Gotta Dance

Fred Astaire Dance Studio student Julia Whedon wrote about her introduction to dancing*:

It was lunch hour. I was waiting for the light to change at the corner of Broadway and 57th Street. Chase Manhattan right behind me, Duane Reade due east, I was idly panning the lower floors of surrounding office buildings-that unseen phylum of fix your fiddle, store your fur, read your palm when I spotted a small fourth-floor sign: FRED ASTAIRE DANCE STUDIOS.

Incredible, I thought, the whole world gone mad, and they're still teaching ballroom dancing. In broad daylight. At high noon. On a lunch hour, maybe, Imagine. I not only imagined it, I imagined myself doing it. The genie was out of the bottle. I sprinted across 57th. I wanted to dance-a real dance with steps to music-and I wanted to do it at once.

I must have wanted to do this for a long time, maybe all my life. But how could I? Everything prevented it—the way music is, men are, what women have become. I'd been a fair dancer once —modern, ballet, that sort of thing. But Health came along and ruined all that. But Health came along and ruined all that. Dance became Exercise. And I'd never been in it for my thighs. Dancing is what you do about music, if it's in you to do it; and if it is and you don't, it becomes a blocked language, like sex. Fear arrived all cold and clammy in the elevator, What kind of guys would dance in a place like this? And what kind of woman would dance with guys like that? Panic. I needed an alibi. Too late. The doors parted. A huge wave of warm music broke over my head, lifting me from where I was and dropping me 'down to someplace new. Day turned into night. Eydie Gorme was belting out a samba.

A couple of hard-looking women in glittery pumps and practice clothes strutted past, looking like magicians' assistants. Beyond, on a large dance floor, two couples were performing extreme Latin dances with cocked hips. A well-muscled young man partnered a woman about sixty-bony in the sternum, ropy in the neck-the kind you hold doors for. Her dancing was not only beautiful, she danced as if she were beautiful. So did he. Was this possible? Didn't I know her from the express line at D'Agostino's? A slender, blond teacher skimmed across the floor with a nervous, bespectacled fellow near forty.

She danced him through her fingertips, smiling, moving as if he were doing it all. I was escorted into an office and told that I could have a half-hour evaluation for $12. I would have paid them $800 just to dance for five minutes like the lady from D'Agostino's.

I was introduced to my teacher, Robert Pike. He wasn't what I expected. Sixty maybe, with a kind of Melvyn Douglas face, he led me into a private studio. I followed, suddenly appalled at what I'd done. Chatting pleasantly, he cued up a tape, took me firmly in his arms and. moved me out across the floor.

Just a word about firmly. You can tell a lot from the way a man swings an ax, snaps the ball or leans into a canter. This guy was the real thing. I don't know what he saw in the wraparound mirrors, but I saw a heroine from the silents being swept downstream, heading for the falls.

He had me dancing in five minutes, really dancing in ten. Waltz, swing, rumba. Half these dances I didn't even know--except I was doing them. “You've danced before,” Mr. Pike remarked. Here comes the pitch, I thought. But he was right: I had. I told him about lessons, once upon a time in Hollywood, at Arthur Murray. "Was that the studio on Wilshire?" Mr. Pike asked. It was. It turns out to be one of the first places he taught. Coincidence is a marvelous thing and got us talking. He told me (side, together, close) about himself, Growing up in Atlanta, the Marines (quick, quick, slow), performing with Les Brown, Hollywood in the Forties. I couldn't tell by this time if I was dancing to the story or the music. This guy was ballroom dancing.

I signed up for ten lessons, which included optional Friday night practice sessions with the staff and other students. I wasn't so sure about those. Private lunch-hour assignations were one thing public admission another. But after three lessons I was so dance crazed I was ready to try anything. I like to think of myself as a grown-up lady. I've been in boardrooms and labor rooms, stopped arterial bleeding, made a citizen's arrest, given speeches, but never with the surge of anxiety I experienced walking into that practice session.

There I am, alone in my party dress. Suddenly big music fills the air. Instantly, Mr. Pike is at my side. From that moment, I am never not dancing with him or someone else. I meet a deli owner from Queens, a scientist from Columbia, an Estee Lauder exec. Doing this dancing in public for the first time with strangers is a little like trying out your French on a Frenchman.

"Nice samba," says a partner at my third practice session.

"Like your waltz," says another. "Very light."

"It's true," says a teacher who coaches competitors, "you can go as far as you want."

Go where? What's he talking about? Competition. They think I am dancing very well, they think I should consider competing. I’m flattered, of course.
There is a newcomers' contest scheduled a month hence. I should think about it. It's excellent preparation for the Eastern Regional’s. I'm dumbstruck.

*reprinted from the Fred Astaire Cincinnati newsletter