By Janessa Cloward
Dorie Thomsen has been part of the Utah Valley ballroom scene for years.
Her two youngest children, Hope and Brad, started ballroom dancing ten years ago as students at Northridge Elementary in Orem. Now they dance on the BYU Youth Ballroom and Pleasant Grove Ballroom teams.
Dorie’s own dancing career, however, didn’t start until six months ago.
One afternoon after Hope and Brad got out of rehearsal, Hope was trying to show her father, Steve, how to waltz in the living room.
“He had two left feet,” Dorie recalled with a chuckle. “Hope just gave him ‘the look’ and stamped her foot and said, ‘Daddy, you’d better not dance with me like this at my wedding.'”
A few weeks later, the Thomsen parents started ballroom lessons.
Thousands of couples across America are joining the Thomsens on America’s dance floors. With Hollywood churning out dance-themed movies and reality shows, Americans are showing symptoms of dance fever in epidemic proportions.
“If reality television shows measure the temperature of the nation, then ballroom dancing is hotter then a malaria patient in a sweater,” Alex Rudzinski, director of the ABC reality series “Dancing with the Stars,” said in a press release.
Ken Richards, spokesman for USA Dance, said studios have reported a 30 to 50 percent increase in enrollment in ballroom classes over last year. Overall membership in USA Dance has doubled over the past decade.
So crediting “Dancing with the Stars” and the Miramax film “Shall We Dance?” for starting the ballroom trend may not be accurate; the shows may have simply exposed what was already happening.
“Hollywood doesn’t generally roll out something unless there’s an audience,” Richards said.
In Utah Valley, ballroom dancing has always been hot. After all, it’s the home of the BYU Ballroom teams and the official United States National Pre-Teen, Junior and Youth Ballroom Championships.
But before dance fever hit Utah, Utah Valley’s dancers have been children and teens, and college students at the oldest. Now adults, too, are waltzing onto the local ballroom scene.
Ray Backlund, director of DanceSport Universe studio in Lindon, said his adult ballroom classes have more than doubled in size over the past year.
“I don’t think adults realized before [dancing’s] one of those things they can go out and do, too,” Backlund said.
The couples at DanceSport Universe come from similar backgrounds – middle-aged, upper-middle class adults with high-stress careers who don’t move around much at work. And they come for similar reasons – to exercise their minds and bodies through dance.
Jim Janney, a DanceSport Universe dancer from Salt Lake City, started ballroom dancing not only for the exercise but also as a way to meet women.
“Somewhere along the line, I fell in love,” Janney said. “But not with a woman – with dancing.”
He likes to compare ballroom dancing to golf. Both sports require concentration and emotional balance.
“The challenge is in getting your body to move the way your mind tells it to,” he said. “And when your body doesn’t move the way your mind tells it to, the challenge is in keeping your temper in check.”
Ballroom dancing also provides a forum for Backlund’s students to be themselves. After ten hours of sitting behind a desk, lawyers or engineers can let loose on the dance floor. Instead of adhering to office etiquette, they let their true colors shine through.
“They find a part of themselves they didn’t know before,” Backlund said. “All day, they’re being these stuffy, boring, professional people, but here they can toss that aside and be themselves.”
“People always dance their personalities,” Backlund added. “You can tell what they’re like just by watching them dance.”
The “red” personality types are easy to spot because they’ll likely be dominating the floor. The “white” personalities would rather follow than lead. “Yellows” light up the room with big smiles and exaggerated movements.
For Lynna Albers, a DanceSport Universe dancer from Salt Lake City, weekly dance lessons provide much-needed stress relief.
Before class, a distant look in her eyes revealed her thoughts of trouble at work or home, but once the music started, her eyes sparkled with laughter and the weariness disappeared as she swayed to the beat.
Albers’ husband stays home while she goes to class, but she said he’s very supportive of her passion for dancing.
“He doesn’t have much choice,” Albers said. “If I don’t get my dancing in, I get nasty and snap at him. Come Thursday nights and he’s practically pushing me out the door because he knows how cranky I’ll be if I don’t go.”
But in addition to releasing stress, dancing also breeds frustration in adults. In the office, the men and women at DanceSport Universe are in control. On the dance floor, they’re just beginners, and tend to be impatient with themselves and their partners.
Tensions run high between couples when they struggle to master a step, especially between married couples, who are more likely to critique their partners. Women in particular are guilty of impatience and criticism.
“If the ladies will come to class and keep their mouths shut and not criticize, the men will stay a lot longer,” Backlund said.
Some couples start dancing to strengthen their relationships, but Backlund said if they aren’t patient with each other, they could end up driving each other apart.
“I always have to separate couples at the beginning because the spouses start to fight,” Backlund said.
One time, when Backlund taught ballroom dancing for a ward activity, a young couple walked into the cultural hall holding hands but stalked out shouting at each other. Why all the fuss? She didn’t like following his lead.
Backlund likes to compare dancing to a marriage: couples need to find their roles and learn what styles work for them. However, some fundamentals of dance don’t change. The man leads. The woman follows.
“They have to learn that there is an order they have to follow,” Backlund said. “It’s not a sexist thing. It’s not about being unequal. It’s about working together.”
Once couples get past the initial frustration and tension, the bonding begins.
For Dorie and Steve Thomsen, weekly lessons at DanceSport Universe provide time to build their relationship as husband and wife, a relationship that sometimes takes a backseat to their other roles as parents to four children.
“When we’re dancing, we’re not Mom and Dad,” Dorie said. “We’re us again. We get to focus on each other.”
But Hope and Brad aren’t far from their parents’ minds, especially when a spin or step that came easily to the children proved difficult for their parents to learn.
“You don’t expect it to be that hard because you think dancing is something that just comes naturally,” Dorie said. “Then you do the steps and you think, ‘Oh, this is hard.'”
With a little practice and a lot of patience, so far the Thomsens mastered all the troublesome steps that came their way. Dorie loves the constant challenge of dancing. Struggling to perfect a step is what keeps her coming back each week.
“I can do it,” she said. “It’s hard, but I can do it. And once I’ve done it, I feel like I’ve done something good.”
