fred Astaire) group helps me to go out socially. And I especially wanted to learn the rhumba.”
Rhumba is a good, all-purpose Latin dance, a waltz with a little Cuban motion thrown in. Williams advises, “When in doubt, rhumba!”
Williams enforces a charming formality. Everyone must greet their partner and applaud at the end of a dance. The final dance has its own ritual.
“When I say `kahlua,’ everyone changes partners,” says Williams. “You must say goodnight to everyone before you leave.”
“Everyone has to dance sometime in their life,” says Gale, “at a wedding or a reunion. If people haven’t had any lessons, they sit there all night thinking it would be fun to be out there. I think dance is the answer to everyone’s problems. It can bring everyone together. Anyone can dance with anyone and everyone feels good while they’re dancing.”
